As the Kennedy Center continues its celebration of the performing arts of the United Kingdom, on of the most daring and innovative theatre groups there, is presenting its production of Lulu, the outrageously sensual play written by Frank Wedekind at the end of the 19^th century.

The Almeida Theatre company has come up with an intriguing piece of theatre in this tale of a beautiful woman's endless search for pleasure. It's macabre, it's funny, it's perverse, it's sexy, it's altogether engrossing. It's also recommended only for mature audiences and certainly not for the prudish. Lulu follows the life of the young woman whose face and figure helps to cut a swath through a raft of men in Berlin and Paris. She leaves a trail of death and destruction behind her only to end up as a lowly penniless prostitute in London to die as the hands of Jack the Ripper.

The excellent cast is composed of some of England's finest stage actors who have numerous credits among them. Perhaps the least experienced of them all is Anna Friel, the central figure, Lulu, a young vivacious girl who has done a few movies and has appeared onstage only one other time. But she is an accomplished actress and her youth, beauty and sensuality stand her in good stead in Lulu and is at the core of her uninhibited nature that ensnares all the men around her. A deft handling of a deliciously naughty subject, the Almeida Theatre production of Lulu will be on view until July 15^th at the Kennedy Center, Eisenhower Theatre.