Aunt Dan and Lemon

Description
Lemon’s (Rebekah Ward-Hays) memories are populated with brilliant creatures spewing articulate hatred, family friend “Aunt” Dan (Brenda Barrie, exquisite as always) chief among them. Even as you recoil from Dan’s worship of Henry Kissinger, you can’t entirely dismiss her arguments about the virtues of fascism. Aunt Dan boasts a prescient assessment of neoconservatism taken to an extreme, but it’s also filled with sick laughs. Heath Hays’s set design extends the sumptuous feel of the Chopin’s basement lobby directly into the playing area. It’s a comfortable place. Luckily, the play isn’t.—Caitlin Montanye Parrish