The thrilling style of film director David Lynch meets the heartbreaking pathos of playwright William Inge in John\’s Kuntz\’s remarkable The Nepenthe. Four actors inhabit 19 characters who live or work in or around The Hotel Nepenthe, a locale straight out of a film noir from Hollywood\’s golden era.

The play\’s setting gets its name from a drug described in Homer\’s Odyssey as banishing grief or trouble from a person\’s mind. That is certainly the goal of the characters who inhabit Kuntz\’s intriguing play. An unsettling drama with liberal doses of humor throughout, Kuntz\’s script takes audiences on a troubling yet profoundly moving journey.

From the play\’s first scene between a car-rental agent and a bellhop carrying a mysterious hat box and searching for a missing hotelguest, audiences are transported into a world where a murder might or might not have occurred, a baby is passed from stranger to stranger, a senator\’s wife plots her revenge, a starlet time travels through her sexual escapades, and taxi dispatchers and bus drivers dispense wisdom to every passenger catching a ride. This is an emotionally searing yet wondrously funny play in which desperately lonely characters are struggling to make connections with other human beings in any way they can. This clever play speaks to our basic need to connect.