Silver Spring Stage presents the comedy thriller Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn, directed by Lenora Dernoga and produced by Celeste MacMillan. A London sex specialist stumbles into a murder plot that sends her traveling back in time. She and two women who were murdered race back and forth in time to rewrite history and prevent their own violent ends. Communicating Doors will run weekends April 11 to May 4, 2008.

Silver Spring Stage is located in the Woodmoor Shopping Center, lower level (next to the CVS) at Colesville Road and University Boulevard. Ticket prices range from $13 to $18. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday matinees on April 20 and May 4 at 2:00 PM. Tickets can be purchased at www.ssstage.org. Information is also available by calling (301) 593-6036.

''Time is just one color in the playwright's palette,'' Alan Ayckbourn has said, ''to be spread, mixed, thinned and splattered as required.'' The most prolific English playwright in history, Ayckbourn has stylishly used and reinvented nearly every theatrical style in a career that has spawned 71 full-length plays. Sometimes characterized as the Neil Simon of Britain, Ayckbourn has never settled for a single moniker of his works. His superb writing and willingness to experiment with theatrical language truly makes every one of his works an adventure for actors and audiences. He truly has had a life led in the theatre, starting at the age of 17 in one of Britain’s old touring companies. He worked his way through the provinces as an actor, scene painter and more until dissatisfied with the roles he played, he took pen to paper and wrote his own. He hasn’t stopped since. Even his recent announcement of retirement from his position at theatre in North Yorkshire, won’t stop him from continuing to direct and write. Communicating Doors was first performed in 1994 and went on to Best Play of 1996 award from the Writer's Guild of Britain. As entertaining and engaging as Communicating Doors is with its clever time-travel device, the play does explore the ideas of fate and free will and whether or not people can control their own destiny. These are matters we all wish to find answers for ourselves. So, hop on the time travel train and enjoy Communicating Doors!

Communicating Doors begins and ends twenty years in the future. As the play opens, an ailing Reece Wells (Peter Nigra), wealthy businessman and owner of the Regal Hotel, is in his suite with Julian Goodman (James Raby), his friend and business partner. Reece has called for the services of a self-styled "special sexual consultant" (a leather clad dominatrix) by the name of Poopay (Rachel Demma). After Julian departs, we learn that the only service Reece desires of Poopay is that she witness a document. In anticipation of his impending death, he wants to confess all of the terrible acts that he and Julian have committed. (These range from simple dishonesty to the murder of both of his wives.) When Julian returns and Poopay needs to make a quick exit, she uses the communicating door. Instead of taking her into the room next door, it returns her to the same room twenty years earlier when it was occupied by Reece's second wife, Ruella (Toni Carmine). It is the very night on which, according to the confession, Ruella is to be thrown from the balcony by Julian. When Ruella and Poopay figure out what has happened, they realize they must get her out of there. When Ruella passes through the door, however, she does not go forward in time; she goes back another twenty years, when the same suite is occupied by Reece and his first wife, Jessica (Rachel Duda), on their wedding night, seven years before the time when Reece confesses she was killed. What follows are adventures that hilarious and nefarious and not to be missed!