Tuesday, September 19, 2006; Page C05 ks

Backstage
A Play's Special Interest Group
To D.C. Audiences, '40s Comedy May Not Seem So Dated
By Jane Horwitz

Synetic Style

During rehearsals for Synetic Theater's new adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (at the Kennedy Center through Oct. 1), Dan Istrate, playing flawed genius Dr. Victor Frankenstein, accidentally poured a bit of vinegar into the eyes and mouth of Irakli Kavsadze, who plays the Creature he is trying to re-animate
He will never be quite this adorable again, though, in the beautiful if somewhat listless production in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. The adapters of Mary Shelley's groundbreaking gothic novel, Paata Tsikurishvili and Nathan Weinberger, develop a portrait of a Creature of impulse, whose response to any frustration or opposition appears to be of a type that reflects our own do-it-if-it-feels-good times: He simply snaps the nearest neck.

The liquid is used as a prop to help make smoke and bubbles in the doctor's laboratory. Istrate was only supposed to mime pouring it onto the Creature's face. Kavsadze's eyes stung like mad, but there was no harm.

Istrate cites the aftermath to the incident as typical of the closeness of the Synetic company: Though Kavsadze was the injured party, Istrate says the actor "co me s back to me after an hour to see if I am okay." That closeness, according to the two actors and Artistic Director Paata Tsikurishvili, has artistic as well as collegial significance. The director says the troupe is so well trained in his physical style of performance that he and the actors got this show ready in two months. Previous Synetic productions took three or four. Still, it was nearly twice as long as most Washington theater companies rehearse.

Kavsadze, a longtime lead actor with Synetic, says the key to this is a kind of partnership, though "partnership [does] not necessarily mean being on the stage together. . . . Even if you're not looking at your partner, he's understanding you." Adds the Romanian-born Istrate, who gets tossed around by Kavsadze more and more as the play's tragedy unfolds and the Creature grows angry: "It's like a dialogue that has to show physically."

Rehearsals with Tsikurishvili and his choreographer-actress wife, Irina, begin with hours of warm-ups and improvisation he calls "messing-around time." The director says he and his actors approach characters and their psychology similarly to other companies -- at first. "We try to dig it out, like other theaters, and then it's transformed" into the physical. Yet it is never merely physical, adds Tsikurishvili. "If actors are only doing physical, without emotion, nobody's going to buy it. It's high acting, really."

And when the director or choreographer ask for changes, the company has a shorthand now in the way everyone communicates. "We have to understand in seconds -- it goes in your brain: Okay, she wants this, " says Kavsadze. "A lot of times, we don't even know where Paata's going to take it. . . . It's a matter of trust," says Istrate.