This piece requires not only underscore and transition music, but also music to lyrics already in the script, and a soundscape that can convincingly echo the claustrophic and repressive setting of the piece. I used period insturments for this score, including a clavichord, celeste, and a glass harmonica.

Although I had dabbled in sound designbefore, this is the first time I had been credited as a sound designer. Rick Lombardo, artistic director of New Rep, showed me the ropes.

The cast for this show were not only incredibly talented actors, but also a riot. This is a creepy, timely piece of writing that deserves to be produced many times over...

Few plays are likely to invite such divided views as "One Flea Spare" by Naomi Wallace, which is being produced by the New Repertory Theatre in Newton Highlands.

If you look at the play from one perspective, you may simply see a gripping story in which the class struggle is vividly portrayed and a form of sexual cruelty is checkmated, while matters of sex and death are freely explored, often in unusual ways. There's no denying that the play has received four awards, including a 1997 Obie Award for best play, and the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grant was given to the playwright.

You may note that the producer of such popular hits as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill" is working on a film based on the story. Do not, however, make the mistake of assuming there is any similarity whatsoever between "One Flea Spare" and those two light romantic comedies.

If you look at "One Flea Spare" from a different perspective, you're likely to feel that the playwright has used an historical setting as an excuse for sexually suggestive scenes that would never make it onto the New Rep stage on their own. With the intermingling of strange sexual experiences and horrific accounts of death, you may feel like you've entered a twilight zone that you wish you had never encountered.

There's no doubt that Naomi Wallace intended to write a play that crosses familiar boundaries in order to grab hold of audiences through a certain degree of shock. She's obviously very effective at doing just that. The real question is whether you find any value in being put through such an experience.

The story involves four people who are trapped in a house in 1665 London, having to wait through a 28-day quarantine, while the plague rages around them.

Mr. William Snelgrave and his wife, Mrs. Darcy Snelgrave, had witnessed the death of their servants and were on the verge of being able to leave their home and flee London, when Bunce, a sailor, and Morse, a young, female orphan, break into their home, seeking refuge. A new quarantine period begins while Kabe, a cynical watchman, stands guard outside to make sure nobody leaves or enters the house.
The play ambles along as Bunce tells Mr. Snelgrave of experiences at sea and teaches him sailors' knots. All of this seems fairly aimless, until a dramatically effective scene in which Mr. Snelgrave allows Bunce, whose feet are wrapped in rags, a chance to try on his socks and shoes. This is where the tables begin to turn.

Central to the play is the fact that Mrs. Snelgrave has been deprived of sexual intimacy for most of her married life for tragic reasons revealed in the play. But Bunce does not have as hard a heart as Mr. Snelgrave.

Naomi Wallace obviously revels in having characters touch each other physically in unusual ways and having them recount the breaking of common sexual taboos. She also offers vivid descriptions of death, sometimes in poetic language that combines the sublime and the horrific. It's this pushing of boundaries that the play really is all about.

For all of their Broadway experience, the married couple Stephen Mendillo and Lisa Richards are surprisingly one-dimensional in their performances as Mr. and Mrs. Snelgrave. It almost feels as if director David Wheeler (who did better directing ART's "The Doctor's Dilemma") feared that too much honest emotion would blunt the shock value of the play.

James E. Berrier plays Kabe as a cruel, revved-up Shakespearean clown. Robert Parsons as the sailor Bunce gives the one performance of the evening that really has emotional dimension and nuance.

The 12-year-old Eliza Rose Fichter brings remarkable energy and intrepidness to the role of Morse. But watching her, it's hard not to be conscious of the fact that most families probably wouldn't want their 12-year-old attending this play, let alone participating in it. Writing such a young person into the script, as a key player in some of the suggestive scenes, obviously is an intentional pushing of the envelope.

Richard Chambers' spare set -- the frame of the house and a wall of splayed boards in the background -- is effective. So is Haddon Kime's otherworldly music with the sound of tinkling chimes that hint of the life beyond, which is pressing in on the play's characters.

The title, by the way, comes from a poem by John Donne in which a flea bonds the poet and his mistress by drawing blood from both.