Review: 4615 Theatre Company's WAXING WEST

Of the two dozen stages participating in the Women's Voices Theater Festival this year, the one for the 4615 Theatre Company in Silver Spring must be the smallest.

In a sort of black box performance space speckled with Christmas lights, before three rows of seats, the company doesn't have a lot to work with. Still, artistic director Jordan Friend bounds on stage, reveling in the space as if it's Carnegie Hall. It's their first time at the Highwood Theatre in a community arts building and it sure beats the basements and church halls where they've had to perform previously (The number in the theater company's name reflects the address of the house where they originally put on shows).

The important thing is what's on the stage and the fledgling group acquits itself well with its vibrant performance of Saviana Stanescu's dark comedy "Waxing West," whose themes echo that of the company - the American Dream of advancing and success.

It's the second time they've put on a play by Stanescu - they staged her "Aliens with Extraordinary Skin" in the Woolly Mammoth classroom in 2016.

"Waxing West," directed by Friend, is the Odyssey of a young woman's journey from Romania to the United States as a prospective bride who can't quite adjust to either her dull, laptop-obsessed finance or quite shake the horrors left behind in Romania. Specifically, the specters of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who were tried and executed following a long reign as the second and last Communist leader of the country.

In Stanescu's vision, the Ceausescus aren't that easily disposed; indeed they live on inner narrative as a pair of stylish vampires, played by Nahm Darr and Alani Kravitz, waiting in the wings and commenting bitterly when they aren't trying to figure out what to do with the Romanian woman Daniela, who has made her way to the states.

In that role, Alexandra Nicopoulos is a gem, able to be expressive with even a blank face. Her character's trade is a cosmologist and her specialty is waxing (hence the play's name, whose full title is "A Hairy-Tale in two Acts and Four Seasons").

Daniela is the excitable narrator of the tale, which begins in Bucharest in a domestic scene between her mother (Sue Struve) and brother Elvis (Jack Russ). Her move to New York comes with a disappointing dud of a partner (Charlie Cook) who nonetheless has a kinky side (he likes to play a holiday turkey about to be carved).

His sister Gloria (Jenna Rossman) has her own designs on Daniela and gets her own waxing. Daniela for her part is left to stealing self-help books at Barnes & Noble, where she meets up with a philosophic war refugee named Uros (Frank Mancino). All this occurs in a very specific apocalyptic timetable, as summer 2001 turns to the fall.

The limitations of the modest Highwood stage aren't much, it turns out. They manage both projected titles for the scenes as well as some terrifically selected audio, such as a Romanian language version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (which later gets a live singing).

The audience has to vacate during intermission to set up for act two, and the house itself didn't open until after the scheduled curtain time. But these things don't compare with the displacement of the dreamer in the center of the splendid and pleasingly surreal play.

Whatever shaky parts there are of the production, this is one work that's full of ideas, exuberantly played by a talented cast in a production of the Women's Voices Theater Festival that likely stands with as any from a large company this season.

Running time: Two hours with one 10 minute intermission.

Photo credit: Sue Struve and Alexandra Nicopoulos in "Waxing West." Photo by Ryan Maxwell Photography.

"Waxing West" by the 4615 Theatre Company runs through Feb. 10 at the Highwood Theatre, 914 Silver Spring Ave., Silver Spring, Md. Tickets available online.

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