Baltimore Waltz acting is right in step

Author: Kelsey Smith

Paula Vogel's "The Baltimore Waltz," the senior work of Caitlin Dennis '06.5 and Julia Proctor '06.5, opened Thursday evening at the Hepburn Zoo. Director Dennis continued the Zoo's long-standing tradition of presenting challenging student-designed and produced work with a powerful performance that carried the audience through a bumpy ride of imagined possibilities.

Vogel, a playwright who is known for dealing with uncomfortable, sexually-charged topics - AIDS, pornography, prostitution and pedophilia - does not shy away from taboo. "The Baltimore Waltz" is Vogel's own personal cathartic response to the death of her brother, Carl, who succumbed to AIDS in 1988. Upon entering the Zoo, audience members were presented with a letter written from Carl to his sister, prefaced by Vogel's words, projected onto a simple, white sheet obstructing the stage. Carl frankly addresses his burial ceremony with a hint of comedy punctuating his unavoidable sadness. In Vogel's preface, she confesses that she did not take her brother up on an offer to tour Europe shortly before he died, saying, "I declined, never dreaming that he was HIV positive."

Dennis identified the difficulty of balancing humor and horror in the production, explaining that, "Sometimes it was a challenge to know exactly what parallels to HIV or homosexuality Vogel was attempting to draw at any given moment. The text is complicated and at times very opaque. But we realized you couldn't think of it as an allegory alone. It's really far more than that."

The complex dream world that is "The Baltimore Waltz" is not about any one thing in particular, but rather the way that all the elements of comedy and tragedy add up to make, well, life. The result is a "what could have been" scenario, involving an imagined farewell trip through Europe, in which it is Anna (Proctor), the stage incarnation of Vogel, who has fallen ill, not Carl.

It is often difficult to distinguish between the voice of Anna and the voice of Vogel. Anna, an unmarried first-grade teacher, is informed by a doctor that she has contracted ATD, Acquired Toilet Disease, a fatal and mysterious illness with a high risk factor for those sharing seats with five-year-olds. She and her brother Carl, played by Rishabh Kashyap '08, depart for Europe in search of a doctor who may be able to help cure her.

The performances were solid and the cast should be congratulated for working through a very opaque text. Willie Orbison '08 was responsible for most of the laughs from the audience with his performance as "The Third Man," playing everything from a socially awkward doctor to a bashful Dutch boy to a sexually forward French man. Orbison's combination of physicality and nonsensical German, French and Dutch dialects stole the show, heightening the contrast between humor and tragedy.

The affection expressed between Proctor and Kashyap was tangible. Proctor, a longstanding veteran of the Hepburn Zoo, emerged in a particularly adult role, something that has been lacking in some of her previous performances. Because of her maturity, it was difficult at times to believe that she and Kashyap were nearly the same age.

The expression of their relationship was actually strengthened by the four-in-one set piece that served as a train, hospital bed, hotel room and barstool. Their maneuvering of the unwieldy piece of "furniture" was carefully and successfully orchestrated. Yet the background set, an explosion of giant, gold-plated picture frames and purple fabrics, was a bit distracting at times. While it was understandable that the design was meant to convey the fantasy world that Anna had created, at moments the garishness of the design choices detracted from the focus on the actors. The sound design was especially moving, as the music Carl requested Vogel play at his burial ceremony was laced seamlessly throughout the production.

The play's constant discussion of the inadequacies of language added an interesting element to the performance. The evening was sprinkled with lessons on the role of different kinds of communication: medical jargon in laymen's terms, how to have a phone conversation, etc. Matters were complicated by the introduction of foreign languages. The most poignant comparison came when Anna, sitting on the doctor's table, comes to terms with the phrase, "there's nothing we can do." Anna turns it over in her mind, conjugating it into every form possible. Dennis, another veteran of the Middlebury College Theatre Department, brought together a particularly cogent interpretation of a very difficult text. The production was collectively effective; the end result was a piece that spoke to the audience, moving many to tears.