Dark House takes William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and sets it in a Logan Circle mansion at various points in the decades since Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. The story is told mostly through flashbacks between the present-day owner of the mansion and the real estate agent looking to sell the property. Old maid Rosa Coldfield tells smooth-talking Quentin Compson that anyone looking to live in the house must know the truth about her family’s sordid past there. Seven actors play the roles of 12 characters in the pop-up dramatizations of her accounts. This starts with wealthy-but-emotionally-bankrupt Thomas Sutpen abandoning his first wife, who has just given birth to his first son. Years later, the son becomes entangled with both of Sutpen’s children from his second wife. This leads to several other debacles that address themes of classism, racism, incest, murder, and suicide — issues that writer Tarpley Long realized “so easily translate beyond the Civil War era” (the backdrop in Faulkner’s book).

The cast skillfully goes back and forth between personalities and decades to relay Coldfield’s story to Compson. Dark House includes some important D.C. history regarding the 1968 riots in Shaw, Columbia Heights, U Street, and H Street NE, and the aftermath in those neighborhoods. But between Faulkner’s convoluted prose and sort of unclear timing and character shifts on stage, those who haven’t read Absalom, Absalom! might find the plot difficult to follow. Ascending like a soap opera and structured like a Greek tragedy, the play raises Long’s idea that today’s society tolerates less “injustice and disunity” than it did in the 1860s, but individuals still seem “slow to evolve in any effective manner to eliminate” their prejudices completely.

Remaining performances:

Friday, July 19, 6:15 p.m.
Sunday, July 21, 12:45 p.m.
Wednesday, July 24, 6 p.m.
Friday, July 26, 8 p.m.
Saturday, July 27, 11:45 p.m.

At Fort Fringe – Redrum, 612 L Street NW
Tickets online here.