REVIEW: A Slick, Intelligent Drama at Burien Actor's Theatre
by Adriane Vetter
In a tiny office, lit like an old movie from the days of Gary Cooper and Tyrone Power (if those movies had been in color instead of black and white), two people play a game of cat and mouse in the days after Lenin, leading up to the dictatorship of Josef Stalin. Lighting designer Craig Orsinger has done his homework, making the sparse set (designed by Maggie Larrick) authentic enough so that one feels as
if this edge of the seat drama is indeed an old movie from Hollywood's Golden Age. And director Beau M.K. Pritchard has created an aura of tension that never lets up, setting the audience up for the dynamic ending.
Played with wire taut precision, actors Michael Mendonsa (who plays 'The Director', a man at once engaging and menacing) and Devin Rodger (who plays 'Anna', a timid woman, who is also fiercely
confrontational and delightfully logical) kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering where this drama
would end up. The two play well off each other, as what seems like a simple matter of question and answer by Mendonsa's 'Director', quickly turns into a terrifying interrogation and accusations begin to
