Princeton Summer Theater presents Paula Vogel's 'The Baltimore Waltz'

Vogel wrote the piece as a tribute to her brother Carl, who contracted AIDS at the height of the crisis. In the play, Anna (Abby Melick) waits in a hospital lobby as her own brother Carl (Sean Peter Drohan) lies dying.

Anna fantasizes she’s the one who's sick — with "Acquired Toilet Disease," a shameful affliction for single schoolteachers, she's told. Carl rushes her off to Europe in pursuit of an unorthodox cure. Fighting off death, she resolves, "Whatever time this schoolteacher has left, I intend to fuck my brains out."

Her dream imagination mixes this escapist erotic wish with her grim hospital experience and the European vacation she and Carl long hoped to take together. Plus — bizarrely, inexplicably, hilariously — she mashes it all up with the 1949 film noir The Third Man.

Down the rabbit hole

Melick makes a sympathetic Anna, believably committed to her nightmare as it becomes more frenetic and perplexing. She has a genuine connection with Drohan's demonstrative Carl and his favorite childhood toy, a stuffed rabbit.

The pair often speaks directly to the audience, sometimes in the second person: "Your ears are functioning, but the mind is numb." They then switch to the first person in the same speech: "This is how I'd like to die: with dignity." Carl and Anna also sometimes narrate each other's thoughts and actions. It's a dizzying challenge for actors.

The cast’s third performer arguably works hardest. Evan Gedrich plays a variety of characters: Carl's real doctor, Strangelove-ish urologist Dr. Todesrocheln, Anna's many lovers, "The Little Dutch Boy at Age 50," and more.

Julia Peiperl's creative costumes keep up with the quick changes required, as does Gedrich, making each character distinct with a droll deadpan that accentuates the comedy while maintaining the play's darker tone.

Director Nico Krell's production captures the frenetic pace of the many transitions in Vogel's challenging script. He is aided greatly by Megan Berry's colorful lighting on Jeffrey Van Velsor's white hospital set.

All the furniture is on wheels, allowing for quick changes to hotel beds, train compartments, even a Ferris-wheel seat. A television set neatly allows Vogel's prerecorded "lessons" about language, such as "Medical Straight Talk: Part One," to play during scene changes.

A play for today

While the program notes — including a letter Vogel received from Carl about his funeral arrangements — remind us of the AIDS crisis at its peak, the play remains relevant. I'm surprised it's not performed more often; perhaps it's overshadowed by Vogel's 1997 Pulitzer winner How I Learned to Drive.

As politically sharp about homophobia and AIDS as it is, the play's eloquence about grief, its hectic balance of humor and pathos, and its inventive theatricality make The Baltimore Waltz an exciting personal experience in the theater today.