Theatre in Review: Dido of Idaho (Ensemble Studio Theatre/Radio Drama Network)Abby Rosebrock, a new face, plants herself firmly on the theatre map with this head-swiveling new work. Dido of Idaho starts out as a riff on an old-fashioned sex-comedy premise, but with its train-wreck heroine, classical-literature references, brutally candid cast of supporting characters, and wild twists, it quickly develops an audacious quality all its own. One of the characters commits a brutal act of assault, but that's nothing next to what the playwright does: She gets away with murder. Nora, the trouble-magnet lead character, is a musicologist and adjunct professor at an Idaho university. When we meet her, she is enjoying an afternoon encounter with her lover, Michael, accompanied by the music of Henry Purcell. At first, it appears to be an affair of true minds -- she is devoted to Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, and he, a literature professor, is a Virgil specialist. Too bad that Michael is married, and his promised divorce keeps receding, causing a constant undertone of tension. "You have to stop stalking her on Instagram," Michael says, "her" being his wife, Crystal. "Where else am I gonna see photos of casseroles?" Nora replies, evasively. Crystal is a former Miss Idaho -- her tiara is on display in the living room -- and it isn't lost on Nora that her situation is rather like Dido's: She's the other woman, saddled with a temporizing lover and his wife, a mistress of the domestic arts. This inherently unstable situation is blown wide open when, after their tryst at his house, Michael runs off to work -- as he points out, "Poetics of Estrangement in Postcolonial Diasporas doesn't just teach itself!" -- and Nora, feeling abandoned and ready to act out, drinks herself into a stupor. Enter Crystal, who is nonplussed to find a strange woman passed out on her couch. Nora, panicked, spins a false portrait of herself as an abuse victim to whom Michael has given temporary shelter. Big mistake: Domestic abuse was Crystal's platform at the Miss Idaho pageant, and she embarks on an aggressive, on-the-spot intervention, tutoring Nora in the principles of self-love. Nora, who has spent her entire adult life on the run from her disapproving adoptive mother -- an evangelical choir director -- finds herself pouring out her problems, over a bowl of cookie dough, to her lover's wife. Crystal force-feeds Nora with inspiration, while also making clear that she isn't one of the academic set: "If you want love so bad, then you need self-esteem, so men find you attractive," she says, adding "which I realize, that's like a catch-thirty-two." But neither is she some bubble-brained Miss Congeniality. Among other things, she is deeply devoted to her mother, a lesbian -- "We all know lesbians are fly as hell," she says -- who is dying of cancer. And she is thoroughly frank about how she bagged Michael ("I magnetized him with my confidence"), while insisting that she has settled for one of the few available acceptable examples of the fallen male sex. She also drops a bombshell about her marriage that unhinges Nora and leads to a full-on catfight. Throughout, Rosebrock has merciless fun with Michael's involvement with a program called Poetry for Prisoners, the allure of the sitcom Designing Women, and Monica Lewinsky's TED Talk about "the culture of judgment," while pondering whether the Dido and Aeneas narrative has given Western culture the dubious gift of two opposing female role models: the high-achieving, self-destructive single woman and the tiger wife. Except for Michael, a true weasel husband who wants to have everything his way, the characters aren't easily pinned down. In addition to Nora, who is a riot but deeply damaged and heading for a crack-up, and Crystal, whose therapized approach to life doesn't entirely mask a mean streak, there's Julie, Nora's mother, whose deeply Christian worldview doesn't stop her from falling into an affair with her old friend Ethel. Or does she? The second act of Dido of Idaho sends Nora in search of Julie, who lives with Ethel in a rural Georgia cabin, an event that cues a plot twist so shocking that it reframes everything you think you've seen. It's a daring gamble, and it works, even if it leads to a final scene of reconciliation that, in a less assured production, might be difficult to accept. No such worries here: If the play sometimes shifts gears wildly, the director, Mikhaela Mahony, wields an efficient stick shift, and she gets skillful performances from her cast of five. Layla Khosh nails Nora's native awkwardness, demonstrating her skill at pratfalls and spit takes, but also probing her character's abundant scar tissue. Rosebrock herself is a most formidable Crystal, dispensing her brand of tough love with supreme confidence, and, when the situation calls for it, going off the rails with frightening authority. Dalia Davi is equally daunting as Julie, who is, by turns, denunciatory and surprisingly tender. Dawn McGee is slyly amusing as Ethel, especially when counseling Nora in mother-daughter relations. "You don't need her love to survive anymore," Ethel says. "So don't act like you do." Nora, trying to work it out, says, "So that trick you play on boyfriends, to make them respect you. I should just apply that with my mom." "This is like teaching Helen Keller to read," Ethel replies, giving up. The production benefits from an attractive set, designed by Angelica Borrero, that, with a simple gesture -- the opening of an upstage wall -- transforms from Crystal and Michael's home to Ethel and Julie's retreat. Audrey Nauman's costumes and Christina Watanabe's lighting are both accomplished and Almeda Beynon's sound design supplies the action with music selections running from Purcell to Pat Benatar. Anyone who can combine mistaken-identity farce with brutal violence, feminist analysis, and a scene of hard-won forgiveness is clearly a writer to watch. That Rosebrock can do all that and also deliver a first-rate performance is even more impressive. EST has a real find in her. -- David Barbour 
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