Reviews

The Festival of Independent Theatres celebrated the opening of its 10th season on Thursday with perhaps the weirdest double bill in a decade. Not that there's anything wrong with weird in the world of independent theaters.

REX C. CURRY/Special Contributor

From left: Beverly Jacob Daniel, Jennifer Youle and Lulu Ward

WingSpan Theatre Company, one of two troupes that have participated in every FIT, led off with the U.S. premiere of Sherry Kramer's A Permanent Signal. The Drama Club, which banded together just for this show, followed with a world classic, Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata. You could call each work a metaphysical fantasy, but they're very different pieces.

The important thing, for those with a taste for the far-out, is that each is splendidly done.

Susan Sargeant directed as well as produced A Permanent Signal, and she cast it with three artists she's worked closely with before. Beverly Jacobs Daniel and Lulu Ward play a kooky pair of ... hmmm. I guess you could call them female demiurges – and if you don't know what that is, you're just as puzzled as I was. They've come to make a kind of annunciation to a young woman named Mary (played by the feisty Jennifer Youle). Mary proves highly resistant to their designs on her life.

I think Ms. Kramer's theme is thwarted expectations, but I wouldn't wager big money on it.

Of the founding fathers of modernism, Strindberg is the one whose work we see least. His innovations were the exploration of harrowing family situations and free-form structures with dream logic. The Ghost Sonata combines both advances in a tale of intergenerational revenge and despair.

Jeffrey Schmidt doesn't direct often but has the gift. He has inspired a talented group of performers to go full tilt at high style. Erik Archilla, as a young man who has just rescued people from a disaster, is the only actor who doesn't wear a mask throughout. The other six switch roles frequently and create powerful images in Lydia Mackay's sculptured masks.

They're all terrific, but John Flores and Cindy Beall are especially so. Mr. Flores sounds sonorous and looks scary as an old man with sinister plans, and Ms. Beall caws and swoops as a mummy who thinks she's a parrot.

PLAN YOUR LIFE FIT continues at the Bath House Cultural Center through Aug. 9. Passes $49 to $69, individual tickets $12 to $16. TITAS at 214-528-5576, www.bathhousecultural.com.