You know before you take your seat that a fun night is in store for you the at the Roundhouse Theatre's production of A Sleeping Country by Melanie Marnich (to 6/21), a modern comedy about chronic insomnia. From the creative program cover (Gary Kelley) to the imaginative scenic design (James Kronzer) and the subliminal sound effects (Mathew Nielson), a fanciful dreamcatcher world emerges, with a stunning blue and green pastel interior façade, with maroon curtains, set against a starry, moonlit night, that are accompanied by sounds of ascending jets, accelerating cars, barking dogs and a beating heart.

Directed with sensitivity and collegiality by Greg Henry, A Sleeping Country is a wonderful collaboration of actors, creative team, and my pleasure to report, a living playwright with a fresh voice.

Ms. Marnich's relatively new play (2007), which has been rewritten in parts and is receiving only its second production, is a serio-comedy or melodrama which morphs into a fantasy.  The first act sets up the conflicts with Julia Fracassi (Susan Lynskey) attempting to find relief from her sleep disorder with the aid of long-time friend, and psychiatrist, Dr. Midge (Connan Morrissey).  It is a delight to watch the body language of these two accomplished actresses as they navigate through their characters' personal and professional roles.  The versatile Ms. Lynskey playing Julia is alternately desperate and bemused, while expressive Ms. Morrissey shows the cocky, exhibitionistic, but wounded side of the shrink.  The costume design (Catherine Norgren) emphasizes the contrasts - a loose and flowing top for Julia while the oversexed wardrobe of Dr. Midge is bursting at the seams, with shoes that are a testament to someone's fetishistic tastes.  An aspect of female friendship immediately unfolds: men seem to take sports and drinking buddies as friends, while women not infrequently select those who are total, contradictory opposites, alter egos as it were. Later we meet long-suffering fiancé Greg (Marcus Kyd) who writes for a soap opera during the day as he lives through a never-ending series of television reruns (including golf) and tensions at night.  Mr. Kyd shows both the compassionate and exasperated parts of Greg's nature as the temporary hurdles fade into the potentially permanent.  Ms. Marnich keeps upping the stakes in the relationship and disease process - associated with the Orsini family in Italy - which forces a crisis as we near the mid point in the play, when a dream sequence relocates the action to Venice.

A clever rotating set of Mr. Kronzer's transforms the stage into a chocolate-colored fairyland Palazzo. While the scenic design of the first act with squares and cylinders has a boxed-in feel, the second act features a Moorish influence with curves, and mood with possibilities, that open things up.  Costumes in the first act catch the pastels of the walls, while the burgundy and off-white colors of the Venetians in the second act burnish the brownish exterior of the house.   The lighting (Nancy Schertler), fully complementing the design and nicely cuing the performance, here and earlier, is superb.

Julia travels to the Orsini residence in Italy to see if she bears the marker of the genetically-linked disease.  Countess Isabella Orsini (Brigid Cleary), the family matriarch, is a comic force of nature and of fate as she sweeps the boards.  Ms. Cleary has embraced her character to such as degree, she completely owns her.  It will be years, if not decades, before I'll be able to see this part performed without her image being conjured up in my mind's eye! Her posture, verbal peculiarities, and seemingly impromptu mannerisms steal the show.

If most of the first act was a broad comedy, Ms. Cleary, together with Mr. Kyd playing an additional two roles as major domo Franco and son, Carlo, along with Ms. Morrissey as the Gondolier and daughter, Carlotta, transform the final part into a laugh riot.  Ms. Lynskey also gets into the act with Mr. Kyd to such an extent in one delightful "discovery" scene (I Am a Gondolier) that both actors crack up along with the appreciative audience.  The scenes play like skits at times, but the rewards seem to outweigh the risks.

This magical world is orchestrated by Isabella, a female Prospero, who leads to Julia's breakthrough moment.  It's about taking charge of your illness; you define it, not vice versa.  She forces Julia to confront her fears - there are many of them from her immediate relationship to the global ones in these 24/7 times - as a first step to recovery.  In the midst of the humor, we start to see the premise of the play, a Catch 22: with all that's going on in the world how can anyone sleep, yet if you sleep you don't truly know what's going on.  There's a kind of Eastern philosophy at work here - you must first lose yourself to find who (or what) you are.  This is where the play loses some clarity for me.   And you may be asking too much of an overt comedy to put on the brakes and get ruminative and earnestly serious at this stage.  The characters and story do not seem to support a When We Dead Awaken resolution. Dr. Midge is finding her own access to inner peace sans drugs, with meditation, and Greg is still hanging in there tough and true as he waits out Julia's journey of self discovery.  The other figures, likely the conjuring of a hallucinating, delusional mind induced by sleep deprivation, are perhaps figments of her imagination.  She alone holds the key to her own successful outcome, which the crisis has jump-started: she begins again to dream, and "in dreams begin responsibilities."

These minor points aside, the dialogue is razor sharp, the characters well drawn and unique, and the story vastly entertaining and informative.  Ms. Marnich sent me to the internet several times to broaden my medical knowledge, at the risk of increasing my paranoia perhaps, but who knew that such obscure realms of medicine had so much comic and dramatic potential!   I'd like to see more of this peculiar world unfold, as George Walker has shown us in his East End Plays and Martin McDonagh in his Leenane and Aran Islands trilogies.  A play from the perspective of Dr. Midge, with a possible triangle set up with Greg and Julia, seems to be supported in the text and might get the ball rolling.  And Isabella, wherever she is, certainly has more to say! 

Sound check: Moderate decibel levels

Program notes: Average.  Includes an informative interview with the playwright, but lacks any dramaturgical information for the complex subjects covered in the play. The text has not yet been published. 
Applause meter: Highly recommended, 3 ½ hands, mature themes.

Runtime: 1 hour and 50 minutes with an intermission.