In previous productions writer/director Nikki Appino and House of Dames have created some of the most daring, creative, and memorable theater ever seen in Seattle. However, though helped along by the fine work of Wade Madsen's choreography, Wayne Horvitz's music, and Dan Corson's set, Invisible Ink feels oddly unfinished. The show is a sort of riff--in movement, dialogue, and song--on the life of dancer, courtesan, and possible World War I spy Mata Hari. Mata Hari was in fact a Dutch woman named Margaretha Zelle, who reinvented herself several times, first as "Lady McLeod," the wife of an abusive military officer stationed in the Dutch East Indies. After divorcing (which was a pretty daring act in those days), she returned to Europe and supported herself as a stripper and streetwalker. Finally, she passed herself off as a faux Japanese exotic dancer--Mata Hari. Meanwhile, Mata/Margaretha was racking up an impressive list of bedfellows. Though recent scholarship suggests that she was not a spy, the sheer number of her military paramours made people suspicious (or maybe just envious), so in 1917 she was executed for espionage.

Only part of the story, however, takes place during Mata Hari's life; part of it also takes place in the present. A student of forensics named Monica (Monica Appleby) is staying at an Amsterdam hotel in which Mata Hari once lived. The hotel is run by Hans (Hans Altweis). (I didn't get the point of giving the characters the actors' names.) In a sort of Dead Again scenario, Monica and Hans reenact scenes from the lives of Mata Hari and her men. Is this show saying something about patterns of desire? Reincarnation? The story seemed to be reaching for something that it didn't quite grasp. Both Appleby and Altweis show impressive range in their performances as actors and dancers. Unfortunately, all the interesting, well-done parts of this show do not add up to a satisfying whole. REBECCA BROWN