One-woman show in Ohio focuses on playwright's dyslexia

The Columbus Dispatch review:

Minding your p's and q's is a good idea even when the results aren't always outstanding.

Eleni Papaleonardos (pictured) expands on and explores the concept in intriguing but sometimes didactic ways in Stop Sign (Language), which opened tonight at MadLab Theatre.

The phrase, which means to be on your best behavior as well as to be careful about your language, fits Available Light Theatre's world premiere of the autobiographical one-woman show about dyslexia.

Papaleonardos talks revealingly and often amusingly about her lifelong difficulties in decoding language -- especially in understanding the difference between p's, q's, b's and d's.

Among the many fascinating things you learn from this brisk one-act is the confusion Papaleonardos felt as a child about learning an alphabet in which some letters have the same shapes but in different, reversed positions.

For her, the challenges seemed twice as big because she had to master the two overlapping but different alphabets (English and Greek) of her bilingual family.

Although a few stories get personal, the actress doesn't delve into her life as poignantly or deeply as one expects and desires.

One of the best scenes is shaped as a celebratory and comical but heartfelt love affair between the artist and the octagonal stop sign, which has become for Papaleonardos a symbol of universality and therefore of greater clarity in communication.

Co-directors John Dranschak and Jeanine Thompson help the actress focus her performance and lead it a few steps toward a metaphoric dance with dyslexia.

The rear-screen projections of rotating letters and shifting shapes by Christian Faur also work well, nicely matching the actress's rhythms in words and gestures.

But as a movement-theater piece, Stop Sign (Language) falls tantalizingly short.

One of central Ohio's best actresses, Papaleonardos has played plum roles from Beatrice (in Actors' Theatre's Much Ado About Nothing) and Matilda (in CATCO's The Clean House) to the title role in Mary Stuart.

Yet, as a fledgling playwright, she hasn't given the actress in her enough room to shine.

The biggest problem with Stop Sign (Language) is that she mostly talks about dyslexia, a neurological learning disability that makes it hard to accurately and fluently recognize words.

Although Papaleonardos moves, bends and stretches gracefully, sometimes mimicking the shapes of letters with her body, only rarely does she find specifically theatrical ways to dramatize her themes.

Much of the piece works, though, as an excellent classroom lesson.

At under an hour in length, the show seems ideal for tours to area schools, where students should be as fascinated as I was to learn more than they imagined about the evolution of language, the history of symbols and the courage to overcome adversity.