October 23, 2019
Page 5
Play Inspired
by AIDS Chaos
o PinionAted
J udge
by
d arleen o rTega
Portland’s Profile Theatre
makes the writers of original
plays its focus, delving each
season into the work of one or
two playwrights. This season
brings a focus on the great
Paula Vogel, whose play “In-
decent” so won my heart at
the Oregon Shakespeare Fes-
tival this past season. Profile,
too, will mount a production
of “Indecent” later this year--
but first, it has produced “The
Baltimore Waltz,” which was
the play that first brought Vo-
gel to national prominence
and earned her an Obie Award
for Best Play in 1992.
It’s a tricky play to produce,
perhaps more so than when it
premiered in the early 1990s.
It was inspired by the loss of
Vogel’s brother Carl to AIDS--
but unlike more direct and po-
lemical approaches to that sub-
ject matter (such as “Angels
in America” or “The Normal
Heart”), Vogel’s play is more
indirect and personal. She and
Carl had talked about traveling
to Europe together but missed
the opportunity before he got
sick. Rather than directly de-
pict her brother’s illness, Vo-
gel circles it with an imagined
and often broadly comedic trip
to Europe between a brother
and sister, Carl and Anna, in-
spired by learning that the sis-
ter is terminally ill with a new-
ly discovered terminal illness
that the public health system
can’t seem to find a reason to
prioritize.
Vogel’s more fantastical
approach captures a sense of
the chaos of the early AIDS
crisis--the feeling of unreali-
ty, the senselessness of people
dying for no reason, a lack of
concern among medical pro-
viders--but those aspects of
the crisis were more accessi-
ble for audiences who expe-
rienced that sense of chaos
back in the late ‘80s and early
‘90s than for audiences look-
ing back from this distance.
Vogel has scrambled the ele-
ments of her and her brother’s
experience in a way that is
literarily and psychologically
interesting but that makes the
play harder to access than it
may originally have been; in
this production, at least, de-
spite an inventive set design,
it’s a little hard to decipher
that the trip to Europe is all a
fantasy in Anna’s head while
the play is actually taking
place in Carl’s hospital room.
That said, the cast of three
is strong. Jen Rowe is a fierce
Anna, capturing a sense of
frenzy that seasons the play’s
humor and also holds some of
the desperation that attends
the loss of a beloved broth-
er to a senseless illness. Dan
Kitrosser is a gentle Carl,
ironic and a bit mysterious;
Carl doesn’t tell us every-
thing and is carrying some
secrets, including from Anna.
Joshua Weinstein is a nim-
ble Third Man, shifting roles
from doctor to waiter to mys-
terious stranger to a series of
lovers for Anna, alternating
from cold to comic to seduc-
tive. The play asks a lot of the
cast and especially Weinstein,
who must shift shapes and
moods as Anna dodges and
struggles with the reality of
losing Carl.
It’s a quirky play that works
better in memory than in the
PhoTo CourTesy by
d avid K inder /P rofile T heaTre
Dan Kitrosser (left) and Josh Weinstein in Profile Theatre’s production of “The
Baltimore Waltz,” now playing through Nov. 3 at Imago Theatre, 17 S.E. Eighth Ave.
moment, not unlike how the
brain circles and dodges and
dances around a painful ex-
perience. This production
will keep you laughing and
leave you with lots to chew
on. “The Baltimore Waltz” is
now showing through Nov. 3
at Imago Theater.
Darleen Ortega is a judge
on the Oregon Court of Ap-
peals and the first woman of
color to serve in that capaci-
ty. Her movie review and the-
ater arts column Opinionated
Judge appears regularly in
The Portland Observer.
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