Sheila Callaghan's certainly has a way with words. In her latest drama Crawl, Fade To White, her stylistic influences are many (Mac Wellman being the most prominent) which become very evident in the cryptic opening sequence where Louise (played with a sexy, ice maiden elegance by Carla Harting) addresses her neighbors Fran (Black-Eyed Susan) and Dan (Matthew Lewis) for the first time in 20 years. The couple are having a yard sale (various baby toys litter the dirt patch yard in front of Anna Kiraly's problematic set) and Louise is trying to sell a valuable antique Louis Tiffany lamp ("I find myself in need of money rather quickly," she obscurely notes). Soon after Louise has commissioned the lamp to Fran and Dan, her neurotic daughter April (an irritating, tic-riddled performance by Jocelyn Kuritsky) and her boyfriend Nolan (a doleful Matthew roi Berger) arrive home (after burning down their Ivy League dorm). They also are trying to retrieve the lamp for cash flow problems. Like a "McGuffin" in an Alfred Hitchcock film, the lamp comes to represent the various psychological handicaps of mother and daughter.

Cinematic images dot the production throughout perhaps inspired by the title. Director Paul Willis fractures the narrative line in keeping with Callaghan's ambiguous word play. His use of imagery bring out some of the poetry in the author's writing (Fran's constant staring out the window as she fights her agoraphobia) but it's still pretty tough going for a lot of the play. We become very sympathetic to Nolan's frustration as to what's going on ("Dude. You like drop this creepy insinuation-bomb on me, then you act like I'm a perv for wanting to know more.")

The play seemingly settles into a mother-daughter conflict and therein lies the problem. Louise is so fascinating as written and played (Harting strikes a Grace Kelly manner throughout) that despite April's obvious genius (in matters of quantum physics), she is at a disadvantage being unflatteringly underwritten that our attention wanders. We soon gravitate towards the more interesting Nolan whom Louise eventually seduces and her neighbors (shades of Edward Albee) take on as a surrogate son.

The production also suffers from the clunky set design (the box-like arrangements take too long to move) and Mullins unwisely gets caught up in to many spatial antics distracting us with scenes above and behind the playing space (the area used to be an art gallery). Ben Kato's evocative lighting eases some of the irritation.
Still, Callaghan's word craft has a wonderful allegorical quality. April's explanation of the probability of the velocity of light particles could easily be a description of the play's characters themselves. April's end at the close of the play is both linguistically and cinematically rendered (the Tiffany lamp is again involved) to the point of mythic proportions. Louise magically appears in a sexy blue cocktail dress smiling enigmatically. If Callaghan can harness her dynamic skills to a tighter narrative (albeit absurdist), she may find an emotional resonance that Crawl, Fade To White lacks.

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