With edgy, personal writing, innovative and charming set design, and actors firing on all cylinders, ‘Ritter, Dene, Voss’ never misses a beat and is an unblemished highlight of the festival.
Ludwig Worringer is brought home from a mental hospital to stay with his two sisters: at its heart this play is a study of domestic friction in the house of the rich and terminally bored. The sisters simultaneously support and undercut one another in that mercilessly precise manner that only family can achieve. One is sulky, sultry, and more than a little cruel, one the overtly self-sacrificing maternal replacement, both are pithy, indignant, and entertainingly vocal. When their brother arrives it soon becomes apparent that he is only marginally less sane than they are, injecting as he does each subsequent scene with unpredictable instability. The reinforcement of each personality by the others is a triumph of nuanced acting on all parts.
The writing achieves an entirely convincing collection of moods and topics, forming a seamless patchwork of debates, rants, and haughty banter in which no line is wasted and no opportunity lost; it’s dense without being overwhelming, pacey, amusing, and bright. As time passes the contradictory and misrepresented agendas of all three expose madnesses distinguished more by their differing priorities than anything else. Ultimately their family’s irrational equilibrium, after much disturbance, has returned, but not after a delightfully revealing detour.
Whereof one can speak, thereof one must declare: see this show before you see anything else.
5/5 
Bernie Greenwood
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