The Zeitgeist Stage Company has yet again transformed the intimate BCA Black Box into a unique playing space for their winter production, Alan Ayckbourn’s Private Fears in Public Places.  Part apartment, part office, part hotel bar, the thrust-style space is fully explored by the actors, hiding and highlighting different interactions for different areas in the audience.  It only heightened the sense of mystery we felt as the character’s stories and relationships unfold around us.

Private Fears in Public Places is a brief slice of life that follows six lonely souls as they strive to make connections with the world around them- not realizing how interconnected they already are.  Running throughout their stories is a vein of darkness that may keep them from achieving their dreams. Not your typical love and loss story, the show isn’t always clear about who we should believe.  Does sullen Dan, on the verge of serious alcoholism, drink from fear of failure or to escape from a loveless relationship?  Does sweet and innocent Charlotte plot sexual games with her friends and coworkers to keep her entertained or is she reaching out in desperation for help from a crushing addiction?  Is soft-spoken, mild mannered Ambrose hiding a life of homosexuality from his ailing father or merely focusing his attention on his work to hide his fear of losing him?  No real answers are ever given in this one act play, set up in short vignettes, giving the audience bursts of story that take us right to the edge of comprehension before swinging us right back into the blurred confusion of their solitary and tragic lives.

Zeitgeist’s cast of six include company regulars, Michael Steven Costello, Christine Power, Bill Salem, Becca A. Lewis, and Robert Bonotto, and introduced newcomer Shelley Brown.  Bonotto’s pained and nervous depiction of Stewart was excellent, as was Brown’s heartbreaking portrayal of a lonely spinster looking for love in the personal ads. They were both at home on the stage and had an eerily comfortable family dynamic.  I enjoyed Power and Costello’s chemistry as Dan and Nicola, as well as the fun and funny bar scene that Brown and Costello shared.  Salem’s sensitive treatment of Ambrose was a fresh breath after the heavy and intense scenes surrounding him.  The knockout performance of the night came from Lewis in her interpretation of Charlotte.  Besides her spot-on British accent (the hands down best in the cast), her stage presence was spectacular.  You could not help but look at her even when she was not the focus of the scene.  While I credit the playwright with giving her the most provocative character, I credit Lewis for her nuance.  The performers were, overall, solid and committed, and I enjoyed them as a unit as well as individually.

I’m not quite sure, though, if I enjoyed the production as a whole.  Ayckbourn’s script leaves a lot of questions unanswered and doesn’t lay the foundation for the audience to fill in the answers on their own.  Director David J. Miller chose to include the use of British accents for the whole cast (the show was originally produced in the UK) but the cast could only pull this off with varying degrees of expertise, which continuously pulled me out of the story.  Though it was technically sound and the actors and actresses gave clean and thoughtful performances, it lacked the wow factor that I have come to expect from Zeitgeist productions. Overall a solid, but not spectacular, production.

Bill Salem and Michael Steven Costello Photo by Richard Hall/Silverline Images