1st Stage’s less-is-more aesthetic, usually successful, doesn’t deliver the goods for Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius, a fighting-over-the-inheritance drama with overtones of American Buffalo. Indeed, what’s needed most to help this slight story—scams and counter-scams surrounding what could be an extremely valuable legacy of 19th-century postage stamps—is a trim to one-act length and more sharply drawn characters. As written, Mary (Amy Waldman), one of two sisters squabbling over the property, has only one note to play: “they’re my stamps; they’re not yours to sell.” Her ne’er-do-well sibling Jackie (Leigh Taylor Patton) does better, but the necessities of the plot require her to acquire information about her trove at unrealistically precise points in time. The casting of Roger Payano as the small-time stamp dealer Philip and of Edward Daniels as the small-time small-time Dennis unfortunately obscures the relationship between them.
- Mauritius, by Theresa Rebeck, directed by Mark Krikstan, 1st Stage, McLean, Virginia