A fine cast fills 'Blue Room'

SARASOTA -- A lot of sex happens in The Blue Room, but David Hare's play is about what goes on in people's minds and hearts as well as between the sheets.

In the production by FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training, an impressive student cast flirts and fibs, wiggles and weeps, loves and leaves, and does an altogether engaging, professional job.

The 10-character play is a sexual roundelay: A prostitute has sex with a cabdriver, the cabbie has sex with an au pair, the au pair has sex with her employers' college student son and so on, until a wealthy man wakes up with that same prostitute, closing the circle.

The characters' names aren't important; they're the Girl, the Student, the Actress, the Aristocrat. Hare is more interested in the complexity of our motives for even the most ephemeral of sexual connections; the changing power balances of gender, age and class among his couples; the elusiveness of love and the language we couch it in, not to mention that eavesdropping on other people's intimate moments can be hilarious.

The Blue Room is based on Reigen ("round dance"), written in 1897 by Arthur Schnitzler, a Viennese playwright and friend of Sigmund Freud.

The play may have roots in Freudian theory, but it's no collection of dry case studies. Hare wrote his witty, lusty update in 1998, and the hit London production directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and starring Nicole Kidman in all five female roles elicited such headlines as "Theatrical Viagra!"

Although The Blue Room has often been produced with two or four actors, the conservatory uses nine (which makes sense for an acting school). The cast members are students, but they bring polish and confidence to this comedy of sexual manners.

Kidman and Iain Glen bared all in the London production. In Sarasota, though there are some erotic flashes of flesh, no one gets naked.

The vignettes are brief (nine in 90 minutes) but rich in what they reveal about desire. Because we see each character in two relationships, we often know more than the people onstage do. Yet Hare keeps surprising us.

Among The Blue Room's fine cast, standouts include Lauren Orkus, who delivers a troubling mix of kittenish sexuality and weariness as the Model; Heather Corwin, who's remarkably convincing as the Married Woman, a character substantially older than herself; Bryan Whitcomb, the only actor who plays two roles and effectively differentiates the Cab Driver and the Politician; and Francisco Lozano as the preening Playwright, a man so besotted with his words that he jumps out of bed to scribble down his pillow talk.

In this season of sentimentality, The Blue Room offers a refreshing switch: It lets us revel in naughty over nice.

REVIEW: The Blue Room, by David Hare, at FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. 8 p.m. today through Sunday, Tuesday through Thursday, and Dec. 14; also 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and Dec. 14 and 15. $19-$21. Toll-free 1-800-361-8388; www.asolo.org.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright