David Storey is a lauded, prolific English author of novels, poetry, plays and work for television and film -- but he is rarely seen stateside, and director Bob Martin has been longing to produce "Early Days." "It's a real actor's piece: the beauty of his plays comes out of the characters, not the plot," he says. "It's a hell of a challenge, even in a traditional theater. I want to see if we can pull it off in our own unique format."

William Hutchings, theatre critic, describes the play as "a compressed, poignant, and threnodial portrayal of its central character's realizations of time, loss, and remembered love -- though the potential sentimentality… is undercut by the play's subtle irony and melancholy humor."

Hutchings compares Storey to Samuel Beckett, writing that "Early Days" is "an important contribution to the tradition of 'minimalist' theatre… an evocative play, a deftly drawn character study that presents, with surprisingly few lines and carefully selected significant details, an extraordinary and revealing portrait of its 'ordinary' subjects."

An extraordinary cast takes on the project, including Jane Clark, Benedict Herrman, Gavin Hoffman, Ariel Puls, and Josh Rengert, among others. Hoffman is currently guest-starring on Leverage, the TNT production filming in Portland, and Rengert recently wrapped the lead role in Selfless, a Pander Brothers production now on the film festival circuit.