Leaves of Glass

Ahh those crazy Brits -- how they love the 3 D's in their theater: Depravity, Dysfunction, Death. Leaves of Glass, by Philip Ridley, at the Peter J. Sharp Theater on Theater Row, has all of them in abundance. There is no McDonough blood pouring off the edge of the stage, but there are ripped emotions, anguish, shreds of relationships pouring, bouncing, skittering, banging about.

This is an English, naturalistic (though stylized) kitchen-sink drama about two brothers, the younger a demented artist (Euan Morton) and the elder a neurotic successful man, withdrawn yet aggressive (Victor Villar-Hauser). It's a parade of familial conflicts filled with mental aberrations, with the strengthening of one coinciding with the deterioration of the other. And there is their complex, in denial mother (Alexa Kelly) and the lovely wife of the hesitant elder (Xanthe Elbrick). These are characters I wouldn't want to spend time with performed by actors you'd love to see perform. They are all brilliant; there is not a moment that is not totally believable in their work.

Director Ludovica Villar-Hauser has kept this exposition-filled piece totally honest as we see that there is only one strength between the two brothers, and it jumps from one to the other in a juxtaposition of neuroses. There is a bit of depravity and a bunch of denial underlined by Kelly's exquisite, complex performance. In the dramatic device employed by Ridley, you might find a memory of Thomas Mann's "The Transposed Heads" and Sam Shepard's True West.