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'Dream Play' achieves otherworldly feeling

By Marty Clear, Times Correspondent
In print: Thursday, June 19, 2008

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TAMPA — A little more than a century ago, Swedish playwright August Strindberg made a stage play out of the structure and psyche of a dream.

In 2005, British playwright Caryl Churchill pared that monumental effort down to a scale more appropriate for contemporary theater and updated it to appeal to contemporary audiences.

The current Jobsite theater production of A Dream Play shows that both Strindberg and Churchill succeeded. So has Jobsite, with its admirable take on a difficult work about the human condition and the human subconscious.

Director Chris Holcom and his cast handle the material with airiness and humor. But it's still substantial and thought-provoking, full of ideas and images that stick with you.

There is a skeletal but serpentine plot, about Agnes, the daughter of gods, who descends to Earth to learn about humanity. But it's the poetry and the symbolism that really drive the play.

Kari Goetz (as Agnes), Steve Mountan, Amie Sallee Corley, Steve Garland and the rest of the cast expertly tread the borderline between the play's surreal form and its essential humanity.

Brian Smallheer's set is simple but evokes a dreamlike atmosphere even before the actors enter.

Although compact and witty, this isn't a play for casual theatergoers. It was experimental in Strindberg's day and it's still bold and unconventional. At times it's more like performance art than theater, and the opening sequence, in which Agnes appears on Earth, could be considered modern dance.

But for those who look to theater for something different, who value intellectual stimulation over mere diversion, A Dream Play is invigorating.