Category Archives: theatre

Coffee’s for Closers

glengarry

I talked to Jeremy Skidmore about his Keegan Theatre revial of David Mamet’s classic of manly desperation, Glengarry Glen Ross. Haven’t seen the production yet, but Celia Wren seemed to like it.

A couple days after I filed this, the new Fall Out Boy album came to me for review in what it turns out will be my final installment of Media Mix (as that part of the paper is going away come the new year), complete with a tune called “Coffee’s for Closers.” No obvious connection to the play, but perhaps I haven’t listened closely enough to Fall Out Boy. There is always that risk.

(Yes, I am well aware that All My Sons is by Arthur Miller and not David Mamet.)

“Frost/Nixon” at the Kennedy Center

frostnixon-030-photo-by-carol-rosegg

I’ve never been a big fan of Ron Howard’s films, though the word on his upcoming adaptation of Peter Morgan’s fine history play Frost/Nixon is that it’s good. If you can afford it, though, I heartily endorse the touring production of the play I reviewed for DCist. It’s at the Kennedy Center through Sunday night.

Setting the Stage

“On Stage” piece from today’s Weekend section on Tom Kamm, an architect and set designer who has worked on a number of shows with Robert Wilson, among others. He designed the set for Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom, opening next week at Woolly Mammoth.

I feel a little silly saying this, but click on the picture to read the story.

Double Shot of DRUID

DRUID’s kiss-me-quick production of two Synge plays, The Shadow of the Glen and The Playboy of the Western World, reviewed for DCist.

The Princess Diaries: Wishful Drinking

Run, don’t walk!

Hooked.

My piece on Maria/Stuart, playwright Jason Grote’s new show at Woolly Mammoth, is in the Weekend section of today’s paper of record. Click on the poster above to read all about it.

Marat/Sade at Forum

Fringe is over, but Forum’s Marat/Sade has two more weekends left in its run. Reviewed for DCist . . . more than a week ago. I’m a bit behind in my blogkeeping.

Making Sweet Musical

Natascia Diaz and Doug Kreeger in Rooms: A Rock Romance. Photo by Colin Hovde.

Ever wonder how an original musical gets written? A: Very slowly.

And now I’m writing about theatre for the Paper of Record.

Iconicity unleashed!

So, my better half — co-founder of the Eleventh Hour Ensemble — got to breathe a big sigh of relief last night. The first of a half-dozen Capitol Fringe Festival performances of Iconicity, a photography-and-memory show she and Ryan Christie created with the aid of a gifted cast, went off mostly successfully. (So says Dan Owen, blogging for the City Paper’s Fringe & Purge dealio.)

The biggest flaws were all light-and-sound-related, and thus entirely my fault, since I was running both boards. In my defense, we had exactly one rehearsal in the Fort Fringe space and using their equipment. (I’d else practiced the sound cues on an iPod, which is a little different from a soundboard.) But that’s no excuse. I pledge to you that when you attend one of the five remaining performances of Iconicity — as you must! — the light and sound cues will be dead-solid-spot-on perfect.

How’s the show? Fabulous! Truly, that’s my as-objective-as-can-be-expected assessment. It’ll resonate especially with anyone who reads this story in today’s Paper of Record by Warren Zinn, who frets that a photo he shot of Army medic Joseph Dwyer during the first week of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 may have contributed to Dwyer’s suicide last week. Sad, haunting stuff.

Bow Down Before The Lion King!

No, it’s good. Really. Are you at all surprised? I wasn’t. Which is why my review is less than a rave, even though the choreography and especially the sets and costumes are all topnotch.

Wagon of Sorrow: Theater of War at SILVERDOCS

John Walter’s brilliant documentary, reviewed for DCist.

UPDATE 6/26/08: I got a nice e-mail about the review from Theatre of War director/editor John Walter, who reports that he is shopping the film around for a distributor. Best of luck to you, John! It’s a great documentary, and it deserves as wide a release as it can get.

John also sent this cool one-sheet image:

Los Angeles, Detroit, Cairo, Rome

Suzanne Bertish and Andrew Long as the titular star-crossed lovers in Antony and Cleopatra. Photo by Carol Pratt.

Either because I am remarkably prolific or because I am distressingly lazy, my reviews of the Shakespeare Theatre’s Antony and Cleopatra and of the X/Detroit Cobras double-bill at the 9:30 Club last Wednesday ended up on DCist the same day. The Friday preceeding Memorial Day weekend, in fact. Given that I posted them both after lunchtime, I’m confident that tens and tens of people read both trenchant works of art criticism.

Happy Memorial Day, everybody.

X: Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom, Jon Doe, and D.J. Bonebrake, pictured sometime well in advance of their current 31st anniversary tour.

Better Half Called Sinuous, Otherworldy in the Washington Times

Milady sees the future in Constellation Theatre Company’s current production of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia. Washington Times theatre critic Jayne Blanchard says she “provides chills . . . as the sinuous and otherworldly oracle Cassandra.”

Way to bring those chills, Baby. Respect!

The rainpan 43 Festival @ Studio

Trey Leyford and Geoff Sobelle are rainpain 45

Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, talking with their mouths full in all wear bowlers.

Being that I am a former Studio Theatre employee — more than that, being that I can in one way or another trace nearly all of the very good things that have happened to me over the last three years back to another of my former employers’ sold-out engagement of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants in May-June 2005 at yes, the Studio Theatre — I haven’t avoided writing about Studio shows, but I haven’t really pursued the opportunity, either.

But Miss Crooks, foremost among those very good things I just mentioned, happened to catch all the first of the three shows that comprise Studio’s rainpan 43 Festival, all wear bowlers, Tuesday night, and she came home raving about it. Twenty-four hours later, I was raving about it too.

Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, the two halves of rainpan 43, previously staged all wear bowlers in New York and at the Edinburgh Fringe, but the other two shows they’ve brought to Studio, Amnesia Curiosa and machines machines machines machines machines machines machines, are, respectively, being workshopped and brand-new. Can’t wait to see ‘em.

Hurry Up and Kill Yourself Already: Solas Nua’s Portia Coughlin

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We know just how she feels: Linda Murray is just asking for chronic back pain in Portia Coughlin.

It’s no fun reviewing a show created by people you like and respect unfavorably. (And there’s a bit of it going ’round lately, seems like.) But this is The Job.

Also on DCist this week, my first Weekly Music Agenda.

SMILFS to Go ‘Round: Shintoku-Maru at the KenCen

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Wow. No, really. Wow.

I expanded upon my reaction to Yukio’s Ninagawa’s Shintoku-Maru for DCist.

We’ll Find That Bastard If It’s the Last Thing We Do

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Solas Nua’s Trad, reviewed in DCist today.

Mightily do I dig Solas Nua. Their Scenes from the Big Picture at Catholic back in May was what we pointy-headed aesthetes like to call “the shit.” I had a nice talk with Jessi Burgess, founder of the Inkwell, at their opening gala Saturday night. She’s directing the next Solas Nua show, Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan, so we have reason to expect greatness, or at least grooviness.

The K of D

thekofd-kimberlygilbert-heron-by-stanbarouh-6036-1.jpgMy review of Woolly’s debut production of Laura Schellhardt’s  prismatic spook-story, brought vividly to life by Kimberly Gilbert (pictured) and director John Vreeke, is on DCist today.  Read it, then go see it.  I know what’s good for you.

Dipped My Wick

inkwell.jpg

 . . . into The Inkwell, Capitol City’s latest playwright-focused theatre company, for DCist.

It’s Irish Genius Week in my Clip File!

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po-faced [poh-feyst] – adjective, Chiefly British. having an overly serious demeanor or attitude; humorless.

And U2 Week in the Style section at the Paper of Record, apparently, what with yesterday’s gushing front-page profile of Bono, my review of the 20th Anniversary reissue of The Joshua Tree in today’s paper. Maybe I’ll post a longer version of that review here. Or maybe I’ll just say “enough is enough” and get on with my life, too much of which has already gone to cutting that thing down to the not-ungenerous length at which it ran. Verily, writing about your sacred cows can be a tricky business.

The other Irish genius of whom I speak would be Samuel Beckett. The National Theatre of Great Britain Production of his 1961 Happy Days starring Fiona Shaw is at the Kennedy Center’s Terrance Theatre for a short run of concluding the day after tomorrow. I reviewed it for DCist. Not exactly light entertainment — for that, there’s A Christmas Carol 1941 at Arena, which I took my parents to the following night; DCist review forthcoming — but, you know, thought-provoking, imaginative, ballsy. Beckettian, I guess.