Theater Reviews : ‘Baltimore Waltz’ Turns on Life-Affirming Love

“The Baltimore Waltz,” a 1991-92 Obie award-winner, is not as slow and sentimental as the title may suggest. The play, at San Diego’s Fritz Theatre, has a bittersweet dual nature: as a dance with death and as a passionate, infectiously funny life-affirming gift.

Playwright Paula Vogel wrote the play for her HIV-positive brother, Carl, who died of pneumonia in 1988. As she explains in the preface to her play, she wrote it because she had refused her brother’s invitation to take a trip to Europe with him two years before, not knowing he was sick or how little time she had left with him.

So the play, set in a hospital room not unlike the one in which her brother died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, becomes a story about the trip not taken--recast as an imaginary, fantastic trip to Europe with Carl and his sister--here called Anna.

But as in a dream, everything is twisted. Suddenly it is not Carl who is sick, but Anna, an elementary school teacher with ATD--Acquired Toilet Disease--caught from one of her pupils.

And you never forget it is a trip in the mind because Carl and Anna are always in their pajamas (though Carl wears a blazer over his) and every other man they meet is played by the actor who plays the doctor.

It took guts for this modest little company to take on this project. Never mind the difficulty of the subject matter--it would be so easy to do this work badly. Like a cobweb, fantasy is threaded from many delicate strands that must all hold perfectly if any flies are to be caught.

But it does hold, thanks to a wonderfully charged and luminous production directed by Christina Courtenay at the Fritz’ intimate 80-seat space in the heart of downtown San Diego.

The production values are minimal--as befits a play of the imagination--but cleverly right-on (kudos to Daniel Morris’ stark set with its multiple passageways and Douglas Gabrielle’s warm lighting). And the acting is unforgettably in-your-face.

The play begins with Anna (Claudia Orenstein) in her nightgown, struggling to master phrases in foreign languages in preparation for their trip.

“It’s the language that terrifies me,” she says, but we soon see she’s not just talking about French or German, but about the medical language in which she learns of Acquired Toilet Syndrome--an incomprehensible verbiage much like that used to describe AIDS. The joke of course is that the more complex the language used to describe the condition, the less anyone actually knows about the disease itself.

Orenstein, who recently earned a doctorate from Stanford in directing and criticism, is a slightly built powerhouse, at once compelling, witty and vulnerable as Anna. Her work is well matched by the large, soulful portrayal of Carl by Duane Daniels, the Equity actor who doubles as the theater’s artistic director, and by the impeccable timing of the intense Ron Choularton in the darkly comic roles of Everyone Else.

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Fantasy requires some key or messenger to take us from here to there. Here the envoy is Carl’s old stuffed rabbit, which we later learn that Anna has brought to her brother in the hospital. Like the White Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland,” this toy seems to be the ticket down the rabbit hole into a world in which illogical ideas are brought to their absurdly logical conclusions.

If AIDS were ATD, a disease that strikes single straight elementary school teachers, then society wouldn’t be talking about blame or shaking collective heads at the victims’ sexual desires. The public would look with more empathy as the afflicted contemplate any cure--no matter how ridiculous--even to the point of drinking one’s own urine.

But the most important element that charges this particular work is the fierce and tender love between brother and sister, suggested by the way they hold each other, the way they look at each other, the way they dance as if they are two bodies melted into one. They have a bond that death can’t break; it’s the one thing that feels real amid the madness.

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And that is the triumph of “The Baltimore Waltz.” Anyone who has lost a loved one knows how it feels to be left yearning for one final embrace or dance with that person--which would only be possible in the imagination.

For those willing to enter its dreamlike state, “The Baltimore Waltz” illustrates this with sensitivity and grace. And while the play can’t make you dance, it does point the way to the dance floor.

* “The Baltimore Waltz,” Fritz Theatre, 420 3rd Ave., San Diego. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends April 10. $10. (619) 233-7505. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes. Claudia Orenstein Anna

Duane Daniels: Carl

Ron Choularton: Everyone Else

Paula Vogel’s play. Directed by Christina Courtenay. Sets by Daniel Morris. Lights by Douglas Gabrielle. Sound by Jim Johnston. Costumes by Beverly Delventhal. Original music by Duane Daniels. Dramaturge: Dick Emmett. Stage manager: Beverly Delventhal.