Director-playwright (and sometime actor) John Jahnke has returned to Downtown Manhattan's HERE on Valentine's Day with his latest, Mercurius, ending its scheduled run March 18. The play began performances Feb. 14. Jahnke's Lola Montez in Bavaria played at HERE last season after a hit run at the 1998 New York International Fringe Festival. An alumnus of the legendary West Coast auteur Reza Abdoh and his Dar a Luz company, Jahnke has often populated his works with other Abdoh disciples, including actors Tony Torn (Richard Foreman's current offering, Now That Communism Is Dead, My Life Feels Empty) and Julianna Margulies (Foreman's Hotel Paradise).
Mercurius also features a Abdoh graduate, Sabrina Artel, who appeared in the avant-garde master's Quotations From a Ruined City and Law of Remains.
—By Robert Simonson
