Sarah Ulstrup and Ricardo Frederick Evans
I reviewed Doorway Arts‘ world premiere of Allyson Currin‘s play Hercules in Russia for the Washington City Paper. Needs a rewrite, but I think it’s got plenty going for it and I’d like to see how it evolves in subsequent productions.
If you’re curious, Robert K. Massie‘s nonfiction book Nicholas and Alexandra, which helped inspire the play, is available via Google Books. Continue reading
Personally — and professionally, come to that — I had more fun with the imported comic illusionism of Elephant Room at Arena (“would look far more comfortable in some ramshackle, claustrophobic space, where its raw aesthetics and ironic sensibility might … Continue reading
Nick Dillenburg & Miriam Silverman, fine actors in a shaky production
Reviewed for the Washington City Paper.
Jon Langford's portrait of Hank Williams
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Tagged artisphere, Arts Desk, artwork, Jon Langford, mekons, Richard Byrne, theater, Waco Brothers, Washington City Paper
Holly Twyford is a wounded photojournalist (SCOTT SUCHMAN)
What I ran out of room to say in my Washington City Paper review is that the book the character played by Greg McFadden starts working on during his convalescence, an examination of the political subtext of horror cinema, sounds an awful lot like Shock Value, the one published by the New York Times’s Jason Zinoman – son of Studio Theater founder Joy Zinoman – last summer. Continue reading
Christian Conn and Erica Sullivan in VENUS IN FUR. (SCOTT SUCHMAN/Studio Theater)
What was the Number One Topic under consideration by DC theaters in 2011? Why, the theater, of course.
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Tagged Arena Stage, Bob Mondello, David Ives, David Muse, essays, Studio Theatre, theater, Trey Graham, Washington City Paper, Woolly Mammoth
Danny Scheie as Nero and Susannah Schulman as Poppaea. (SCOTT SUCHMAN/Arena Stage)
Or maybe it’s about how a bad upbringing can damage you beyond the reach of art’s rehabilitative prowess.
Or mediocre art’s rehabilitative . . . I’m still thinking about this, is the point. Which suggests Freed was successful, even if the ending is kind of a mess. Continue reading
Not that bust. Grow up.
I wrote about writer/actor/comic/onetime Daily Show correspondent Lauren Weedman’s one-woman-show for the City Paper.
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Tagged autobiography, Lauren Weedman, solo shows, Studio Theatre, The Studio Theatre, theater
Theater J’s new production of Arthur Miller‘s What? No, it’s not about me; you’re an imaginationless churl merely to suggest it play After the Fall is a staggering work of heartbreaking genius. I reviewed it in today’s Washington City Paper, along with Studio Theater’s busy U.S. premiere of Roland Schimmelpfennig‘s The Golden Dragon, which does Rorschach’s After the Quake, which I liked, one better in the the opaque-animal-metaphor interpretation derby.
As ever, your mileage may vary.
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Tagged Arthur Miller, autobiography, drama, Elia Kazan, Marilyn Monroe, Red Scare, Studio Theatre, theater, Theater J
Kris Medina and Maude Mitchell
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Tagged A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen, Kennedy Center, little people, Mabou Mines, theater
Michael Russotto and Joshua Morgan in A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
Woolly Mammoth opens their Apocalypse-themed 32nd season with Samuel D. Hunter‘s surprisingly empathetic comedy A Bright New Boise. My City Paper review is here. I also wrote about Active Cultures’s Halloween trio Hellspawn in this week’s issue, available wherever fine newsweeklies are given away free.
Rachel Zampelli and Alyssa Wilmoth. (C. Stanley Photography)
My review of No Rules Theatre‘s fine production of Diana Son‘s Stop Kiss is in today’s Washington City Paper. Read it here.
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Tagged H Street Playhouse, No Rules Theatre Company, theater, Washington City Paper
Delia Taylor in HAPPY DAYS. Photo: Dru Sefton
My Washington City Paper review of the newly, pun-tastically rebranded WSC Avant Bard‘s production of Samuel Beckett‘s Happy Days is here.
Four years ago I reviewed the National Theatre of England‘s Fiona Shaw-starring production when it played the Kennedy Center.
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Tagged Delia Taylor, Samuel Beckett, theater, Washington City Paper, WSC Avant Bard
And also say other boat things! Boat things ahoy! And/or ho! As appropriate!
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Tagged David Cale, monologues, The Studio Theatre, theater, Washington City Paper
I Wish You Love, a new, original “drama with music” from St. Paul, MN’s Penumbra Theatre tells the tale of how beloved entertainer Nat “King” Cole chose to end his 1956-7 TV variety show, the first primetime network program hosted by an African-American.
Cole dipped into his own pocket to keep it going, and A-list friends like Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Tony Bennett appeared for scale, but it was no use: With Montgomery Bus Boycott still in effect, no national sponsor would risk paying to bring a black man into America’s homes. When NBC insisted Cole segregate the players in his band, which didn’t even appear on camera, he finally balked. Ironically, lack of a live band is what keeps this show from living up to its considerable potential. It features 20 songs; far too many given that its Cole, Dennis W. Spears, is singing to prerecorded music. And several songs fail to advance or comment upon the story in any resonant way — not necessarily a problem, if Spears can sing the shit out of them. Continue reading
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Tagged Estonia, Nat "King" Cole, Penumbra Theatre, Scena Theatre, Sofi Oksanen, theater, Washington City Paper
Annie Houston, Julie Garner & Cliff Williams III. (Melissa Blackall)
BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA. Another winner from Forum Theatre, whose Last Days of Judas Iscariot was my favorite show of, um… 2008, was it? Reviewed for WCP. Continue reading
Christian Conn and Erica Sullivan whip it good. (Scott Suchman)
“I hate the audition process,” sighed provocateur-playwright David Mamet in a 2005 Los Angeles Times essay. “As an actor, I found it demeaning. As a writer and director, I find it damn near useless.”
It’s David Ives, not Mamet, whose fertile imagination begat Venus in Fur, a wickedly ingenious dark comedy that premiered in New York last year and has now arrived at the Studio Theatre in a new production that preserves its whip-smarts fully intact. But Mamet’s essay, “The Tyranny of the Audition,” could’ve contributed a perfectly descriptive moniker for Ives’s play had the latter not already borrowed the name of a scandalous 19th century German novella about a man who derives sexual pleasure from being abused. (If you already knew that the novella’s author’s name, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, is the origin of the term masochism, go to the the head of the class. And continue down the hall the principal’s office; we’re totally calling your parents.)
Ives’s intelligent design is not a straightforward adaptation of the novella. He presents us instead with a youngish, famous-ish, not-yet-rich theater artiste who’s trying to cast his new adaptation thereof. After a long day’s fruitless search for an age-appropriate, articulate and sexy “actress who can actually pronounce the word ‘degradation’ without a tutor,” playwright-director Thomas is surprised when a woman barges into his shabby studio from out of the rain, all self-flagellating apologies for showing up hours late for an audition he can’t even find on the schedule. He tries to blow her off but you know she’s going to read for him anyway, and if any ladies or actors or lady actors or anybody is getting vapors hearing such a brazen male wish-fulfillment scenario recounted, just you wait. As Vanda pries off her rain poncho to reveal her patent leather (or vinyl?) bondage gear — just wait, I said! — the balance of power between omnipotent creator and helpless actor has already begun its hypnotic migration across the stage. Continue reading
Rachel Beauregard does not actually don boxing gloves in SWAMPOODLE that I can recall, but happily she does sing.
So, Swampoodle. A beautiful mess, is what it is. Bring your ear horn.
Also, I saw Keri Hilson play the 930 Club as the headliner of the WPGC Bithday Bash last Thursday night. The bill also included Lloyd and B.o.B., but my hopes for an all-star version of the Eastern Motors song were dashed.
Last Sunday, I saw The Moscows of Nantucket at Theater J. It’s good. More fun that that Fleet Foxes show, certainly. Continue reading
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Tagged failed experiements, Ireland, movies, Solas Nua, theater, Theatre J, Uline Arena, Washington City Paper
Eric Hissom is emotionally erect. (Carol Pratt/courtesy Folger)
By the power vested in him by nothing more than his wildly protruding ego, Cyrano de Bergerac runs a blowhard actor off the stage at rapier point. So begins the Folger Shakespeare Library’s sparkling and soulful new adaptation of the romantic classic, and of all the outlandish scenarios it demands that leading man Eric Hissom imagine, this might be the most farfetched: As Cyrano, the guardsman of uncommon cheek and uncanny beak, a genius almost as fast with a sword as he is with a quip, Hissom is so effortlessly charming and authoritative it seems impossible he could ever find himself staring down a hostile audience.
He’s so good, in fact, you almost can’t believe that this Cyrano’s inconveniently 3D schnoz would much impede him in romance. But of course, the pickle he finds himself in ultimately has nothing to do with the fleshy cucumber sticking out under his eyes. For Cyrano, the rub is his lack of confidence that he’ll persuade his second cousin Roxane to see beyond her—uh, his—nose, an eloquent and enduring metaphor for the self-doubt that can cripple even the most capable among us. Continue reading
Irakli Kavsadze as King Lear and Ira Koval as Goneril
Now what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. At least that’s what a smarter-than-me friend of mine says we’ve got in the text. Synetic’s wordless version is an action flick. I like action flicks.
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Tagged King Lear, Shakespeare, Synetic Theater, theater, Washington City Paper
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