This morning, WOSU Public Radio featured playwright David Ian Lee, director Matt Slaybaugh, and cast member Jordan Fehr on All Sides with Ann Fisher. Ann spoke with David by phone before discussing our production of Sleeper and its creation with Jordan and Matt, live in the studio.

LISTEN HERE.

After thoroughly enjoying our opening of Sleeper last night, Arts writer Margaret Quamme applauded the show in writing. Here are some highlights.

Sleeper is a taut, emotionally demanding drama set in the years following 9/11. Available Light Theatre’s fluid, dynamic production of David Ian Lee’s play never lets its tension subside over the almost 2 1/2 hours of running time …

Lee has a gift for high-energy, jumpy, and often gleefully politically incorrect dialogue … At their most emotionally confused, the characters come across as intelligent, even if their brains aren’t getting them anywhere …

Director Matt Slaybaugh deftly locates the gap between the glib words and the less coherent feelings beneath them. Using a minimal but effective set, he keeps several scenes going simultaneously without losing the flow of any of them …

Eads and Weaver are particularly strong as the two lead women, finding depths and complexities in what could have been a simple dichotomy of liberal versus conservative …

Brant is quietly effective as a man increasingly in over his head. Welsh is touching both as Rachel’s husband and as Teri’s father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s …

Jordan Fehr is believably conflicted as a Muslim with ties to both London and his native Afghanistan …

The Available Light production grounds the more theatrical elements of the play in realistic character development, with the result that the smaller daily conflicts of the play come across as being as significant as the larger more world-shattering ones.

You can read her whole piece here.

The NY Times front page today features not one, but two stories about Afghanistan. One is a largely pictorial essay (view the slideshow) about the architectural evidence that remains from the Soviet Union’s influence in Kabul decades ago.

It’s the other, however, that is so strikingly concurrent with Sleeper, the play we’re about to open this Thursday. The headline reads, “Risks of Afghan War Shift From Soldiers to Contractors.”

In David Ian Lee’s Sleeper, one of the characters, Bobby Goffin, leaves his hospital consulting in the U.S. behind to take a job building roads in Afghanistan, a job he believes will be very safe.

A stand-out statement from the article – “More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year for the first time during the war.” What follows is a pretty shocking list of statistics, including the fact that “at least 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan” and “according to the Labor Department’s statistics, 1,777 American contractors in Afghanistan were injured or wounded seriously.” And we don’t even know the real numbers, because these private companies aren’t required to reveal all the details.

We’ve spent a lot of time reading about the history of the Afghanistan-Pakistan chaos and studying the most current events and policies with respect to our recent actions in the region. Even so, it’s hard not to view it with detachment, the events being so far away, and there being so many months since Afghanistan has been a nightly part of the news cycle. But there’s nothing like a front page headline to make it so much more visceral and immediate.

Read the NY Times stories online here:
Risks of Afghan War Shift From Soldiers to Contractors
In Afghanistan, a Soviet Past Lies in Ruins

See Sleeper starting February 16.

A few of our favorite moments from some of our favorite writers …

Jay Weitz in the Columbus Alive:

Just as Beethoven played with the little details of a simple waltz, Available Light makes a graceful minuet of Kaufman’s intricate play.

Richard Sanford of Screen of Distance:

It’s one of the most consistently acted, moving productions of a play I’ve seen in town in years – a simple story so beautifully told that I was moved to tears by the time it was over and I have a hard time picturing anyone I know not walking out enjoying it.

Richard Ades in The Other Paper:

… it does add up to an enjoyable evening of drama and music, thanks largely to director Eleni Papaleonardos and her consistently good cast …
Josie Merkle delivers intelligence and prickly impatience as Katherine; Acacia Duncan radiates concern as her protective daughter, Clara. Adam Humphrey is appealing as Mike, a love-struck nurse who attempts to worm his way into Clara’s life even though she insists she’s too busy worrying about her mother.

Michael Grossberg in The Columbus Dispatch:

Under the sensitive direction of Eleni Papaleonardos, a fine nine-person ensemble hits virtually all of the play’s lilting grace notes of nobility, tenderness, passion and yes, grace.

With its artful tapestry of monologues, dialogues, lighting, sound and multimedia projections, Available Light illuminates one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking recent Broadway plays.

33 Variations continues through Sunday, January 22. Get your tickets now, before they’re gone.

We’re extremely pleased to announce that our cast and crew have been able re-arrange their schedules so that we can offer one more Sunday matinee performance of 33 Variations. Hooray!

Tickets are available now. Get them before they’re gone.

MORE INFO.

Columbus Dispatch theatre critic Michael Grossberg wrote about last night’s opening of 33 Variations and unleashed a symphony of praise. Catch the highlights below.

Available Light Theatre’s elegant area premiere weaves a fascinating spell …

Under the sensitive direction of Eleni Papaleonardos, a fine nine-person ensemble hits virtually all of the play’s lilting grace notes of nobility, tenderness, passion and yes, grace …

Josie Merkle hits her stride as Dr. Katherine Brandt … as she conveys the persistence amid increasing fragility …

As Beethoven, Matt Hermes embodies the composer’s humanity, passion and frustration while revealing convincing glimpses of his genius …

Acacia Duncan couldn’t be more luminous as Clara Brandt, Katherine’s New York daughter …

As nurse Mike Clark, Humphrey exudes decency, empathy, competence and diffidence …

Strong support comes from Nate Roderick, increasingly concerned and protective as Beethoven’s friend Anton Schindler; David Tull, touchy and excitable as composer-publisher Anton Diabelli; and Emily Bach as Dr. Gertrude Ladenburger, a guardian of Beethoven’s papers who becomes Katherine’s trusted confidante …

Perhaps least visible but most evocative is pianist Dave McMahon, who capably performs excerpts from many of the waltz variations on a piano at the center rear of the stage …

With its artful tapestry of monologues, dialogues, lighting, sound and multimedia projections, Available Light illuminates one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking recent Broadway plays.

Read Mr. Grossberg’s entire piece here.

Vaclav Havel died this morning. It was a Vaclav Havel play that set me on my path. I was working on Temptation at the College of Wooster in 1995. Nothing else was going well in my life at that time, but that play was the most exciting art I’d ever been involved in. The theatre turned into my sanctuary and that hasn’t changed since.

I posted the text of a particularly memorable letter that Havel wrote to his wife, Olga, in 1981, while in prison, to my Scribbleboxing site. It starts like this:

As you know, I’m an inveterate planner and master of ceremonies, and so you can imagine in what incredible detail I construct my sweet fantasies, such as how I’ll go to the sauna, combine it with swimming in the pool and sunbathing, then go home for a snooze, then in the evening put on some nice clothes and go wit you to a good restaurant, and I imagine all the things we’ll eat and drink there etc. etc. When I think about it, all such daydreams have one thing in common: sooner or later, a disturbing question always arises: what then? What next? For the time must come, after all, when – figuratively speaking – I will have swum enough, preened myself enough, eaten enough, slept enough; when I will no longer want to indulge in those delights any more, yet my life will clearly be far from over, and it will be high time – especially after all that – to breathe some meaning and substance into it.

I encourage you to read this rest.

- Matt