Published on: Wednesday, November 04, 2009

By David Cannon, Sentinel Arts Critic

Mixing politics and scientific concerns with art, the Incite Festival is in its third year at Boston University and made its first appearance in the Washington area at Olney Theatre Center this past weekend. Reminiscent of the old Potomac Theater Project, the Incite Festival was a more ambitious endeavor presenting two short, rarely performed classics dealing with music and the subject of mental illness.

Olney Artistic Director Jim Petosa teaches at Boston University and is also the Incite Festival director, so there is the connection with Olney. Plus, Mr. Petosa directed both works on the program.

The most straightforward is “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat,” a one-act opera by Michael Nyman, based on the best-selling book by Dr. Oliver Sacks. Despite the humorous title, this is a real-life case study of a man with a strange affliction.

The patient functions normally enough but his mind does not register images correctly. He is not insane or going blind or just forgetful. In a key scene, the man is given a black glove and, while he can describe it, it does not register with him that it is a glove. According to Wikipedia – I know, caveat emptor – the condition was later diagnosed as a rare form of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The opera is full of minimalist music, pulsating patterns and tonal chord progression, often sounding like John Adams, but the patient is a singer, so Nyman adds snippets from the songs of Robert Schumann into the score. The piece is surprisingly melodic and very tonal. You try setting a medical examination to music. Nyman does it with fascinating results.

A very good job by the three singers – Daniel Gerdes as the concerned doctor, Gideon Dabi as the confused patient, and Jessica Stavros as his concerned wife. The setup in the Multiz Gudelsky lab is equally minimal but Petosa keeps his cast moving and interacting smoothly throughout this one-act opera. It is an opera, though sung in English, but at times the use of surtitles would have been helpful, especially when more than one person was singing.

Meanwhile, at the Olney Mainstage was a rare performance of “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour,” written by Tom Stoppard. It is a very political play for Stoppard, though characterized by his trademark wit and virtuoso use of the English language.

Alexander is in a Soviet mental hospital where authorities are trying to make him confess that his anti-government statements are the result of mental illness. Another man in the hospital, named Ivanov, is truly a schizophrenic. There are a number of officials, more out of Groucho Marx than Karl, including a teacher trying convince Alexander’s son, Sasha, that his father is mentally ill.

Despite the fine acting, the real star here is the orchestra. You see, the schizophrenic Ivanov thinks he is a great classical musician and his fantasies are presented at length with an orchestra playing music specifically written for this play, by Andre Previn. The music is quite elaborate and very much in the Shostakovich vein. You need the orchestra for those hallucinations, and for the funniest lines of the play as Ivanov verbally berates his musicians as he “conducts.” One good comment, Ivanov admits that for the cello section, he had to “scrape the bottom of the barrel, and that’s how they sound.”

The play has scenes where Duke Doyle vividly describes being incarcerated in a Soviet prison, while David Rosenblatt, as Sasha, plays a son torn by various emotions. Meanwhile, Alex Mickiewicz is great fun as the wacky Ivanov, especially when he gets to briefly assume the doctor’s role, but Bill Gardiner’s Doctor and Paul Leopold’s Colonel are no mental giants either. The student orchestra is very good under the baton of William Lumpkin, and there is an imaginative stage design by Steven Meyer that is minimal but very surreal. Petosa directs his large forces well, even allowing Rosenblatt and Mickiewicz to weave in and out of the onstage orchestra for some of their scenes.

Even more than the Nyman opera, the elaborate forces required to pull off this Stoppard play may make the Olney production a once in a lifetime event.

The season comes to an end at Olney Theatre with the holiday presentation of the musical “Camelot” starting Nov. 18 and running to Jan. 3, 2010.

For more information, call 301-924-3400 or go online to http://www.olneytheatre.org.