As you sit in the tiny performance space inside the Casa del Pueblo Methodist Church – which the Rorschach Theatre Company always manages to make look like an entirely new space from its previous production – you’re hot. The sweat’s dripping down your face. You’re trying to avoid any bodily contact with those sitting next to you. You’re starting to feel a little faint.

Impressively enough, Rorschach’s lack of air conditioning only serves to place its audience even more firmly into the world of The Arabian Night, its offering for the Capital Fringe Festival. The tale is set in an oppressively hot apartment building in an unknown location. It also has a dubiously functioning elevator, a mysterious sound of rushing water that appears to have no source, and a space/time continuum not quite in sync with our own. And that’s just the beginning.

The Arabian Night‘s many stories each start off fairly straightforward. The building superintendent (Edwin Xavier) seems to be experiencing a flashback to his previous marriage. Fatima (Nelina Giridhar) has a set of conventional problems – a weird roommate and a series of annoyances which culminate in her getting locked out of the building. Her boyfriend’s state is a little more dire, at least in his own mind; Kalil (Matt Dunphy) is trapped in a broken elevator with no visible means of escape. On the more elusive side of things, we have a roommate whose past is a puzzle (Franzisca Dehke) and a neighbor (Jason McCool) who is using that roommate to play out an elaborate fantasy of his own.