Mind mystery

From the beginning of The Other Place, Sharr White’s intense family drama now playing at the Blue Room Theatre, it’s clear that Juliana Smithton, a brainy and confident 52-year-old drug-company scientist played by Cynthia Lammel, will be the dominant character.

The play begins as she steps forward into a spotlight and, speaking to an unseen audience, launches into the first of several monologues. At this point she is the picture of poised professionalism, describing, in complex medical terminology, as images of chromosomes play on a big screen, how she held a convention audience of fellow neurologists enthralled by her command of her subject.

Then something happens. She has what she describes as an “episode.” She becomes fixated on a young woman in the audience, the only other woman in the room, who is dressed, most inappropriately, in a yellow string bikini. Distracted, Juliana loses her way.

The play then cuts to a scene with Dr. Cindy Teller (Hilary Tellesen), who is trying to break through Juliana’s angry defensiveness to determine what is wrong with her. That is followed by a scene in which Juliana, now at home, speaks on the phone with her long-estranged daughter, Laurel (also played by Tellesen), angrily and yet desperately begging to see her again. Enter Juliana’s husband, Ian (William Johnson), an oncologist who she insists intends to divorce her, a charge he angrily denies.

If this sounds confusing, that’s because Juliana is confused, and we’re often seeing things through her eyes. The play is a mystery: What’s going on here? Does Juliana have brain cancer, as she insists is the case, or is she experiencing delusions, as Ian says she is? Is their daughter actually alive and living somewhere with her husband and children, or is she dead?

Throughout this first scene Juliana often refers to “the other place,” meaning the cottage on Cape Cod her family once owned. The climactic second scene takes place there, 10 years earlier, on the night Laurel ran away. In the third scene, set in the present, Juliana returns to the house, where she encounters the current owner (again played by Tellesen), whom she mistakes for her daughter. Put off by the presence of this stranger in her home, the woman—who has her own set of painful problems—softens as she begins to understand that Juliana is deeply disturbed. She comforts Juliana until Ian arrives to take her home.

The Other Place is at its best early on, while the mystery remains. The resolution of the final scene may be emotionally satisfying, but it seems pat. Tellesen does a terrific job of distinguishing among the three characters she plays, but it’s hard to believe Juliana would mistake the owner of “the other place” for her daughter.

That’s a quibble, however. I was enthralled from beginning to end of this production, thanks mostly to Lammel’s incandescent performance as Juliana, but also to the stellar work of Johnson, Tellesen and Joe Hilsee (in two minor parts). Hilsee also directed.

I can’t praise Lammel enough. Juliana’s world is falling apart, and she conveys its disintegration brilliantly. Actually, “conveys” isn’t the right word: Lammel becomes Juliana, sometimes fiercely, desperately angry, at other times overcome by sadness, with tears running down her cheeks. She’s on stage for the entire play, and it’s impossible to keep your eyes off her.

As good as the other actors are—and they are terrific—this is Lammel’s show. If you want to see what an exceptional actor can do with a role worthy of her talent, don’t miss The Other Place.