HOMEBODY - Ancram Opera House

With Tony Kushner’s HOMEBODY, Ancram Opera House evidenced, once again, it’s presenting the most unexpected and innovative summer theatre program around. Rarely staged, the solo, one-act HOMEBODY concluded a two weekend run Sunday afternoon. The first act of the complete HOMEBODY / KABUL first produced in 2001, HOMEBODY is about a London housewife, a voracious reader of eccentric curiosity, who becomes obsessed with Afghanistan. Danielle Skraastad, a Hudson Valley native who’s worked with Kushner Off-Broadway, assumed the huge task of playing the homebody - solo for almost an hour - who reads from a Kabul guidebook and contemplates everything from her daily meds to the philosophical nature of history. It’s wonderfully Kushnerian, marvelously vocabularic and moving. Skraastad embraces the homebody with neurotic madcap, crafting a performance that really is conversation with audience. Humor abounds. Pathos, too, in the homebody’s angry plea near play’s end. Jeff Mousseau directed with whimsical accents and a stirring finale. (Afghani party) hats off to Skraastad, Mousseau and the crew.