The Mistakes Madeline Made

Filing cabinets, desks, a water cooler and a photocopy machine: the set for Holland Productions' The Mistakes Madeline Made looks like any office environment, except for one thing: the bathtub placed smack dab in the middle of things.

That's okay, because this is not really an office per se. It's the operations center for a wealthy family with a staff of minders and planners. As such, the family are like the gods of old: unseen, speaking only through a duly appointed mediator (the incredibly officious and aggravating Beth, played by Emily Culver), impatient, hard to please, and swift to judge.

The family's newest high priestess of servitude is Edna (Paige Clark), who has only been working with Beth for a week or so as the play commences, but she and Beth have already gotten thoroughly under one another's skins. Beth sees Edna as a project (and herself as a "lion tamer"); she's condescending, but you believe her when she says she's "just the kind of person who never makes mistakes," whereas Beth is given to light mockery, if not downright snideness.

The office tension is interrupted by Wilson (Bob Mussett), who appears from the wings to make odd noises and use the copy machine. In fact, the noises he's making are in imitation of the copy machine; he's like an exotic bird that's learned a new trill, only for that call to be the ring of a cell phone. Wilson is a bundle of screwball energy and flighty intellect; he's struggling to finish his thesis, a study of Leibniz's "monad," which seems to the spiritual equivalent of an atom. The metaphysics of it all are a bit unclear (no wonder the poor lad is getting nowhere with it), but that's beside the point; Edna's arrival knocks his mind off its dedicated track, which turns out to be a good thing: he's smitten, and love is lighting up his.. well, monads, which is nice to see.

The only problem is the smell. Somewhere in the midst of her scorn for the job she does and her contempt for the family she serves (and Beth, whose life revolves around that service), Edna has stopped bathing. Is it because her houseguest, a filthy young man named Buddy (Victor Shopov), has claimed Edna's bathtub as his own private asylum? Gripped by post-traumatic stress and a terror of bathing, Buddy's ever-ripening aroma outpaces Edna's own, but he'll neither vacate the tub nor turn the tap and fill it with water.

Or is it the case that Edna herself is wrestling with some form of trauma, sparked by Buddy's arrival? The play's structure cuts scenes short, jumping Edna from one setting to the other, from office to bathroom, playing her schemes to torment Beth against her efforts to soothe Buddy. The play, written by Elizabeth Meriwether, winds theater's classical double strands of comedy and tragedy around one another more and more tightly until they converge in one long, touching final sequence. The cast as a whole (including the triple role played by Nate Gundy, who features as a string of one-night stands Edna throws herself into) deliver a spellbinding ensemble performance, with Clark, Mussett, and Shopov given the most to do and the greatest range in which to show what they can do--and they do it all well. Shopov somehow gets filthier and filthier as the play goes on; Clark makes her character increasingly distraught and aggressive, while Mussett's Wilson becomes ever more stable, sensible, and likable. Even Culver's Beth takes on a sympathetic depth.

Director Krista D'Agostino puts characters and performance space together flawlessly. Sean A. Cote's set is concrete and minutely attentive, but can turn into a dreamlike space with a flick Ian King's lighting design. Are we seeing Edna's disaffected, sometimes frightening fantasies? Are we delving into troubled recollections? Is Edna's sense of reality fragmenting? Maybe; probably. The fun and intensity of the play comes from the way the writing and performances take the audience along for the ride. Holland Productions isn't just playing in the dirt with The Mistakes Madeline Made; they're digging deep to uncover the goods.