A Body of Water

What are they, this trio of hanging panels that demarcate the action in Molasses Tank's production of A Body of Water, Lee Blessing's puzzling play that runs through Feb. 9 at Charlestown Working Theater? Well, they're the work of local sculptor Sally Moore, who gets a "collaborating artist" credit in the program. (Didn't we used to call this "set design"?) But what are her silkscreened organic forms that suggest tubers and landscapes? Their number matches the number of characters in the play, they're suspended alone in the air like the characters are suspended in time, and there's a subtle tension between their soft curves and wrinkles and the right angles of the canvases that contain them. Beyond that, they're as inscrutable as everything else in this muted meditation on memory.

At rise, a middle-aged man and woman are exchanging awkward chit chat as they tentatively explore the comfortable living room of what seems to be a cozy mountain cabin surrounded by water. They're not sure where they are or who they are. They've woken up in this strange place with no memories other than the strictly utilitarian, and nothing else to hold on to other than each other and a strange calm with which they face their existential crisis. After much stilted debate over whether they should, just maybe, try to learn who they are and how they got there, a third character arrives to shake things up. She announces that she is named Wren and they are Moss and Avis. Wren reluctantly goes on to hint at the couple's backstory. But can Moss and Avis trust Wren? Wren herself exasperatedly admits that they can't, and suggests that she enjoys tormenting them with fabricated stories.

While Avis and Moss tried to puzzle out their situation, I confess my attention kept wandering back to those floating panels. Blessing has an interesting premise here, half Oliver Sacks and half Jean Paul Sartre, but Body of Water is too tentative to feel satisfying. It's neither an honest exploration of cognitive disorder nor a novel look at identity and philosophy; and though the play becomes more poetic as it proceeds, I'm not sure the journey is lyrical or ingenious enough to justify the lack of destination. That's not to say that director Rob Bettencourt hasn't coaxed some charm out of the piece, and his cast. He uses a very slowly building pace that can be frustrating, but that forces careful observation of the three characters. Anthony Dangerfield is a likeable fellow who plays Moss with bemused detachment that seems credible, but that also prevents us from seeing deeper. Elizabeth Brunette is similarly removed, but she shows us Avis carefully thinking through her every word and gesture, hinting at the fear and panic beneath. But it's Judith Kalaora who dominates the proceedings as the emotional Wren. I'm not sure she was meant to take so much focus, but I was grateful for the jolt of energy she brought to the show.

Instead of a miniature triptych, Boston Theater Works offers up a canvas as vast as America itself in Angels in America: Perestroika, the second half of Tony Kushner's epic Pulitzer winning play (both halves play in repertory through Feb. 10 at The Boston Center for the Arts.) If Millenium Approaches is about despair - charting the dissolution of the marriage of the mentally fragile Harper and the weak, closeted Joe along with the physical and mental decline of Prior, who's been abandoned to wrestle with AIDS and disturbing visions of angels by his selfish lover Louis - Perestroika is about hope and forgiveness. Joe and Louis find comfort in each other's arms, yet realize they must make peace with Harper and Prior; Joe's mother arrives in New York City to reach out to her troubled son; and even the toxic Roy Cohn, unrepentant even as he's haunted by the personification of his misdeeds in the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, reaches a d?tente with Belize, the very out black nurse who reluctantly cares for him.

But it's Prior's story (if one story can be separated out from this tapestry) that makes Angels transcend its concern with the early days of the AIDS crisis. Visited by an angel who seems to be a sort of avatar of the American spirit, Prior is told that he is a prophet; but the surprising message he must proclaim is, in a nutshell, to give up. When Prior rejects this idea, he claims nothing more than his right to live; yet by drawing parallels to American pioneers, the immigrant experience and American industry and innovation, and reminding us of the ugliness of racism and divisive politics, what Kushner is really proclaiming is queer people's (or any disenfranchised people's) right to live.

But reams and reams have been written about Angels in America over the years. Suffice to say that Kushner has blended his vision of social justice with an intoxicating theatrical imagination that is well served in the Boston Theater Works production. Co-directors Jason Southerland and Nancy Curran Willis have distilled this sweeping play into a marvel of minimalism that depends on the audience's imaginative participation as much as on the cast and crew's busy recycling of some basic set pieces. Tyler Reilly continues to astound as Prior, but this time he's matched by his opposite number in Richard McElvain's Roy Cohn, a towering portrait of rage and corruption.