Lunaticus.

The opening of Lunaticus caught our attention straight away. Danielle Allen seemed unable to leave the stage: every attempt brought flickering lights and returning voices, pulling her back into a space she could not escape. We did not quite know what was happening, and that uncertainty was interesting. It was an intriguing way into a story about epilepsy, missing time, and trying to understand what is happening inside your own head.

We saw this as a work in progress, somewhere between the staged reading held in June and a premiere planned for later in the year. Allen was still working with her script, but sound, lighting, and some movement were already part of the presentation. The team was trying some of these ideas in front of an audience for the first time. Our response is to the story and the theatrical ideas taking shape, rather than to something being presented as complete.

Written and performed by Allen, the piece is essentially a 70-minute, one-woman monologue. It follows Danielle's experience of developing symptoms during the COVID period in 2020 and being diagnosed with epilepsy in her twenties. Along the way come mistaken explanations and attempts at self-diagnosis. We found that journey fascinating, particularly the difficulty of making sense of experiences that she initially thought were something else. There was already plenty going on in 2020 without this additional uncertainty.

The opening brings in a family connection to a woman associated with witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. Allen considers how her own symptoms might once have been understood as witchcraft or possession. We liked that unconventional introduction. Rather than immediately laying out a medical history, it starts with something stranger and less easily explained. It gives the audience a moment of not understanding before Danielle begins telling us about her own attempts to understand.

What we saw of Ivy Walker's lighting and Sarah Norcross's sound design felt like an interesting teaser of what might come in the full production. They were particularly effective in that opening sequence. The flickering lights and voices made us feel that Allen was trapped, and we read that as a possible metaphor for being trapped by her condition. That was our interpretation, rather than something we would insist the scene meant. These elements gave us something to watch and puzzle over, as well as something to listen to.

One episode stayed with us especially clearly. Danielle describes preparing to get into the shower and experiencing what she initially believed was a faint, but later understood to have been a seizure. She had been naked and about to step into the water. The next thing she remembered, she was fully clothed in bed, with the shower still running. Her roommate came in after hearing a noise and asked whether she was okay.

She thought she might have slept through an entire night, but only a few minutes had passed. In that gap, she had fallen, had a seizure, dressed herself, and got into bed, without remembering those actions. That detail made the missing time very clear to us. It was not simply forgetting a small part of an evening. From her perspective, she had jumped from one moment to another, with no memory connecting the two.

Allen tells the story well. Details like the shower still running gave us something concrete to hold onto as she described an experience so difficult to imagine. There was welcome humor alongside the more unsettling experiences, too. The story and script felt strong, with concrete incidents that gave us plenty to think about afterward. In this version, the storytelling was much more developed than the staging, which was still being explored.

After the opening, most of the performance settled into a more straightforward talk. Allen stood and spoke, with a little movement around the stage, and the lighting and voices were much less present. At times it felt closer to hearing someone read from a diary than watching the kind of theatrical experience suggested by the beginning. That can still be engaging, but we missed the atmosphere and uncertainty that had first drawn us in.

With relatively little visual detail in this presentation, our attention sometimes wandered around the space. We found ourselves looking to the sides or noticing the lights rather than staying completely with the story. We tend to respond to theater that gives us details to discover, whether through something heightened and magical or through carefully developed realism. Here, it was mainly Allen's words carrying the experience.

The voices returned toward the end, including a call that suggested to us a doctor's waiting room. That brought back some of the theatrical interest, although it felt like a different idea from the witchcraft or possession suggested at the start. We were glad to hear it return. Those moments of sound and light stood out against the long central stretch of direct storytelling, giving us a glimpse of the ideas being explored alongside the script.

We came away interested in Lunaticus and curious about what it will become. Allen has a strong script, a compelling story, and an engaging way of sharing it. The opening's flickering lights and returning voices made us feel that she was trapped before she had begun explaining her condition. That uncertainty stayed with us, and this work-in-progress presentation left us interested to see how Allen and director Grace Cutler develop the piece for its full production.