A glimmer of that Jeune Lune magic

Glimmers of the old Theatre de la Jeune Lune floated onstage once again in "The House Can't Stand," writer/actor Steve Epp's dreamy meditation on U.S. history and democracy, the state of the union and of human desire.

The one-person show, with fellow Jeune Luner Dominique Serrand directing, conflates realms and times, ideas and dreams with a simple, fetching theatricality. If we are arrested by its mash-up of history and literature, it is because of Epp's performance as a widow. He's a gifted, nimbly suggestive actor, even if his script could use some tweaking.

At the Southern Theater, where "House" ran last weekend, Epp was hardly recognizable. In an azure dress with matching shoes and earrings, his unnamed character orbited the stage with both delicacy and authority. She evoked a butterfly -- an apt metaphor in a show teeming with them.

The set, by contrast, was minimal: As the play opened, there was a table and chair on stage right, and a screen behind it, on which the interior of a kitchen was projected. At center was another chair, overturned, and a lamp, missing its shade.

The widow enters with a grocery bag that she promptly unpacks (a hint, perhaps, of the unpacking of ideas to come). She tells us she misses Earl, her late husband of 37 years. She makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for him and puts it on the table, waiting. The phone rings. It's a man, ostensibly calling for a survey. The lonely widow and the caller strike up a flirtation, and agree to a theater date later that night.

When the widow drives off to meet him -- there's an inventive use of a screen, movie theme music and video -- her car breaks down. She then enters a dream world where it is possible to have a conversation -- and much more -- with Abraham Lincoln.

"House" treats time like a sea that's chock-full of interesting flotsam and jetsam. It plucks things at random, reflects on them, then moves on. It references and remixes quotes from "Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar." It invokes Thomas Jefferson and President Obama's inaugural address. And it joins distant historical events, so that Lincoln's assassination leads to riots in Detroit and bombs in Birmingham.

The jumble of images and ideas sometimes screams out for order. As I sat in the theater, I wanted to impose my own chronology on the action. The play reminded me of Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days." That work, done so well at the Guthrie last year, is one that you have to surrender to, letting it wash over you in order for the synapses to light up. The creative connections in "House" are less oblique. And it is easier to let its sweep of history and ideas take you away.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390