(Enlarge) Maureen Kerrigan and Dan Manning are featured in a new production of Sam Sheprd's "A Lie of the Mind" opening Feb.4 at Howard Community College. (Stan Barouh)

With Sam Shepard, says director Xerxes Mehta, "love is never uncomplicated."

That's why the recently retired University of Maryland, Baltimore County director felt he just couldn't do the 1985 Shepard work "A Lie of the Mind" full justice using student actors. His production for Columbia's Rep Stage Company opens Feb. 4 at Howard Community College.

"The characters are, I think, beyond the range of most students," notes Mehta, a theater professor at UMBC for over 30 years.

"There are a number of characters who are older -- in their 60s -- and you need really good, professional actors for that. Even the younger people in the play have roles that are extremely complicated."

"A Lie of the Mind" looks at the lives of two families, one from rural California and another from Montana. The families are brought together by the marriage of a son and daughter, Jake and Beth, but the play isn't exactly a depiction of wedded bliss.

The reality of both families is shattered when Beth is unexpectedly hospitalized with a brain injury that turns out to be the result of domestic violence. The blending of this tragic situation with comedic elements is largely what won the play a New York Drama Critic's Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk Award.

"I think it's one of Shepard's best plays," Mehta says. "It has never achieved the notoriety of 'Buried Child' or 'Fool for Love,' but I think in some ways it's greater than either one of those. It's his most accessible play."

Describing the work as "pretty straightforward and realistic," Mehta adds that it also has "wild strains of metaphor and fancy. So it can be grasped on a number of levels."

The cast features Tim Getman, last seen in Rep Stage's "In the Heart of America," and Maureen Kerrigan, a Helen Hayes Award nominee and a veteran of Rep Stage, the Kennedy Center and Ford's Theatre. Other cast members include Valerie Leonard, Dan Manning, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Natasha Staley, Gina Alvarado and Cliff Williams III.

"The people in this play are simultaneously wild and wonderful and shocking and horrific and tragic, really," says Mehta, who directed a production for Rep Stage in 2007. "And yet at the same time, they're terribly funny - ridiculous in many ways."

The Rep Stage Company will perform "A Lie of the Mind" Feb. 4-March 1, in Howard Community College's Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center's Studio Theatre. Show times are Wednesday-Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday 8 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday 2:30 p.m. Tickets run $15-$30 depending on the day and discounts are available for groups and seniors. Admission for students with ID is $12.

A pre-show lecture will be given Saturday, Feb. 14, 1 p.m. and post-show discussions will be held Fridays, Feb. 13 and 20. Call 410-772-4900 or go to www.repstage.org.

Bard bunch returns with a bawdy 'Wife'

The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is hoping to restore English Restoration comedy to modern audiences with its fresh staging of "The Country Wife," opening Thursday, Feb. 5 at the Howard County Center for the Arts.

The 1675 play might still seem like something of a slap at Puritan oppression by today's theater-goers. It tells of man who schemes to seduce all the wives in his hometown; to accomplish this, he spreads a rumor that he is a eunuch, so that the local husbands won't be jealous when he spends time with their wives. When the truth comes out, the women struggle to salvage their reputations.

"Restoration comedies were written in the period after Charles II was restored to the throne," explains managing director Lesley Malin. "It was after the English revolution, when his father was executed and the Puritans took over and closed down the theaters and basically legislated that there should be no fun for anybody.

"When Charles was restored to the throne, there was an explosion of people enjoying themselves, and theater reflected that.

Malin was instrumental in bringing "The Country Wife" to the troupe's attention. She studied Restoration comedy in college, she says, and "fell in love with it.

"The whole period is just an amazingly larger-than-life time," adds Malin, who is also appearing in the current production. "It just seems like a hoot really, and a real pleasure to read about - the liveliness, the wit and the bawdiness."

The troupe eventually decided to produce William Wycherley's "The Country Wife," which Malin says is generally thought to be the funniest of the Restoration comedies.

That didn't mean it was easy to bring to the stage. One big roadblock was finding a director familiar with the style.

Malin decided to "troll the Internet" and eventually found there was a director at the University of Maryland who knew the genre. Heather S. Nathans signed on after learning that many members of the troupe had already trained in the style.

The style, Malin says, requires that actors recreate the movements and mannerisms of the period. As such, some of the troupe's rehearsal time is spent performing "an exercise regiment" to develop the proper muscles -- extensive training in holding the body and the arms back. "We start out every rehearsal with push-ups and all sorts of things like that," she notes.

The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company will produce "The Country Wife" Thursday-Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 2 p.m., Feb. 5-March 1, in the Black Box Theatre at the Howard County Center for the Arts (8510 High Ridge Road, Ellicott City). Admission is $25 general, $22 for seniors and $15 for students. The troupe is also offering Valentine's Day dinner packages in conjunction with the Ellicott City restaurant the Rumor Mill at $135 per couple. Call 866-811-4111.

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