Nov 13, 2009  |  By: Patrick Folliard  | COMMENTS     

Not for nothing did the press invitation to Woolly Mammoth’s latest offering advise those coming to wear comfortable shoes. Staged by Michael Rohd — a Portland, Ore.,-based director well known for site specific work — Woolly’s production of Charles L. Mee’s “Full Circle” is performed all throughout the company’s multi-level D Street venue. And where the actors go, the audience follows.

A tale of chaos in post-communist East Germany, Mee’s satire is set exactly 20 years ago at the time of the Berlin Wall’s fall when power bases were shifting and political and economic futures were uncertain. The American playwright humorously employs familiar, archetypical characters like East German head of state Erich Honecker (a wheezing, sputtering and almost unrecognizable Sarah Marshall) and folksy American billionaire Warren Buffet (Michael Willis) as the proponents of battling ideologies in eastern Germany.

Adapted from Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” the epic vaudeville production’s most prominent storyline follows the wacky chase of two very different women — privileged socialite Pamela Dalrymple (Naomi Jacobson), and idealist student activist Dulle Griet (Jessica Frances Dukes), an unlikely pair that has rather unwittingly become the caretakers of Honecker and his mistress’ abandoned baby boy.

Together, Pamela and Dulle race to ensure the child’s safety while the personified worst of capitalism and communism follow in hot pursuit.

The action begins in Woolly’s rehearsal room (or one of several other screening areas used, depending on the color or your ticket) where audiences first meet some of the cast on film in what’s perhaps the funniest part of the play. The black and white film segment shows Heiner Muller, the famed East German director played convincingly by Woolly’s artistic director Howard Shalwitz, debasing himself before Honecker and his bored cronies (i.e. doing what it takes to keep his theater company funded).

Next, it’s on to three-dimensional characters demonstrating in the lobby. Though the actors perform atop platforms and staircases, there are strategically placed monitors to ensure everyone’s view. The audience then moves to Woolly’s main theater where actors perform on thick raised wires and later a swaying catwalk high above the stage. Following intermission, the lobby morphs into what feels an interminable Oktoberfest-styled wedding celebration, and then it’s back to the theater where disgraced director Muller attempts the impossible — to make things right.

Throughout the two-and-a-half hour performance, a group of youthful usher types herd spectators from room to room — never an easy task, but Woolly’s efficient guides make it appear effortless. Moving around the Woolly facility does give a sense of journey and, at times, a feeling of being part of the massed crowd. And while they’re ambitious, entertaining and keep the meandering story lively, Rohd’s inspired methods can’t transform the work into something extraordinary.

As Pamela, the highhanded character based on the late society powerbroker/mantrap Pamela Harriman, Jacobson settles nicely into a broad comic groove early on and remains winningly on track. Other standouts in a cast of Woolly regulars include gay actors Michael Russotto as a wistful East German guard, and quirky Sarah Marshall, who — in a brilliant stroke of cross gender casting — plays several men. Stand warned: her portrayals of the aged and infirmed Honecker, and even more strikingly, a beer-swilling German dude named Helmut, are sure to give D.C.’s drag kings a run for their money.