The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois **

Based on my reaction to earlier plays by Adam Rapp (Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, The Hallway Trilogy, Red Light Winter), my expectations for his current play at Atlantic Stage 2 were low. To my great surprise, I found it both involving and touching. In Ellis (a superb William Apps), Rapp presents a man who has bipolar disease with psychosis, who has done some horrible things who commands both our fear and our compassion. When we meet him, he is nervously preparing to receive guests. His visitors turn out to be a pair of teenage girls, Monique (an irresistibly watchable Susan Heyward), a trash-talking 15-year old African-American girl and Catherine (Katherine Reis), a shy 13-year-old with asthma and IBS. Monique has “borrowed” her aunt’s driver’s license to drive Catherine to meet Ellis. We eventually learn who Catherine is and why she is there. The trio are joined by Barrett (Connor Barrett), who has enabled Ellis and Catherine to make contact online. Ellis’s attempt to hold it together falters, with frightening results. The visit concludes on a slightly hopeful note. Andromache Chalfant's generic apartment set is grimly realistic and Jessica Pabst’s costumes suit the characters well. The playwright directed with assurance. The play has some slow moments. If Heyward were not such a stage presence, I would have found her character an annoying cliche. Barrett’s role is a bit underwritten. Despite its shortcomings, the play succeeds in taking us to a place that we probably never wanted to go while getting us to care about someone we would rather dismiss. The audience reaction was quite mixed. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes; no intermission. NOTE. Avoid Row A; it’s behind row AA and not elevated.

Dreams of Flying, Dreams of Falling *

What's Adam Rapp's new play about? About 90 minutes. That's all I can say with certainty about his absurdist comedy now in an Atlantic Theater Company production at CSC. The cast is led by two wonderful actors (Christine Lahti and Reed Birney). The set (by Andrew Boyce & Takeshi Kata) and costumes (by Theresa Squire) perfectly establish the gracious milieu of privileged Connecticut WASPs. Two families, the Cabots and their guests, the Von Stofenburgs, are about to sit down to dinner. Things soon spin out of control. Mrs. Cabot tries to persuade Von Stofenburg (Cotter Smith), whose reputation has been tarnished by a Madoff-like affair,  to poison her husband so they can run off together. The Cabot daughter (Katherine Waterston), who likes to pluck the hairs out of men's arms for an art project, maintains that there is a she lion in the basement. The Von Stofenburg son (Shane McRae), just returned from two years in a clinic after believing his stuffed animals when they told him he could fly, is in correspondence with a young Iraqi insurgent whom he is helping to acquire "materials." The two young adults have vigorous sex all around the dining room. The black maid (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), is learning French and likes to recite Shakespeare. Mrs. Von Stofenburg (Betsy Aidem) is so bland that her presence barely registers. Wild geese crash against the house, the sky turns strange colors, the murder plots goes awry.... and so forth. While some of the plot lines might have been interesting if developed more fully, here they just seem part of a mishmash. While there were some entertaining moments along the way, there was no sense of unity. Neil Pepe directed.