Baltimore’s Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is presenting Henry IV, parts One and Two in repertory. Part One (not reviewed by DCTC, we regret) opened February 15th, Part Two opened March 15th, and they overlap for three weeks, offering three (now two) Saturdays where patrons can see Part One at 2pm, have a dinner break, then return for Part Two at 8pm.

Perhaps I’m doing CSC a disservice by not having seen Part One; I missed getting a sense of the overall narrative arc and how director Ian Gallanar’s approach plays out across the two plays (Note: Part Two is co-directed by Gallanar and Gerrad Alex Taylor). Part One has the best scenes, one of the Bard’s best characters (Hotspur, whose impact is missed in Part Two), a climactic epic battle, and the bawdiest and most memorable Hal/Falstaff vignettes.

Part Two offers comparatively fewer pleasures plotwise: A few more repetitive Falstaff escapades, with and without Hal, against an extended buildup to a battle that never actually happens. The payoff comes toward the end; Henry’s deathbed reconciliation with Prince Hal, who then becomes Henry V and rises to the occasion just as he promised us in Part One, and his iconic repudiation of Falstaff, likewise as promised. But said payoff is some two hours in the making. CSC might’ve been better served editing the two texts together and excising the superfluous and expendable bits, most of which were from Part Two, as Orson Welles did for Chimes At Midnight.

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Henry IV, Part Two

closes April 7, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

In past CSC productions I’ve reviewed or seen, whatever liabilities may have existed in the company were compensated for by the strength of the scripts themselves, or an imaginative bit of staging or some especially inspired performer(s). This time around, however, faced with one of Shakespeare’s lesser plays and with the leads largely sidelined, despite standout performances by some and earnest effort and/or journeyman competence from the rest, the company lacks the collective chops to transcend the challenges of the script. Compounding the problem, largely indifferent staging, vague and/or mealy-mouthed performers, and belabored would-be comedy (“Doll Tearshit?” Really?) result in an unfortunate misfire.

It certainly looks great. Above and beyond the splendor of the building itself, I appreciated Daniel O’Brien’s set design that utilizes projections against wooden spires, and Heather Jackson’s costume design merges classical forms with contemporary fabrics and flourishes.

It’s difficult to gauge Gregory Burgess’ performance as Falstaff without having seen Part One, which arguably has a majority of Falstaff’s best moments. Falstaff has more of an understated, elegiac quality in Part Two, and he’s more of a tragicomic character here. Burgess is subtle and his Falstaff isn’t quite larger than life, so without Part One to compare, I can’t really fully judge. That said, I wanted his Act Five comeuppance to land with greater weight.

Ron Heneghan and Séamus Miller as Henry and Hal have a touching chemistry together as they bond both as father/son and King/King-to-be in their famous Act 4 scene, which comprises the seeming majority of their collective stage time. Amongst the rest, Keith Snipes has an engagingly world-weary melancholy as Northumberland, Gregory Michael Atkin lustily chews scenery as Pistol, and Ashly Fishell-Shaffer is a feisty, spritely Doll Tearsheet. Her scenes with Burgess provide some of the evening’s strongest and more poignant moments.

Ultimately Henry IV pt 2 is a frustratingly uninspired production. It’s a difficult play to start with, not one of the Bard’s best, and without a fresh directorial perspective or a company (noted exceptions aside) with the skill set to breath life and passion into it above a certain level, it wavers between passable and mediocre, though never less than pretty to look at. I’ll wager Part One was a more fulfilling experience.

Henry IV, Part Two by William Shakespeare. Directed by Ian Gallanar & Gerrad Alex Taylor. Cast: Gregory Michael Atkin, DJ Batchelor, Lance Bankerd, Gregory Burgess, Tamieka Chavis, Michael Crowley, Kathryne Daniels, Bart Debicki, Nello DeBlasio, Ashly Fishell-Shaffer, Ron Heneghan, Steven J Hoochuk, Briana Manente, Elana Michelle, Séamus Miller, Molly Moores, Brendan Murray, Tudor Postolache, Scott Alan Small, Keith Snipes. Scenic Design: Daniel O’Brien. Props: Alexander Rothchild & Willow Watson. Lighting Design: Katie McCreary. Costume Design: Heather C Jackson. Sound Design & Composer: David Crandall. Music Director: Grace Srinivasan. Fight Choreography: Casey Kaleba. Production Stage Manager: Alexis Davis. Produced by Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. Review by John Geoffrion

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Theater J, its old stage at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center completely refurbished, will offer a slate of six new(or new-ish) stories about older (or ancient) events for its 2019-2020 season.

The company will lead off the 2019-2020 season with its sole musical, Ofra Daniel’s Love Sick, with music by Daniel and Lior Ben-Hur. The story is derived from that most ancient of sources, The Song of Songs. A woman, locked in a loveless marriage, wanders, naked and crazy, through the streets of Jerusalem, crying out for a lover she’s never met, but knows only through the letters he secretly sends her. “There’s a tragic resonance to a heart so thirsty for passion that, once fed, it fills to bursting and breaks,” observed Sam Herwitt of the San Jose Mercury News, who also noted that “The star attraction here is really the music…Jubilant and mournful, it’s a stirring world-music mix with klezmer clarinet…flamenco guitar…and propulsive drumming.” Christopher Renshaw directs this Glickman Award-winning play, which will run from September 4 to 29, 2019.

We move up several centuries for Theater J’s next offering, Occupant, Edward Albee’s play about the sculptor Louise Nevelson, a mid-to-late 20th-century artist who specialized in the use of cast-aside objects. The play is also, however, about the slippery nature of reality, a recurrent Albee theme. “Nevelson…determinedly shapes her history into a series of life-changing dramas and piercing insights,” says Darryl Miller of the Los Angeles Times. Aaron Posner directs; Susan Rome will play the imperious Ms. Nevelson. From November 7 to December 8 of this year.

Then it is 2020 and at Theater J, thoughts will turn to 1939, when we are not quite at war but when the implications of Hitler’s policies were impossible to avoid. An American Jewish couple has an audacious plan: bring fifty Jewish children to America, and thus protect them from Hitler’s ravages. In Alex Sobler’s Sheltered, they find out just how audacious the plan is when they try to convince friends of theirs to adopt one of the children. “[T]he two acts of Sheltered proceed at the pace of a good thriller,” says Arts Atl.’s Andrew Alexander. “Sobler knows her subject, both in the sense of her historical research and in her ability to imagine historical realities.” Theater J Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr directs a cast which includes Kimberly Gilbert, Alexander Strain and Erin Weaver. From January 5 to February 2, 2020.

Next: Esther and Schmuli are Satmar Hasidic Jews in a 1970s arranged marriage in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers. Esther feels stultified and trapped, but is she much different from Abe and Sophie, two sophisticated writers who live in the 1990s and whose marriage is haunted by a flirtation Abe carries on over the ‘net with a movie star he’s never met? (Shades of Love Sick!) . “Jewish history and Jewish guilt play a prominent role, and Ziegler effectively weaves them into the story, at first subtly, then climactically,” says Pat Launer of the Times of San Diego. “Ziegler’s dialogue is consistently crisp.”  Amber Paige McGinnis will direct this play, which will run from February 19 to March 20 of next year.

Perhaps the couples in The Wanderers — perhaps all the lovelorn characters in Theater ‘s season — would benefit from the insights of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, America’s most beloved sex therapist. Mark Germain’s Becoming Doctor Ruth returns to Theater J next Spring, with Naomi Jacobson once again in the title role. “Mark St. Germain’s nimble script does justice to the rich material of Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer’s life experiences.” Debbie Jackson said about last year’s production in this DCTS review. “And Naomi Jacobson is exquisite as the legendary woman, down to the raised arched eyebrows, jaunty pacing, and exuberant spirit that we slowly find out covers unspeakable heartbreak.” Holly Twyford will direct; from March 27 to April 19, 2020.

Theater J will conclude the 2019-2020 season with the story of the man who obsessively sought to bring The Diary of Anne Frank to the stage…and failed. Rinnie Groff’s Compulsion tells the story of Meyer Levin — here presented as Sid Silver — as he rages against a theatrical establishment he believes took this sterling property away from him and gave it to two gentile writers instead. “Groff’s play is a gift on numerous levels,” says Carol Rocamora of Broad Street Review. “First, it reveals a little known and fascinating chapter of theater history. Second, it introduces us to a unrecognized champion of the memory of the Holocaust, Meyer Levin….Third, it serves as a sobering reminder of the fine line between dedication and fanatical obsession.” Theater J’s Obsession will feature Laura C. Harris and Paul Morella, and be directed by Joanna Gruenhut. From June 5-28 of next year.

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Michael Bobbitt, a director, choreographer and playwright who has served as Adventure Theatre MTC’s Artistic Director for nearly twelve years, will leave the company in July to become Artistic Director of the New Repertory Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts, Adventure MTC announced today.

Since Bobbitt took the reins of the young person’s theater (then simply known as Adventure Theatre) in 2007, the company has been known for bold original work and for its collaboration with such well-known artists as Harry Connick, Jr. and the Marley family. In 2012, Bobbitt helped arrange a merger between Adventure and Musical Theater Center; the first project the merged group undertook was a young audience’s version of Big: The Musical, which Bobbitt co-adapted with Jeff Frank. Since the beginning of his tenure, the company has received 59 Helen Hayes nominations; it won eight times.

“I am very proud of what Adventure accomplished, especially the dozens of new works that have gone on to publishing deals and subsequent productions, pioneering Sensory Friendly productions which are being modeled all over the globe, the merger with Musical Theatre Center and building an academy,” Bobbitt said. “It’s been amazing to be a part of helping children get close to their dreams of being performers, along with the off-Broadway transfers and national tours, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity work that we activated and making children’s theatre an important part of the fabric of the DC theatre scene.”

“All of this is bittersweet,” Bobbitt continued, “but New Rep’s work is about larger social and human issues, and the community loves to convene and converse about these issues, and I find that exhilarating.”

Bobbitt will succeed former Olney Artistic Director Jim Petosa in his new post.

New Repertory Theatre. “His proven track record of leading and growing Adventure Theatre-MTC will certainly help guide New Rep,” said the company’s Managing Director, Harriet Sheets. “Michael’s commitment to including all audiences and his interest in developing new works will continue to support our mission.”

“I was drawn to ATMTC by Michael’s creative vision and have been so impressed by all that he has been able to accomplish with this company,” said ATMTC Chair Leslie Miles. ““I will miss Michael in every way, but am excited to see him accept a new challenge.”

Managing Director Leon Seeman said that the company will begin its search for Bobbitt’s successor in April, with Bobbitt working with the Board of Directors to find the best fit.

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The most exciting moment in this fourth Broadway production of Cole Porter’s backstage musical riffing on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew comes at the top of Act II, when the cast at first languidly sings “Too Darn Hot” but then quickly throws themselves into Warren Carlyle’s warp-speed choreography – simultaneously old-fashioned and eye-catching, gymnastic, aerial – featuring a tap-dancing Corbin Bleu demonstrating why he is one of the great song-and-dance men of his generation.

See all production photos at NewYorkTheater.me

I was thrilled. I was impressed. But I also couldn’t help thinking:  If it’s so hot, why are they moving around so much?

It was a silly question, but it offered a clue to why, even in its most entertaining moments, I had trouble fully embracing this Kiss Me Kate.

Every element arguably works in its favor – a Golden Age musical that won the very first Tony Award for Best Musical; a witty and tuneful score by the great Cole Porter; Carlyle’s astounding choreography; a lush and pleasing design; and a cast of Broadway performers with proven track records, led by the lovely Kelli O’Hara, whose voice continues to astound and delight, and the dashing Will Chase.

The creative team even makes an effort to clean up some of the misogyny inherent in both Shakespeare’s play and the musical’s book. The original 1948 musical offered a story of a headstrong Hollywood star, Lilli Vanessi, being lured back to the stage by her ex-husband, the dashing impresario, actor and egomaniac, Fred Graham, to star with him in a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew.  In the mirrored plotlines, Petruchio tames the shrew Katherine on stage, as Fred winds up taming the volatile diva Lilli. At the end, Lilli sings “I Am Ashamed Women Are So Simple,” the lyrics lifted verbatim from Shakespeare’s comedy:

I am ashamed the women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.

Now, Will Chase as Fred/Petruchio and O’Hara as Lilli/Katherine are meant to be equally matched, and lyricist Amanda Green has been brought on board to change that last song in the play-within-the-play to “I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple.” So Lilli as Katherine sings:

I am ashamed that people are so simple
To offer war when we should kneel for peace
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway
When everything but love must die away.

It’s a noble and modern sentiment – people should love one another, especially spouses; it’s not a question of submission – but I’m not sure how much sense this makes.  Are we meant to understand that Lilli has rewritten Shakespeare? If so, why doesn’t Fred acknowledge this? Or has Fred, to make peace with Lilli, supposed to be altering the text? Or are we not supposed to realize that these words are being said within Taming of the Shrew?

But then, in truth, the whole enterprise doesn’t make much sense. It felt analogous to The Play That Goes Wrong, a farce that doesn’t aim to make sense; it aims to entertain. Roundabout’s Kiss Me Kate asks us to put aside our intellect, and just yield to our endorphins, in a way that the other recent revivals of problematic Golden Age musicals My Fair Lady and Carousel, did not demand of us.

From her very first entrance, during the first musical number, “Another Op’nin’, Another Show”, Kelli O’Hara is presented as beautiful and warm and elegant…but very far from a high-strung hellcat. In one entrance after another,  dressed in yet another of Jeff Mahshie’s chic ensembles, she is the picture of glamorous  magnanimity – much as O’Hara herself is. So the battles between Lilli and Fred come off strictly as comic shtick between Chase and O’Hara.  It was hard to feel any kind of love/hate, pull/push attraction on any of the three levels – Petruchio/Katharine, Fred/Lilli, Chase/O’Hara.

There are several fun numbers and pleasing bits in this Kiss Me Kate, although not as many as I would have liked. The key to enjoying them is to view the show as a kind of revue, not meant to offer credible characters in realistic relationships. One choice by director Scott Ellis makes complete sense:  He firmly sets Kiss Me Kate in 1948, in a theater in Baltimore. It’s as if he wants the audience to be set in the 1940s too, an era when we could enjoy the various elements of the show without worrying whether it all holds together.

Kiss Me Kate is on stage on Studio 54 (254 W 54th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019) through June 30. Tickets and details

Kiss Me Kate. Book by Sam and Bella Spewack, with additional material by Amanda Green; Music and lyrics by Cole Porter; Choreography by Warren Carlyle; Directed by Scott Ellis. Set design by David Rockwell, costume design by Jeff Mahshie, lighting design by Donald Holder, sound design by Brian Ronan. Featuring

Kelli O’Hara, Will Chase, Corbin Bleu, John Pankow, Terence Archie, Mel Johnson, Jr., James T. Lane, Stephanie Styles, Adrienne Walker, Lance Coadie Williams, Preston Truman Boyd, Will Burton, Derrick Cobey, Jesmille Darbouze, Rick Faugno, Haley Fish, Tanya Haglund, Erica Mansfield, Marissa McGowan, Sarah Meahl, Justin Prescott, Christine Cornish Smith, Sherisse Springer, Sam Strasfeld and Travis Waldschmidt. Reviewed by Jonathan Mandell.

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Enchantment awaits those who enter Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim’s wildly inventive, darkly comic thicket of life lessons sprung from children’s fairy tales in a new revival at Ford’s Theatre.

Sondheim and book writer James Lapine have packed the show to the gills with ideas about wish fulfillment and its consequences, the relationship between parents and their children and the awareness that existence is both struggle and reward. These woods are a stand-in for the experience of life itself, of course, with all its bounty and tragedy and lack of a clear way. But this forest emits glorious music as a guide—in typical Sondheim fashion, the score is polyphonic and exuberant, the lyrics are gleefully clever, and the shallowest pools conceal great depth.

The production is further blessed with an excellent ensemble; beautiful, clear singing from all (Erin Driscoll, Awa Sal Secka and Rachel Zampelli stand out); and stellar scenic and design work investing all the make-believe with the requisite liveliness (especially impressive on Ford’s limited stage).

At the heart of the story, an infertile baker (Evan Casey) and his wife (Awa Sal Secka)—in two of the strongest performances for their tenderness—wish for a child, setting them on a quest into the woods where they encounter a cavalcade of characters from the pages of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, each one driven by a desire of their own.

These woods are full and there’s a lot going on. Too much, as it turns out (the story and the show start to unravel in Act Two), but here’s a brief primer, some of which you’ll recognize: Cinderella (Erin Driscoll) yearns to go to the ball, but isn’t really sure about the Prince (Christopher Mueller) who chases her through the forest more than once; Jack trades his cow for magic beans, which once planted allow him access to giants in the sky and their treasure; Little Red Ridinghood (Jade Jones) visits her grandmother and attracts the lascivious attention of a big bad wolf (Mueller, again); the golden-haired Rapunzel (Quynh-My Luu) is locked away in a tower by her protective mother, the same Witch (Rachel Zampelli) who cursed the Baker’s family with childlessness.

There are a few more characters, including a Mysterious Man (Scott Sedar) who turns up at will; another Prince (Hasani Allen) with an ear for Rapunzel; and the Narrator (Sedar, again, costumed as a National Park Service ranger in a nod to the historic Ford’s Theatre site), because without him, who would let us know that Once Upon a Time…

The whole lot crisscross each other in the woods, helping and harming one another and eventually break the curse, and live happily ever… no wait that’s just Act One. Real life doesn’t come with storybook endings and Act Two gets hairy with trauma and catastrophe but also enlightenment, connection and acceptance.

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Into the Woods

closes May 16, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

There’s an overabundance of dramaturgy to wade through, and it begins to drag down the show. It’s fun to do the Bruno Bettelheim psychoanalysis bit and pick out connective themes from fairy-tale symbolism, and the dissatisfaction with wish fulfillment is an obvious theme, but then new and bigger crises and convolutions are introduced after the intermission.

The last scenes and songs comprise, among other ideas, a paean to passing on wisdom and morality to the next generation, understanding the connectedness of all humanity and engaging life’s choices with confidence and courage. It’s OK to know that the world is not good vs. evil, but something much more complex, gnarled and murky as the titular wilderness itself. “Witches can be right…Giants can be good…You decide what’s right…You decide what’s good,” the characters exclaim. Intellectually, the show pulls in many directions.

But let’s talk about the songs. There are so many highlights among this bounty of riches. Composed by Sondheim, with original arrangements orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick and performed by conducter and musical director William Yanesh and an eight-member orchestra, the music and lyrics both tickle and astound and are liable to carry you away on a bed of charms.

“Into the Woods,” the ambitious prologue song, is one of Sondheim’s most brilliant and memorable, as it courses over the first extended scene, introducing the main characters and their dilemmas. It surprisingly includes a rap performed by Zampelli (“Rooting through my rutabaga…Raiding my arugula”), years ahead of what Lin-Manuel Miranda would later do. That’s followed by the fantastic meeting between Little Red Ridinghood and the Wolf (“Hello, Little Girl”) in which Mueller (creeping around on stilts!) thirstily croons “There’s no possible way…to describe what you feel…when you’re talking to your meal.”

Cinderella expresses her reticence about the prince in “A Very Nice Prince,” and again outlines her romantic indecision in “On the Steps of the Palace.” Young Jack realizes the world is bigger and more wonderful than he ever knew in “Giants in the Sky,” and the princes display their “Agony” in the funniest scene of the show.

The singing all around is fantastic but Driscoll’s soprano is angelic. Mueller has got to be having the most fun onstage in two delightful turns, first as the lascivious wolf, and then nailing both the performance and the singing voice of the fatuous prince. The duets with his royal brother Hasani Allen are wonderfully silly.

Zampelli is another standout. The witch’s costuming is a bit of a miss in Act One, but she sings strongly in “Our Little World” and “Stay with Me” and caricatures the part of the crookbacked hag well enough. It’s a treat to see her post-transformation however; the upgraded robes are a nice touch and her cool, disapproving take on events is fun to watch.

Secka shines in the pivotal “Moments in the Woods,” the highlight solo of the production, in which the Baker’s Wife dissects her responsibility to balance between the “or” and the “and” in her life. Driscoll leads a lovely rendition of “No One is Alone,” to close the show.

The production design depicting the magical world of witchcraft, granny-eating wolves and giants is superb—the set by Milagros Ponce de León is a work of wonder, Wade Laboissonniere’s costumes are appealing and Clint Allen’s projections hit the mark, especially in a critical scene.

And director Peter Flynn and choreographer Michael Bobbitt deserve much credit for keeping the large cast moving seamlessly through the plot’s many physical and metaphorical twists and turns.

Ford Theatre’s spirited Into the Woods is as bright and smart a revival as one could wish for. Sondheim’s effulgent fairy tale for grownups runs long and tries to tackle more than it can handle, but it’s still an amusement park of fun.

Into the Woods. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by James Lapine. Directed by Peter Flynn. Original orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick. Orchestrations by Kim Scharnberg. Music direction by William Yanesh. Choreographed by Michael Bobbitt. Featuring Hasani Allen, Evan Casey, Tiziano D’Affuso, Wyn Delano, Erin Driscoll, Maria Egler, Rayanne Gonzales, Jade Jones, Ashleigh King, Quynh-My Luu, Justine “Icy” Moral, Christopher Mueller, Christopher Michael Richardson, Awa Sal Secka, Scott Sedar, Karen Vincent, Sam Nour Younes, and Rachel Zampelli. Scenic design by Milagros Ponce de Leon. Costume design by Wade Laboissonniere. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Sound design by David Budries. Projection design by Clint Allen. Hair and makeup design by Anne Nesmith. Stage managed by Craig A. Horness. Produced by Ford’s Theatre. Reviewed by Roy Maurer.

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With characters named “Dude,” “Gal,” and “Chick,” I was wary that Spills would be just another cliché story about millennials (What industry did we kill this time?). I was wrong. Who What Where Theater Collective did right by this millennial, telling a sexy, silly, and most of all daring story about modern sexuality that one-up’d itself with all three acts.

Act 1 opens with Dude (Jacob Thompson), a professional Ultimate Frisbee player living in a six-person group house and making the most of his open relationship, answering a knock at the door. His Tinder date has arrived: Gal (Kira Omans), a graphic designer who is about to burst with anxiety over what is about to come. Namely, Chick, Dude’s yoga-loving, kombucha-swilling friend with whom Gal is about to have her first threesome.

At first, playwright Ruthie Rado, rapid-fire wit at the ready, cleaves to the stereotypes you might imagine. Omans especially shines in the first act, her anxiety almost an audible buzz as she worries both about doing anything wrong and what will happen if she gets what she wants. But, as comfort grows between the three, we uncover so much more, including a heartfelt monologue from Gal digging into her family history, surprising news from a genealogy website, and her elderly father’s failings. Spills far exceeds expectations in how fully realized a character named “gal” could be.

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Spills

closes March 30, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

Another star is the venue, Rhizome DC. When performed at the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival in 2018, the play was already set in a Takoma Park group house. A more appropriate venue than Rhizome DC does not exist. It is literally a house in Takoma Park, but with the added feature of being a nonprofit community arts space, complete with an art installation in the bathroom (Not ADA-compliant though, as the living room performance space is up some stairs and the bathroom is up more stairs on the second floor). Thompson’s Dude looks completely at home, dashing down the stairs and swinging through the kitchen like a monkey on a vine.

The found seating that lines the “stage” makes for an intimate experience, fitting less than twenty audience members. Sadly, not all seats are equal. Due in no small part to a lot of time spent sitting on a couch angled just so and over on one side of the stage, the far wings of the audience often have much less access to the action. While that is just what happens in a theater large enough to have a balcony, when there are only a dozen audience members, it is a shame to leave someone out.

Spills goes big for Act 2, reveling in a lengthy metaphor portraying a lively threesome as a variety of sports and field day games. Production designer Brittany Martz does the work of an army of designers. The outlandish costumes, props, and soundtrack are maniacally delightful. The whole cast does a remarkable job, with their timing down and energy way, way up. And whenever the fray threatens to drag, Rado slips another hint into exactly what the metaphor means, reinvigorating the risqué atmosphere. Rado also earns points for depicting casual sex with nuance, just as she explored Gal’s character in Act 1. The sex is fun and wild, but also frustrating and a little embarrassing.

The final act is foreshadowed at the door when the audience is offered to take one of the special participatory seats. If you opt in, a character will offer you a drink and invite you to talk candidly about your own sex life, while the characters reflect on how they feel Act 2 went. As an avid immersive theatre and analogue game attendee/performer/player/designer, I can say Who What Where Theater Collective deserves special attention here for one fantastic choice: Dude says, during the sex scene, “Communication is key.” Audience members who opt-in to the special seats are fully briefed on what will happen with them, then they sit in a chair with everything spelled out again on a piece of paper taped to it, before one of the co-artistic directors includes a third identical explanation in her announcement before the show begins for all to hear (assuaging the anxiety of not only the participants but also everyone watching).

Much has been written about transparency in interactive experiences other than theatre (I highly recommend Dr. Evan Torner’s paper Transparency in Larp, published in Larp Design (2019)), but theatre has lagged way behind in being communicative with its audience to create an informed, cooperative experience. Act 3 benefits significantly from giving audience members time to prepare themselves for their role and doesn’t suffer from the lack of “surprise” that low transparency interactivity designers (playwrights and directors included) too often treat as sacred.

Additionally, Rado uses it as a genuine way to show us a new side of her characters, both in response to their night together and in a totally different social context. Gal and Chick grow in surprising ways that yet again deepen their characters beyond what their names would suggest and depict a richer take on casual sex. Meanwhile, Thompson takes naturally to improvised banter with the audience; his ease is impressive, making Dude’s conversation a joy to watch.

Stories about millennials always put me on edge. Between social liberalism and social media, we have tremendous options for how to live but also a keen awareness of what each choice means in the eyes of others. Last weekend, some friends and I joked about what our personal brands are, until we realized that we had stopped being ironic. That’s just how we need to think. So, when the play’s promo promised the character “Dude, the attentive polyamorous bro,” I prepared myself to feel characterized.

But Spills rises far above that, daring to tell a story about interesting characters having imperfect sex, to challenge its actors to compete in a raucous dodecathlon of sexual metaphor, and to communicate transparently with its audience about participation. With every opportunity, Spills exceeds.

Spills by Ruthie Rado. Directed by Rebecca Rado. Cast: Rebecca Ballinger (Chick), Kira Omans (Gal), Jacob Thompson (Dude). Production design: Brittany Martz. Produced by Who What Where Theater Collective. Review by Marshall Bradshaw.

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How could one not run to a show that, in this day, puts together a story that purposes to go to the heart of a topic that raises both volatile antipathy and gut wrenching emotions of compassion? In addition to setting the new work at our southern border “wall,” new Artistic Director of In Series Timothy Nelson has made a strong commitment in his first season to reach out into the community and across languages, cultures, and ages. So he is to be championed for his vision and for forging partnerships with Corazón Folklórico DC, a Mexican dance troupe, and Latin America Youth Center for La Paloma at the Wall.

I went to this new production with great expectations. I like Nelson. He’s smart, energetic, and his vision of reinventing opera, challenging the status quo about whom opera “and more” is for, is much to my liking.  I have admired In Series’ mission and hope Nelson’s injection of youthful vitality will help this theater do great things in the future and attract new audiences. (GALA Theatre where the company was performing was packed opening night, so hopes are high.)

The piece, like hell, is paved with good intentions. So what happened?  Well, let’s start with the form itself.

Some carry the tradition of zarzuela, a music-theatre form likely born during the Baroque period of Spain then somewhat reinvented during the 19^th century, like the Holy Grail. Others have spoken of it as something that contagiously spread, suggesting something more like the plague, to the colonies as far flung as Cuba and the Philippines which naturalized it into their own homegrown forms. Zarzuela combines back-to-back dramatic spoken scenes with music, both operatic and popular ditties, as well as dance. Orchestral ensembles were always part of the mix. But the mix often has this clunky museum feel – like waking into a diorama whose parts suddenly mechanically come to life.

Spanish conductor and composer Tomás Bretón wrote the original score for La Paloma de la Verbena in 1894 from a libretto by Ricardo de la Vega, and it became a hit. Although it remains a favorite of the genre, the plot feels contrived and overly complicated – pushing into melodrama.  (It takes three pages to give you the ins and outs and the various subplots of this version, if that gives you an idea.)

Writer Anna Deeny Morales gives the work a facelift by setting the action at the U.S.-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana. She begins with a border patrol officer interviewing Paloma, an asylum seeker from Guatemala. All during the interview, other female characters serve as a chorus stridently echoing her answers and making the work feel like an in-your-face political rant. (The contrivance just drops off after this, so the feel of theater-as-action-for-social-justice doesn’t thread through the production.)

The setting shifts instead to a Tijuana bar where the bulk of the action takes place. Two old ‘goats’ (I’m referring to men who have reach a certain age they should know better than wheeze over young girls,) a judge and his pal, an American pharmacist, talk about male plumbing ailments and bemoan their diminishing attractiveness to young women. If the subject ever was funny, now, in the age of #Metoo, it just feels pathetic and icky.

Meanwhile, bar owner Francisco is playing cards with his cronies, two security guards. His wife tends to baby while also knocking herself out for the coming festival. (That she is treated like a shrew throughout the piece, while he loafs around with his buddies, is also not particularly funny.)

But here, as throughout the play, wherever something starts to boil over potentially and get things going, any dramatic tension is diffused, with someone calling out, “Hey, let’s have a song!”  One of the guards, the very talented Nigel Rowe, stands on a chair and obliges with a song about his roots in Oaxaca. His tenor voice has commendable presence. What the song has to do to advance the plot is a mystery. (Note to self: songs in this form often have very little to do with the story line.)

There are several other to-dos that get wound into the story. I simply couldn’t follow Susanna’s role as written, and she’s the lead ingénue. The old pharmacist wants her, and so does Julian, her old beau. Supposedly she is terrified of being blackmailed as a wanton woman, but she seems too sharp and modern to put up with that. Does she want to punish Julian by flirting with the old American? Everyone is put out, especially, it appears Tia Antonia, who as played by Vivian Allen is a cross between the Susanna’s guardian, a calculating madam pimping her and her sister, and a libidinous barfly vying for the girls’ suitors.

Oh, let’s have a song. Ian McEuen takes his turn here. (I’ve seen this talented tenor in several theaters and opera companies but here the guy seemed stuck in a straight jacket.)

One of the biggest disappointments was the music, or should I say the new setting of English words to the music. However the collaborators worked on the old and new songs and translated them into English, it was a hatchet job of prosody. Hence, some of the meanings even got muffled. So much was not singable.

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La Paloma at the Wall

closes March 31, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

All the buzz about the wall, and there just wasn’t enough there there at the end. No one seemed to know what to do with it. (But oh, boy, do I want to thank the talented students of Latin Youth Center. Theirs is a wall worth commemorating, and decorating it with butterflies proves again that young people have the power to transform the world.)

I also want to give a shout out to Alejandro Gongora as choreographer and his dancers of Corazón Folklórico DC. There was something very authentic, heartfelt, and “lighthearted in spirit” about these dancers. I got the sense watching them that this was the needed corazón that was otherwise missing in the work.

There were some other lovely moments.  One of my favorites (and best written) is Paloma’s theme song  “Si me llegara peder/I was born so far from here.” Elizabeth Mondragon feels her way through this emotionally challenging part, and her singing is always heartfelt. She can play fear, outrage, moral hurt, and at the same time gratitude for the little things people to help her.  I loved the lullaby that starts with Paloma but brings the others in as well, “The child is fast asleep, put her to bed my love.”

A stand out actor in the production Gustavo Ahualli as Francisco the bar owner. This baritone from Argentina had all the confidence of a veteran singer-actor and the acting chops to make me believe his choices throughout an otherwise somewhat cluttered plot event.  He found a way for his character to achieve sustained clarity and focus.

Another performer who gained my respect (especially in Act II) is Mia Rojas. When finally unburdened from the plot and allowed to sing, we realize she was born for this.  Singing one of the old pop standards in Spanish, she came alive and delivered a delightful soprano sound while finding a way of shaping an experience.

Too much of the ensemble acting was hammy at best and at worst (in moments) like a page out of The Art of Coarse Acting.  Stage director Nick Olcott can do (and has done) better to pull higher and more authentic levels of performance from an ensemble.

Oh, let’s have a song!

 ———————

La Paloma at The Wall. Expanded from Breton & De La Vega’s La Verbena de la Paloma. Writer Anna Deeny Morales. Composer, Arranger, & Co-Music Director Ulises Eliseo. Music Director Timothy Nelson. Stage Director Nick Olcott. Set Design by Jonathan Dahm Robertson. Lighting Design by Marianne Meadows. Costume Design by Donna Breslin. Mural Designers & Artist by Sarah Craft and Luis Peralta. Choreography by Alejandro Gongora. Stage Manager Bryan Boyd. With Gustavo Ahualli, Vivian Allvin, Teresa Ferrara, Katherine Fili, Lew Freeman, Chris Herman, Cecilia Deeny Locraft, Carlos Macher, Ian McEuen, Santiago Alfonzo Meza, Elizabeth Mondragon, Mia Rojas, Nigel Rowe and Corazón Folklórico DC. Produced by In Series. Reviewed by Susan Galbraith.

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“We’re in a strange relationship with our fiction, you see,” Warren Ellis, the English comic-book writer, novelist, and screenwriter, once wrote. “Sometimes we fear it’s taking us over, sometimes we beg to be taken over by it… and sometimes we want to see what’s inside it.” In Jon Klein’s Resolving Hedda, currently being brought to life in a whip-smart and hilarious production by Washington Stage Guild, one fictional character in particular has most definitely taken over—and she’s taking the audience with her on a wild, bumpy ride.

Klein, currently the head of the MFA Playwriting Program at the Catholic University of America, takes a classic play that he’s taught for decades—Henrik Ibsen’s vaunted Hedda Gabler—and imagines what would happen if a self-aware Hedda tried to change the course of the play’s event from within it. It turns out what happens is that you get a cheeky, anachronistic, self-referential romp that makes for a truly entertaining evening.

This is the point where your reviewer must make a deeply shameful confession—I am, at best, only passingly familiar with the canonical Hedda Gabler. And by “passingly familiar,” I mean that I have neither read the play nor seen it fully produced.

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Resolving Hedda

closes April 14, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

Luckily, this puts me in the ideal position to let you know that having a similar blind spot will not detract from your enjoyment of Resolving Hedda even one iota. The fine folks at Washington Stage Guild have provided a succinct and sufficient synopsis in the program and our protagonist gives us enough of the beats along the way to help us noobs keep up; also, Wikipedia is a thing that exists, for those overachievers who wish to do their homework in advance. Sure, those with a deeper familiarity of the text may find some additional moments of nuanced humor, but it’s certainly not mandatory.

On entering the Undercroft Theatre beneath the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, audience members are greeted by scenic designer’s Tara Lyman-Dobson’s traditional set—all the usual suspects are present and accounted for, including oil paintings, a chaise lounge, and loads of books. Ditto Sígríd Jóhannesdóttir’s 19^th century costume design. But that’s pretty much where convention ends.

Even before artistic director Bill Largess has finished his curtain speech, Hedda herself, played here with commanding personality and undeniable charisma by Kelly Karcher, alerts us to the fact that this won’t be any old production of Hedda Gabler. This version of Hedda knows she’s in a play, knows she’s going to die in the end, knows who her murderer is (Ibsen—or Ibsy as she calls him, naturally), and is hell-bent on changing her fate and surviving this night. More than 100 years of following the same script around the world has left Hedda furious, foul-mouthed, and feminist as… well, you know. Karcher is a force of nature in this role as our fed-up guide straining against a nature devised for her by a dead Norwegian.

The rest of the characters, however, have arrived expecting just another night. Hedda’s nerdy husband George (played with slapstick haplessness by Jamie Smithson), beautiful and blonde friend Thea (a hilariously confused Emilie Faith Thompson), meddling Aunt Julia (the delightfully dotty Jewell Robinson), stereotypically evil Judge Brack (a deliciously devious Steve Beall), and earnest Eilert (a brash and haughty Matthew Castleman) are all baffled by the suddenly changed Hedda in their midst. (Poor Bertha is given the night off—too small a role, Hedda explains.) And, as Hedda tries and tries to steer the action in a different direction, the rest of the characters unwittingly thwart her every attempt.

Fans of metatheatricality will adore Klein’s script, and director Steven Carpenter’s impeccable execution of it, complete with anachronism, inside jokes, fourth wall breaks, and audience interaction. This new, feisty Hedda, who tries fiercely to break free from her pre-ordained path, is the self-confident feminist protagonist that will have contemporary audiences cheering. Klein’s Hedda isn’t just representing herself; she’s taking up the torch for all the classical anti-heroines with ICD (Impulse Control Disorder) who are driven by motives that are far less developed than those of their male counterparts.

There’s a well-known notion in the industry that audiences don’t really want to see theatre that’s about theatre—but based on the uproarious laughter and utter investment of the people sitting around me, I’d say that “inside baseball” can still be a home run. While watching Resolving Hedda, you’ll likely find yourself more engaged in a period piece than you’ve ever been before—and glued to your seat until the final defiant moment.

Resolving Hedda by Jon Klein. Directed by Steven Carpenter. Featuring: Kelly Karcher, Jewell Robinson, Jamie Smithson, Emelie Faith Thompson, Steve Beall, and Matthew Castleman. Scenic designer: Tara Lyman-Dobson. Costume designer: Sígríd Jóhannesdóttir. Lighting designer: Marianne Meadows. Sound designer: Frank DiSalvo Jr. Stage manager: Arthur Nordlie. Assistant stage manager: Bill Largess. Produced by Washington Stage Guild. Reviewed by John Bavoso.

• This article was produced as part of the DC Arts Writing Fellowship, a project of Day Eight conducted in partnership with DC Theatre Scene through the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

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Spring in Washington DC opens up with a ground-breaking world premiere play, From Gumbo to Mumbo presented by  Keegan Theatre’s PLAY-RAH-KA Series. It’s a Live Narrative performed by two award-winning Spoken Word artists and educators: Drew Anderson and Dwayne Lawson-Brown who’ve dedicated their lives to the edification of young school students: enlivening their learning experience of any subject to include fun lyrical rhymes games, trendy culture hits, and the use of creative production. 

From Gumbo to Mumbo, an expressive, creative and innocently explicit drama, does just that. It brings to Life the narrative of two brothers-from-another-Mother sharing their love for the making  of a savory sense of what appears to be a mix-up, mashup and toss up of cultures. In real life, they are both Black, Young and Poetic. They represent their cities DC and New Orleans with an astounding love and allegiance that not even the haunting of Hurricane Katrina or the boisterous uproar of Gentrification facing our nation’s capital today could take from them. In the play, they personify the Black Boy, in many phases: boyhood, manhood, in love, in the struggle for claiming rightful identity and in his place in this Great America. Through the eyes of the Black Boy from the Youngin from South East (S.E.) or the Wodi from NOLA, they extend a candid open invitation into the mind and heart of “him” that really is like every person’s coming of age.

The opening takes us in and outside of a Red Nissan pickup truck revolving on a platform, strings of colorful triangles banner across the top of the set framing the stage and putting us in a Mardi Gras mood. As the guys tit for tat about what’s the best of their cities–it’s like how kids in the 1970-80’s use to Play the Dozens, rhyming up the longest crudest cut-throat street-cred realness diss that one could come up with to put his opponent down. But this one was done in Love. Love for good GUMBO or good MUMBO. Real New Orleans GUMBO, not just “spicy soup” let it be known of which they debate over in a mock game of Family Feud between the two.

On the other hand, MUMBO is a special DC sauce, red sweet and tangy often drizzled on Fries or used to soak seasoned deep fried chicken. The actors continue to play out scenarios of which only a native who grew up wearing K-Swiss Adidas in DC or mixing the best Bisquik batter in New Orleans would know about.

Drew, parodist, comic, former high school science teacher and Creator of Spoof School and C.R.U.N.K. Academy is best described as one who “spits” to the audience. His lyrical narrative consists of quick mind tapping tongue twisters, that make you bounce and bob your head in your seat. Classic. He’s got a mic in his hands, walking through the audience pulling them into his heartfelt rhythmic ballads when he goes to tell us all about it.

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From Gumbo to Mumbo

closes April 7, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

Between he and Dwayne, they touch on a few topics including a statement made by Sarah Palin advising immigrants to, “Speak American.” Drew gave us some school for thought as he exposed the root of linguistics in our country evolving from as far back as our ties to the Great British accent, through our Independence and mixing of cultures with other Europeans migrants until today where use of trending slang phrases appropriated by People of Color and Immigrants is deemed the most intolerable and yet has assimilated the most. His partner, Dwayne, an emotional-intellect, tosses on a professional white coat and runs down the chalkboard and lists of points, laughing, grunting, in agreement and thought. 

Dwayne brings a unique dynamic to the play that makes you reach inside yourself and ponder Truth. His gift of gab has more of an even tone, a rhythm that sits beneath the direct eye contact he makes with us while reciting a Love Ballad or colorful Haiku on how a friend, diagnosed with HIV AIDS, barely got by. He’s is the red-color tip dipped Artist with ‘locs who is passionate about the awareness of Mental Health issues, the support of the LGBTQ Community and the transparency of humanity in general. Agile as he is eloquent, his use of mixed media to tell his version of the Black Boy includes breakdancing, a single rose and video projection on those colorful banners. Viewers can do more than sit and listen……they can chime in if they know the words to a song, snap in affirmation of deep moment or finish the rest of his sentence where pauses allow.

Dwayne and Drew brilliantly present hefty topics: bullying, isolation, suicide, romance, love, fear, family, money, position, power, politics, friends without the all-too-familiar aggressive and ornery approach. Clearly, you have here two fully invested and developed Creatives who understand just how the influence of words spoken can either depict life or distort it. Their portrayal in dialogue with each other or a moments shared with Self as the main character, or as the actors state, “….watching Self, playing Self” translates so clearly.

The transitions from one scene to the next are fluid and unanticipated. The actors exit and re-enter from different parts of the theater, an intimate space that seats no more than 150, jumping off the stage or appearing into the aisles, switching off so that each has spotlight. At the end, the gentlemen graced us with Q&A time.

We discover that Drew, from New Orleans, has been in the DC area for almost 20 years teaching in schools and touring the nation as a proclaimed Spoken Word Artist. Dwayne, the DC native, breaks it down for the us what an authentic MUMBO Sauce looks and tastes like, contrary to those that have tried to appropriate the recipe in DC restaurants the best of it can only be found at a CarryOut. His favorite is the one on Good Hope Road SE.

I was inspired by these two Artists for bringing an artform that’s often tucked away in late night coffee cafes or on college campuses.

From Gumbo to Mumbo is completely profanity FREE. No hints of it, beeps, blurs or filters that suggest the use or even the need for Foul Language. This is a rare interpretation of Urban Culture and it is why middle school aged students are encouraged to attend. Recommended for everyone 10 and older.

From Gumbo to Mumbo, written and performed by Drew Anderson and Dwayne Lawson-Brown . Director Duane Richards II . Set Designer Matthew J. Keenan . Lighting Designer Jason Arnold+ . Projections Designer Patrick Lord . Properties / Set Dressing Designer Cindy Landrum Jacobs . Costume Consultant Alison Samantha Johnson . Sound Consultant Gordon Nimmo-Smith . Assistant Director / Stage Manager Magenta Howard . Produced by PLAY-RA-KAH . Reviewed by Kayla Harley.

Notes from a 10 year old:

On the night I went, I brought a 10-year old Black Boy. Here is his feedback: he was enthralled with the actors’ use of signing, gesturing, movement and mention of familiar songs that he could relate to. For him, satire and ironic political meanings all sound like the making and mixing of GUMBO…colorful, vivid, beautiful and interesting. He was able to pick up on how those tricky things, as he put it, like the “Big G” Gentrification really does affect our lives in DC now, such as the difficulty of finding street parking around Keegan Theatre.

The post Review: From Gumbo to Mumbo, Spoken Word poetry in action appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.

Nu Sass Productions’ Dead Dog’s Bone: A Birthday Play is about a girl and her dog and the messiness of growing up, but don’t think for a moment that means it is a story you’ve seen before. Equal parts tender and prickly, Dead Dog’s Bone uses humor and a touch of the weird to dig right in to the muddled difficulties of trying to figure out who and what you are and who and what you love.

The Virgin Mary serves as our narrative guide in and around the memories and relationships of Juniper, her family, and Dog, her dog.  Juniper is struggling to figure out how to be herself, how to be in a relationship, and what it means to be happy. Juniper is estranged from her artist mom, Iris and is struggling with the silence of her father, Atlas.

She also is confused by the steady love of her boyfriend, Timothy, who wants to take the next step in their relationship. Feeling overwhelmed by the approach of Christmas, Juniper skips town, leaving Timothy to take care of Dog. Unfortunately, Dog is old and isn’t in the best health. As Dog gets worse, Timothy contacts father Atlas when he can’t get in touch with Juniper. Atlas invites Timothy and Dog up to his house for Christmas, in the hope that Juniper will eventually come home to deal with her life and the people (and animal) who love her.

The cast is a delight to watch, as they strike a delicate balance between wisecracks, longing, and sorrow. Dannielle Hutchinson’s Virgin Mary is an important guide through the play’s winding action and sets the tone with her jokey sarcasm, playfulness, and her habit of replying to characters’ deep questions with inscrutable answers. As Juniper, Schuyler Atkins cloaks the sweetness of an ingenue in a fog of crankiness and uncertainty that endears her character all the more, while Andy De’s interpretation of Timothy’s regular guy-ness provides a great foil for Atkins’ confusion. Iris and Atlas, played by Aubri O’Connor and Erik Harrison, radiate chemistry during their scenes together, infusing the stage with romantic warmth as we bounce between O’Connor’s extravagant emotions and Harrison’s shy strength.

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Dead Dog’s Bone

closes April 14, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

In a show of strong performances, the standout is Karen Lange as Dog. Even though she speaks only occasionally, Lange performs with spot on comedic timing, embodying the loving exasperation of notable dog characters like Gromit (of Wallace and Gromit fame) and the Red Baron himself, Snoopy. Without ever turning Dog into a caricature, Lange captures in a look or a movement Dog’s moods and reactions to her humans. Lange also gives beautiful performances of country-style songs, accompanied by De on the guitar, that serve to frame the action and carry a sweet melancholy tone throughout the play.

The space at Caos on F is cozy, but the constraints are put to good use for the show. Since there are no curtained wings for the performers to retreat to, the cast remains on stage as an integral part of the set, with each character doing a few unobtrusive things— Iris paints, the Virgin Mary knits, Dog holds on to her bee toy — while they watch the scenes. The costuming is subtle but effectively highlights the characters, consisting of well-selected street clothes with the Virgin Mary’s blue veil providing a Baroque flourish. I particularly appreciated Dog’s look of plaid flannel, a red neckerchief, and pigtails, which hints at her dogness without going full furry.

I recommend making your way downtown to catch Dead Dog’s Bone while you can. Nu Sass Productions continue to put on interesting and engaging shows, and this one is no exception. It is filled with the kind of touching and human moments I look for when going to theater. Watching the performances in this quirky and charming show is a pleasure you won’t want to miss.

Dead Dog’s Bone by Veronica Tjioe . Directed by Mara Sherman . Cast: Andy De (Timothy), Aubri O’Connor (Iris), Dannielle Hutchinson (The Virgin Mary), Erik Harrison (Atlas), Karen Lange (Dog), Schuyler Atkins (Juniper) . Scenic Design: Julia Colpitts and Mara Sherman . Costume Design: Nina Howe-Goldstein . Lighting Design: Lauren Gallup . Sound Design: Julia Colpitts. Music Captain: Karen Lange . Stage Manager: Julia Colpitts . Production Manager: Caelan Tietze . Produced by Mara Sherman and Aubri O’Connor . Reviewed by Kate Gorman.

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Fans of Richard Wright’s iconic 1940 novel Native Son will want to head to Mosaic Theater Company in the upcoming weeks for the two plays, running in rep, which have emerged from the novel.

Not only will Mosaic be presenting a streamlined 90-minute adaptation of Wright’s controversial story of Bigger Thomas, adapted by actor/playwright Nambi E. Kelley, directed by Psalmayene 24, but that play will run in repertory with Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son, a new reimagining of Wright’s real-life meeting with James Baldwin, written by Psalmayene 24 and directed by Raymond O. Caldwell.

Baldwin bitterly denounced Wright’s story of Bigger Thomas, the African American youth who lived in utter poverty on Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s, and was accused of the murder of a white woman. It was nothing more, he said in his book, Notes of a Native Son, than a politically motivated, dangerous stereotype of the community.

Psalmayene 24 initially came to Mosaic after being asked to direct Native Son.

“I had not read Wright’s novel but I knew Baldwin’s book was part of the American canon, and it sounded like something I should consider,” Psalmayene 24 says. “I read Nambi Kelley’s adaptation and was just blown away by it. It was so sleek, theatrical and action-packed. I knew this was a piece that I must direct.” He approached the play by exploring “stylized realism.”

“[Wright’s] novel, beloved by many people, has also received quite a bit of criticism because of its portrayal of this black character and also how women are represented,” Psalmayene 24 says. “I didn’t want to shy away from either of those aspects of the story but to lean in and investigate those things.”

The director read Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin’s famed criticism, and was struck by what he said and the fact that Wright didn’t recognize his humanity. This led Psalmayene 24 to approach a segment of the play in a way that highlighted more of Bigger’s humanity and investigated some of the problems of the piece.

One of the interesting things about Kelley’s adaptation is that she turns the Black Rat, merely a symbol of Thomas’s squalor in Wright’s novel, into an actual character in the play.

“I thought that was a stroke of genius because the Black Rat is supposed to represent this idea of Bigger’s double consciousness, a theory made famous by W.E.B. Du Bois, in which he states black Americans have this sensation of ‘looking at one’s self through the eyes of others’ that is, the racial dominant culture,” he says. “I don’t know of too many black people who have not had that experience.”

Thinking more about this, Psalmayene 24 then wrote his own story about the famous 1953 meeting of Baldwin and Wright in Paris and the tough conversations they must have had about Native Son.

“It was intended to be a companion piece. Because I have been living with Native Son for so long, Les Deux Noirs is truly in conversation with Native Son in specific parts of the text that reference specific moments,” he says. “I am in a very fortuitous position to be living so intimately with one piece and be writing a piece in dialogue with it. To me, they seem intertwined and even seem like one production in my mind.”

The idea was originally to do a reading of Les Deux Noirs, but then the rep slot became available and Ari Roth, Mosaic’s Artistic Director, asked Psalmayene 24 to fast track his script.

“With both pieces being fully realized, it feels like destiny,” Psalmayene 24 says. “I’ve had the pleasure of researching Native Son and both Wright and Baldwin, who are these powerful figures in American literature. I’ve really learned about their relationship and how complicated and rich it was.”

Baldwin published some scathing critiques of Wright’s work, even though the Wright was one of Baldwin’s mentors. “It was Richard Wright who helped James Baldwin get the grant that enabled him to go to Paris,” Psalmayene 24 says. “I thought the nuances and complications of their relationship were fascinating.”

Native Son stars Clayton Pelham, Jr. in the role of Bigger Thomas and Vaughn Midder as the Black Rat. Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of A Native Son features James J. Johnson as Richard Wright and Jeremy Keith Hunter (currently appearing in Togdog/Underdog at WSC Avant Bard) as James Baldwin.

Psalmayene 24 hopes that audiences will see both productions, and said “Simplistic as this may sound, Native Son is about the humanity of black people and that’s something that is being lost in the conversation. The ugly truth of the matter is, we are still being dehumanized, criminalized and vilified. It’s really about illuminating black people’s humanity through Bigger Thomas, who has the weight of oppression on his shoulders.”

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“The saddest thing in life is wasted talent,” Lorenzo the bus driver tells his son, Calogero, in A Bronx Tale. There’s no wasted talent in the rock-solid touring production of the musical that swaggered into the National Theatre Tuesday night.

A Bronx Tale has a tale of its own. It began as Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical 1989 off-Broadway one-man show. Then Robert De Niro, in his directorial debut, took it to the screen in a 1993 adaptation. Palminteri brought the one-man version to Broadway in 2007. And this musical iteration opened in 2016, with Palminteri’s script, music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, and direction by De Niro and Jerry Zaks.

Can the gritty authenticity of the story survive the leap from straight drama to musical? The answer is yes—if you find a cast that blends Scorsese- and Coppola-film-type character acting with vocal and dance chops. That’s a lot to ask, but this remarkable team has the goods.

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A Bronx Tale

closes March 31, 2019
Details and tickets
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Calogero’s loyalties are divided between his straight-arrow, work-a-day dad, Lorenzo, and the flashy neighborhood gangster, Sonny, who dubs the kid “C.” As played by an ice-cold, silk-smooth Joey Calveri, Sonny is glamorous, dangerous, cash-flashing, and feared. Lorenzo—a confident, amiable Richard H. Blake—is beloved, but—to an impressionable kid with a gangster whispering in his ear—a chump in comparison.

Sonny and Lorenzo have their own tense history, and Manichean dualities dissolve into interesting shades of gray as C (stirringly played as an adolescent Conflictedfella by Joey Barreiro) becomes infatuated with a girl named Jane (a golden-voiced Brianna-Marie Bell) from the wrong neighborhood.

All that, plus the 1960s setting, offer strong elements for Menken and Slater to work with in their score, played with uptown punch by a nine-piece orchestra. There are doowop numbers like the act openers “Belmont Avenue” and “Webster Avenue”; ballads like “Look to Your Heart,” in which Michelle Aravena as C’s mom, Rosina, shines in Act II; a funny dark Rat Pack-style homage by Sonny to “Nicky Machiavelli”; and a swinging love song, “One of the Great Ones,” in which Menken finds a vintage pop Burt Bacharach vibe.

Set designer Beowulf Boritt’s multilayered crisscross of streets, stoops, storefronts, and fire escapes is lit by Howell Binkley in vibrant reds reflective of the narrative’s dreams and menaces. Choreographer Sergio Trujillo’s acrobatics, African-American step, and sexy hip-swaying is well dressed by costumer William Ivey Long. And Garth Owen’s sound design is unobtrusively clever, punctuating police mug-shot camera flashes as we’re introduced to Sonny’s misfit crew, who have memorable nicknames like Eddie Mush, Jojo the Whale, and Frankie Coffeecake.

Palminteri himself bade the audience hello from the stage after the show, saluting his parents and recalling performances at National of West Side Story.

A Bronx Tale isn’t that. It’s not out to remake a genre or reinterpret a classic. But it knows what it’s about—one man’s colorful coming of age—and it depicts it with imagination, assurance, and a lot of heart.

A Bronx Tale at the National Theatre through March 31. Book by Chazz Palminteri. Music by Alan Menken. Lyrics by Glenn Slater. With Joey Calveri, Richard H. Blake, Joey Barreiro, Michelle Aravena, Brianna-Marie Bell, Antonio Beverly, Frankie Leoni, and Shane Pry. Choreography by Sergio Trujillo. Directed by Robert De Niro and Jerry Zaks. Reviewed by Alexander C. Kafka.

The post Review: ‘A Bronx Tale’ Well Told at the National appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.

Michael Hollinger doesn’t want you to be misled by a thumbnail description of Ghost-Writer, his three-character play about an Edwardian-era writer, his wife, and his secretary, the latter of whom claims to continue to receive dictation from the great man following his death.

“I would say that people are often surprised what a passionate experience it is, because the world feels like it might be, on the surface, kind of dry or abstract,” Hollinger told me during a recent phone interview.

“It’s not at all dry or abstract. And, although it seems like, ‘Well, this is a really boring idea for a play,’ I think what shows up, when people watch it, is that, although the environment the play takes in is, on the surface, a rather still, cool one, it allows you to see what’s volcanic underneath the surface. And that’s kind of fun. I think that’s a fun dichotomy.”

Hollinger himself will travel down from his home city of Philadelphia to participate in a post-show discussion following the 2pm matinee on April 14th at Quotidian Theatre Company, which is presenting his play at The Writers’ Center in Bethesda. Quotidian’s production of Ghost-Writer opens April 5th.

I had begun our chat by asking Hollinger what had inspired him to write Ghost-Writer. “To the best of my recollection, it was a pair of things that occurred in close succession. One was the death of my Mom in 2006 and, more than that, my observations of my Father as he adjusted his life around the hole that my Mom left behind: what I would refer to as the presence of absence.

“Around this time, I also ran across a book review in The New York Times for a book about the history of the typewriter. And the article referenced an anecdote that was written about in the book wherein the novelist Henry James had a secretary to whom he dictated his novels and who claimed to continue to receive dictation after his death.

“That was the only reference in the book review, but I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really interesting: that somebody who was accustomed to working with someone else for such a long period of time would continue to channel them after they were gone.’

“So I think those two things created the twin impulses that are necessary for me to write anything, which is something that may be true, or autobiographical, or close to me, and something that feels very far away but interesting, because it’s a little exotic, or unusual, or hard to understand. Usually, for me, that combination of something that is familiar and something that’s strange allows there to be something dynamic for me in writing.

“So that’s really kind of it. I started doing research. I bought the book. I did research on typewriting. I read some Henry James.

“It became apparent to me that I was uninterested in pursuing James as a character, partly because he was unmarried — and asexual, or homosexual — so that the notion of a triangle, in the way that I was starting to conceive of it, wasn’t really going to work very well if it was Henry James. It gave me a lot more liberty to play with the play that I wanted to write, if I was able to fictionalize a character instead.

“But I was very taken with the voice of James’s secretary, whose name [Theodora Bosanquet] I suddenly can’t remember, but knew very well at one time. She wrote a book of reminiscences about him, and there was something about the way she wrote about him in her memoir (I forget what the title is, too; it’s been a few years!) —  something about her tone in writing about working with him was kind of curatorial. It was like someone who is guiding you through… curating an exhibit called ‘Henry James at Work.’”

Having the advantage, after the call, of consulting Google, I can report that the name of Bosanquet’s book is indeed Henry James at Work.

“I found that tone engaging and so, when I began finding [the secretary] Myra’s voice, it very much had that quality to it: the way she would speak about him almost like a museum exhibit.

“If you think about it (and the thing as I thought imaginatively about these characters): if you actually were receiving dictation from a great writer, you’d have to be a kind of receptacle, just ready and waiting — not to fill the room with your own mind, and thoughts, and personality, but ready to receive and transfer these thoughts which are, you know, kind of precious. So I can only imagine that that relationship would be quite intimate — whether it was intimate in romantic or sexual ways beside that — but intimate, certainly.”

I wondered how the play had ended up on the radar of Quotidian. “Well, they found the play. I don’t know if it was through a board member, Michele Osherow, who is an old friend of mine, and who knew the play, I think, from years ago. She is now a professor at the University of Maryland and the dramaturg at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre. She was, for many years, an actor and an arts administrator here in Philadelphia, so I worked with her on a couple different fronts: as an actor; as a fellow administrator at a theater; and in her early days when she was the marketing director at Arden Theatre company, where Ghost-Writer premiered (though it premiered long after she had left the theater). So I think she may have been the matchmaker to say, ‘You guys should look at this play,’ but I’m not sure.”

Osherow will moderate the post-show discussion on the 14th, which will also include the Quotidian cast (Carol Spring, Steve LaRocque, Stephanie Mumford) and director Laura Giannarelli.

Giannarelli appears frequently at Washington Stage Guild, which has produced other Hollinger scripts including Hollinger’s best known, Opus. “I saw her perform in Tiny Island a few years ago. But, yeah, they’ve done a number of plays of mine,” Hollinger remembered, referring to Giannarelli and the Stage Guild.

Does Hollinger come down to DC frequently? “Not a ton, but it’s not that far away, and we have some friends in the area, so it’s nice to get back, and it’s nice to see things when there have been things of mine that have been produced. It’s been nice when I’ve been able to catch them, though that hasn’t always been the case.”

MetroStage produced the area premiere of Ghost-Writer in 2013, so I asked whether Hollinger had seen that. “I did. I did. And it was lovely. It’s kind of fun — it’s not always fun — but it can be a delight to have very little contact with a production and see it, especially to not know the performers necessarily, to not know the space, and to not have any familiarity with the audience.

“I’ve premiered most of my plays in Philadelphia, so I know this audience really well, and I know the acting pool, the directors, the designers, most of which are pretty familiar to me, so it’s neat to go to another area and see something.

“I will say there have been times where that’s not fun, particularly if I’ve had no contact with a theatre, or no conversations with anyone, and I feel like productions, at times, can be misguided. That’s not fun, but most of the time it’s a pleasure, because your collaborators are doing their best, and are doing their homework, and putting their all into it, so I’ve enjoyed the stuff that I’ve seen in DC.”

We spoke a bit about a notorious instance when a playwright saw a production of a play that particularly displeased him. “And stopped the production, and, I think, very justifiably so, based on the information that I heard. You can’t violate so many things and just say you’re interpreting the play. There are protections for that.

“I don’t think anyone wants to do it. I think people involved in the theatre, if they are of the theatre, understand that it’s a collaborative form, and that it requires collaboration, but certain basic protections (like you must use the words that I’ve put into the script)  — that’s considered basic.”

Has Hollinger ever been so displeased that he’s pulled the plug? “No. I think there’s a difference between people making choices because they thought they were in keeping with the author’s intentions, and people making choices because they think they’ve got better ideas, or need to somehow repair a play, or goose it, or something, in a way that they probably suspect that they’re not — they probably suspect that they’re messing with it, but believe it’s better for it.

“That’s different from, you know, a sound cue that’s misguided because it’s not period to the play, or an acting style — ‘Well, we’ll break the fourth wall with this play, because we think it would be funnier if the actors knew the audience were there.’ Those are things that I’ve seen in productions of mine, and while they made me unhappy, and I felt like they were misguided, I didn’t think that they were malicious, or that they were deliberately disregarding my intentions.”

I presumed Hollinger had been very involved with the first production of Ghost-Writer. “Yes, very closely, and not least because my wife originated the role of Myra, so, early on in writing the play, I knew that I was writing the role for her.”

Will she (Megan Bellwoar) be coming to Washington as well? “She will. She will. I hope that doesn’t add any pressure to the situation! She’s seen a couple other productions, too. She saw the production in Alexandria — the MetroStage production — as well; in fact, was part of the talkback there that I did. So, um, yeah.

“But I was certainly aided in the writing of it by knowing what she is capable of as an actor, and being able to deploy her particular gifts, which, thankfully, aren’t unique to her. I feel like many other people are able to do wonderful things with the part. But Megan, my wife, is someone who has a very powerful emotional life, and I knew, putting her in a role that was highly restrained, that that heat would be quite evident; like, you would understand that there was something churning underneath this character who has to remain so still, and restrained.

“And she’s wonderful with language, and so, for a character who is extremely precise in the way she uses language, I knew that those were skills that she had. So that was an aid to me in writing.

“I’ve heard wonderful things about the Quotidian cast. Of course, I’ve worked with Laura (at least I’ve seen her work as an actor), so I have a good feeling about it; that it will be well-served.”

Does Hollinger write for Bellwoar frequently? “It was unusual for her to do it, but not unusual for me to have written a role for her. I had written earlier roles for her, for which she had done readings but not, ultimately, performed them in full productions — which was hard for us. So this one, I felt quite clear, as I was working on it, ‘Nope; I’m going to save this one for Meg. She’s going to do it or nobody’s going to do it first.’ And, fortunately, we were able to see that through.”

Will Hollinger confess to influences? “Oh, I think it would be very, very hard to pin me down, because every play is so incredibly different. There are plays that are very madcap, in terms of comedy — physical comedy, verbal comedy. And then, this is probably the most — I don’t know — crystalline, I would say, or austere of my plays; the one that asks people to listen most carefully and to — the word I used when I was working on the play, and talking with early collaborators, was the play asks audiences to iris-down, so that they become aware of nuances of language, and nuances of relationship, and nuances of humor that are rather subtle, because they’re entering a world that is slower and stiller.

“In my experience, audiences do do that. They’re trained, early on in the play, to go, ‘Oh, I need to listen in this particular way, and I’ll be rewarded when I do.’ But it’s not the pace, or noise, that some of my plays make. There are some where, as soon as the lights come up, you’re on a freight train, and that’s very deliberate, like, ‘Hang on, ‘cause we’re going to go fast; you’ve got to keep up.’

“This is very different. This says, ‘Listen carefully, attend carefully, and it will feed your attention.’ But It does ask your attention. I don’t know what models I would cite for this. I think there’s something in it that feels a little akin to the film The Remains of the Day, because there is, at its heart, a kind of romantic ache that comes out of restraint.

“I think it’s funnier than that, because I am a comic writer, and so, I think, there’s a lot of wit, and, in fact, some very funny scenes in Ghost-Writer — and necessarily so. I don’t think you can ask people for so much attention in a drama without also making them laugh, because there’s energy to be released. But, otherwise, I’m afraid I don’t really…I can’t really…I can talk about a ton of influences, but they probably wouldn’t tell you anything about Ghost-Writer, particularly.”

I assume that the play is set around the time that Henry James, the man who inspired it, was alive. “Yeah, it is pretty much: towards the end of what would be James’s life, as I recall, so Ghost-Writer goes between about 1905 and 1919. And I’m trying to remember how I settled in on that.

“One of the reasons, I think, was because there was a sudden rise in mysticism, seances, psychics around that time. At the end of World War I, there were so many deaths, and I’m speaking just in the United States — and we were latecomers to the war — but even in the United States, the fact that boys and men didn’t return; there was a huge upsurge, a rise in, mysticism and seances (including the popularity of the Ouija Board and other things). And as I was doing some research on that, it just felt like the right year, somehow.

“It also was an era that was seeing a change in the fortunes of women in the world. They had just earned the right to vote in the United States, with the suffragist movement, and so there was a kind of recognition of women rising out of the constraints of what we might call a kind of Victorian morality, and entering into what would be the modern woman.

“We hadn’t yet hit the 1920s, and the kind of cultural changes of the 20s, so there was still a lingering sense of restraint in the late teens, but it seemed like a really interesting time to tune into Myra as a character. Ballroom dancing had emerged recently as a social event, and people were now writing books about social dancing and things like that, so it was an interesting crossroads of time.

“For me, I’m really interested in period. In most of my plays, they are quite specific in terms of the year or month or week or day that they take place, and the historical things that were taking place at that particular time, so I did a lot of research just to say, ‘Alright, what was going on this week, last week, at this particular time, and how might that be impacting the characters?’

“And literature, too, was changing rapidly. A guy like my character, someone like Henry James, was both very old-school, at this point, and just about to be blown out of the water. So, my character is very much a Victorian, Edwardian novelist, whereas Scribner’s, which is his publishing house, is just about to publish Fitzgerald in a few years: The Great Gatsby. They’re just about to publish The Sun Also Rises in 1926. And then, we’re off to the races with the new generation of writers coming in and busting up old forms.

“So there is a sense of (although it’s completely invisible in the play; unless you know something about the history of the novel, and the history of the novel in the United States, you would never understand this), but there is something old-fashioned about this man, and his particular world, that’s about to be shaken up.”

I heard that Opus had been adapted for film. “Yes, it was optioned for a film, and I wrote a screenplay for it. It didn’t happen, and I think, to some degree, it didn’t happen because another string quartet movie came out, and had lots and lots of similarities to it, and I don’t think there was a lot of market for another one.”

I mistook the competing film for the recent Maggie Smith/Tom Courtenay flick. “No. That actually is not about a string quartet. It’s called Quartet; that’s actually about singers. No, no. This movie is called A Late Quartet, which is about a string quartet, and has a number of striking similarities to Opus, so, you know, bad fortune for me that it came out. I mean, if it made a gazillion amount of money, then, maybe, people would have been desperate to have another string quartet movie. But I think it was kind of a niche to begin with.”

Is Hollinger currently working on anything that he could talk about? “Sure. I just finished drafting a play, a couple of days ago, called The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool, and I have no idea if it’s any good yet. I’ve sent it to a few people, including my wife, and told her there’s a role in it for her, if she wants it.

“I’m about to fly out to Northlight Theatre outside Chicago later this month to workshop a holiday play they commissioned called Mr. Dickens’ Hat. And I’m working on a musical of a play by Bruce Graham called Moon Over the Brewery with composer Robert Maggio.

“So those are three things I’m juggling at the moment and, who knows? I might start something new. There’s usually several pans on the stovetop, and some of them are advancing very slowly, and I stir them once every few months, and then some are heating up, and I’ve got to stir them really fast, so, yeah.

“Unfortunately, I’m not done yet, apparently,” Hollinger chuckled in conclusion.

The post Author Michael Hollinger on creating the world of Ghost-Writer appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.

When David Andrew MacDonald takes the stage as Leo Tresler in Arena Stage’s Junk, an economic thriller that exposes the financial dealmaking behind the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 1980s, it will be his first appearance on an Arena stage in 34 years.

Written by playwright Ayad Akhtar, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Disgraced, and directed at Arena by Jackie Maxwell, Junk delves into the world of junk bonds and financial trading. Akhtar, himself, describes it as   “…a story of the transformation of the American economy to an economy where things don’t make money; money makes money.”

“My background is not at all in finance, though a number of my friends growing up ended up going into that world, though more in the legal aspect, so I really knew very little about that world,” MacDonald says. “I knew trading junk bonds had somewhat changed the face of financial America in the world, but really didn’t know much more than that. I was more interested in poetry.”

“My wife had done one of the earlier regional productions of Disgraced in Philadelphia. Ayad had come down and I met him there, and he was really a compelling interview,” MacDonald says. “When I got the audition for this, I still had family down in D.C., so I wanted to come back and work at Arena. I read it and the piece is just fascinating. I was very excited when Jackie wanted to use me.”

MacDonald’s character, Leo, is a private equity magnate who must deal with an internal moral shift when he comes up against the king of junk bonds, Robert Merkin.

“I knew when I read the play, it was functioning around the junk bond period, but I also knew there was something else going on having to do with immigration and having to do with the nature of greed, having to do with racism and anti-Semitism and different things like that,” MacDonald says. “Ayad wrote this almost as an origin piece – who are we as a people coming out of this condition of changing wealth.”

Once cast, MacDonald delved a bit into the history of junk bonds but didn’t want to research it too carefully. A big fan of Shakespeare, the actor understands that doing research of his traditional historic plays has less to do with history than some of his tragedies, and took somewhat the same mindset towards research for Junk.

What he has learned is that what happened in the ’80s changed the face of finance much more than he had originally thought.

There are many ways to look at this play, he believes, which shows how people function and how commercial markets dictate a lot of that.

“There will certainly be conversations about the beginnings of the crumblings of the foundations of the established white male society,” he says. “Even those of us, like myself, will have to acknowledge that those things financially in many ways consciously and unconsciously run our lives in ways we don’t often understand.”

Originally from the D.C. area, MacDonald last appeared at Arena in 1985.  While in college in Colorado, then-Arena Stage Artistic Director Doug Wager came for a summer theater class and invited MacDonald to drop him a line when he was back in the area.

“When I was going to undergraduate school, I thought I was more interested in music. I had done theater, but was mostly thinking opera at the time,” he says. “While there, I started doing a little bit of reading about the history and philosophy of theater and I fell in love with that. I started acting, and coupling that with the applause at the end, it became this fascinating and intellectual connection that swept me off my feet. I just loved it.”

“I called [Wager] and they were doing this rather large John Guare world premiere, and I came in and became part of this huge production, Women and Water,” MacDonald says. “This was back when they still had a resident acting company, so it was really quite an experience.”

A graduate of the Juilliard School, MacDonald has found success in the theater, appearing on Broadway in Rocky, Two Shakespearean Actors, Coram Boy, Mamma Mia!  and Skylight; and also spent 10 years playing Edmund Winslow on the former soap opera, Guiding Light.

Being back in Arena has brought back many memories for him. He remembers playing in a large poker game with some of the theater’s dignitaries and taking home a big pot to the dismay of the older players, and just enjoying the community and the beautiful space. He’s thrilled to be back in a show as important as Junk.

“This show isn’t black and white, but is actually the shade the world really is, which is grey,” MacDonald says. “It’s funny how Junk surprises you back and forth. Ayad is quite remarkable in that way.”

Junk runs from April 5 to May 5 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St SW, Washington, DC.
Details and tickets.

The post Ayad Akhtar’s Junk draws David Andrew MacDonald back to Arena after 34 years appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.

Twenty years on. And the horror of April 20, 1999 has not only not dissipated, but it also seems to have continually intensified with each mass school shooting. Virginia Tech. Sandy Hook. Parkland. Countless others that run together like one big blob of shameful gray in America’s collective mind under the mental banner of “another Columbine.” Since then, school shootings have come to occupy the doldrums of our culture. They happen. We stand slack jawed for a hot minute. Drop our heads. Shake our jowls. Do nothing. Repeat.

columbinus, written in 2003 and premiered at Round House Theatre in 2005 , is a study of that day and the teenage conditions that apparently led to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to kill 13 classmates and one teacher—in addition to injuring nearly two dozen others—in Littleton, CO. Act I follows eight “common” teens, each a composite drawn from numerous interviews, through a typical school day, starting with the morning ritual. There’s the Loner (Patrick Joy), the Freak (Rocky Nunzio), the Jock (Jonathan Del Palmer), AP (Brett Cassidy), Perfect (Thais Menendez), the religious fanatic known as Faith (Jennie Bissell), the Rebel (Alex Reeves), and the Prep (Joe Mucciolo).

In Act II, Loner and Freak become distinctly Klebold and Harris, who carry out their plan as the other actors recite testimony from the surviving victims, parents of the dead, and community members. Often in the dark as disembodied voices, trembling with fear and sometimes full of a restrained anger and even resignation, as flashes of light blink, indicating another shot.

It’s effective, pulling you in and appealing to a macabre fascination. All the actors step for a moment into the spotlight and shine. Cassidy has perhaps one of the hardest-to-hear snippets, relaying the words of the pastor who was asked to reside over Klebold’s funeral. Del Palmer as a grieving father identifying the body of his daughter, which he describes as looking better than he had imagined. Somber and gripping. All at once. As Joy and Nunzio stand above them all, dressed exactly as Klebold and Harris were then, surveying the carnage as if it is their masterpiece. For this stripped down, bare bones presentation of the day, directors Alex Levy and Juan Francisco Villa deserve serious praise.

As well done as Act II is, Act I unfolds in near slow-motion, dragging on a tad and saying very little other than high school is awful. Kids know they aren’t who they want to be or who their peers think they are and scorn the adults who try to keep them on some perceived track. Loner and Freak are the focus, and each is served taunts and teasing as well as being virtually unheard by a well-meaning guidance counselor. What does all this mean in relation to Columbine: an appeal for empathy? Understanding? Concern? All would be easy, except we know Loner and Freak will turn rampage killers, and it’s hard to muster anything but contempt for those two. Especially given the closing sequence, set to the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony,” wherein each kid shows their innate sadness and the truth behind their lies.

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columbinus

closes April 20, 2019
Details and tickets
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columbinus does succeed in capturing the mood of high school circa 1999 (I should know; that’s my era), from the attitudes prevalent at the time to the moody music of Tori Amos and Nirvana, and everything in between. But, as impactful as Act II is—using the words of the real players, including the 911 call made by teacher Pattie Nielson from the library where the majority of deaths occurred—as a docudrama, it is little more than a reliving of the moment, ending with snippets from parents in more recent years that confirm we’ve merely dropped our heads in unison. There is little by way of thoughtful commentary on the why of it all, which the play acknowledges. In 2003, what was there to say? columbinus is a full 15+ years old, and I can’t help but wonder what the playwrights imagined at its writing—surely, not that in 2019 we’d be still languishing in the doldrums, and believing that a retelling of April 20^th, 1999 would be lesson enough to avoid its repeating.

columbinus, as merely a reaction to a horrible event once thought to be an anomaly, may have outlived its original intent and unintentionally does a disservice to those who died, using them as a means to the end. The end being to try to—not to justify Klebold and Harris—but to understand them. I’m uncomfortable that the names of the dead are forever reduced to chalk writings on sidewalks or projections scrolled over walls, while Harris and Klebold have lived on. They’ve gotten all they wanted. Infamy. Admirers. Copycats that have heralded them as inspiration. Because they were not the end. They never were.

Playwrights Stephen Karam (Humans) and PJ Paparelli couldn’t have known that in 2003. Couldn’t have foreseen the future. But, in being frozen a bit in time, columbinus does triumph in reflecting what we’ve learned since April 20, 1999: nothing.

columbinus by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli. Conceived by PJ Paparelli. Directed by Alex Levy and Juan Francisco Villa. Dramaturg Patricia Hersch. Featuring Jennie Bissel, Brett Cassidy, Patrick Joy, Thais Menendez, Joe Mucciolo, Rocky Nunzio, Jonathan Del Palmer, and Alex Reeves. Production: Set Design, Kathyrn Kawecki; Costume Design, Kelsey Hunt; Lighting Design, Conor Mulligan; Projections Design, Robbie Hayes and Patrick W.Lord; Sound Design, Kenny Neal; Props Design, Cindy Landrum Jacobs; and Rehearsel Stage Manager, Elizabeth Burch and Rebecca Talisman. Stage Managed by Laura Moody. Reviewed by Kelly McCorkendale.

The post Review: columbinus at 1st Stage appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.

So, in Native Son, Bigger Thomas (Clayton Pelham, Jr.), a man with no options, lives in a one-room apartment on the South Side of 1940 Chicago with his mother (Lolita Marie) and his brother (Tendo Nsubuga) and his sister (Renee Elizabeth Wilson) and also a black rat the size of an alley cat.

And though Bigger Thomas pounds that rat with an iron skillet until it is flat and soaked in a sea of blood, in Nambi E. Kelley’s retelling of Richard Wright’s seminal story, black rats never die, they just become the alter ego (Vaughn Ryan Midder) of Black men.

Thomas, who dreams of becoming a pilot (fat chance of that, in a White-controlled industry) instead agrees to become a chauffeur to the Daltons, a wealthy White family, because if he does not, Social Services will cut off assistance to his mother and the rest of his family. Once he reports for duty, Mrs. Dalton (Melissa Flaim) announces that he will have a collateral duty: stoking the furnace to make sure the house is warm. And you thought slavery was dead! But don’t worry, the Daltons are liberals. Mr. Dalton contributes to the NAACP, and other “Negro causes.” And Mrs. Dalton has her own claim to sympathy: some bad Prohibition hooch, consumed in her libertine days, has made her blind.

But as woke as Mr. and Mrs. Dalton may believe themselves to be, no one is more woke — or more profoundly asleep — than their daughter Mary (Madeline Joey Rose) and her boyfriend Jan (Drew Kopas). Mary and Jan, professed Communists, rapturously await the Revolution, and to do their own part in it, they sit in the front of the car with their Negro chauffeur, and drink rum with him, and insist that he call them by their first names. And at the end of the day — I mean this literally — Mary, whose idea of African-Americans is distinctly libidinous (she began thinking about them when she peeked in the window of an African-American home and saw the children running around naked) has her arms wrapped around Bigger and her drunken body pressed close to his as he tries to steer her to her room and be shed of her.

And afterward, all is chaos, involving Bigger, his family, his lover Bessie (Wilson), and a fierce bigoted detective (Stephen F. Schmidt). And thus Wright’s story fits squarely into the tradition of socially-conscious novels of the first half of the last century — think An American Tragedy or Of Mice and Men — in which a flawed protagonist finds that his own weaknesses combined with malicious society leads him inexorably to tragedy.

Make no mistake about it: Bigger Thomas is massively flawed. He is almost wholly without imagination, and his default instinct is violence — the number of times he says “I’ll kill you” in response to provocations large and small is impressive. But he is also the victim of pervasive racism, and the dilemma he finds himself in — he cannot resist Mary’s advances without offending a White woman, and he cannot accept them without risking his life — has no good solution. And the reader, who is flawed himself (as we all are) walks away from the novel with a vague feeling that he ought to do something to make the conditions he witnessed in the novel change or go away.

Wright wrote Native Son in 1940. How does it speak to us now, nearly eighty years later?

Obviously there have been some improvements; African-Americans are no longer exotic to White people, and there are plenty of African-American pilots. But it would be nonsense to claim we are on a level playing field. Could Native Son be reimagined in a way which captures the dilemma of the contemporary African-American?

Perhaps, but, sadly, this isn’t it. Kelley (whose adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz was seen last year at Baltimore Center Stage) has elected to chop Wright’s narrative into bits, and rearrange them in time, thus sucking much of the emotional life out of it. For example: we open not in Bigger’s  apartment but at the very crux of the play, where Bigger, with The Black Rat urging him on, is trying to wrestle drunk Mary into her bed as her blind mother comes into the room. Unless we’re familiar with Wright’s work, we do not know the relationship between Bigger and Mary; we do not know who Mrs. Dalton is, or why she can’t see what’s going on, and we do not know who The Black Rat — who appears to be another man — is. We are justified in concluding, say, that Bigger and The Black Rat are two strangers who came upon Mary in her drunken state and have taken it upon themselves to bring her home, and that her mother is not in the same room with them but in the next room, separated by an imaginary wall. Eventually we come to understand what’s happened, but in the meantime we are asking the one narrative question no playwright wants to hear, which is “what’s going on?”

Kelley continues to splice the novel together thematically, rather than chronologically. Thus we see Bigger and his lover, Bessie, on the lam — and, in the next scene, Bigger is in a pool hall with his brother, planning to knock over a store, from a part of the story long prior to Bigger’s fatal encounter with Mary. Toward the end of the play, we see Bigger as a 15-year-old in a confrontation with some particularly vicious policemen. I’m not suggesting that the story needs to be told in a rigidly chronological way –Wright did some time-shifting himself — but Kelley’s narrative risks confusing an audience member not familiar with the story. The problem is enhanced by director Psalmayene 24’s decision to double-cast some actors, particularly Wilson as Bigger’s sister and his lover.

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Native Son

closes April 28, 2019
Details and tickets
——–

Kelley’s other significant innovation is to create The Black Rat as a human character, instead of, as Wright had it, an actual rat. This works better, although not, I think, in the way Kelley intended. In an interview with dramaturges Khalid Y. Long and Isaiah M. Wooden, Kelley says she created The Black Rat as “a manifestation of W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness…” Du Bois, writing in 1897, called this double-consciousness “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

But The Black Rat is not a manifestation of Caucasian contempt, or some savage version of Bigger who would comport with the views that a bigoted White would have of a Black man. He is shrewder than Bigger, and more restrained; but ultimately he urges Bigger on to his disastrous choices. He gives us Bigger’s interior self, but he is not a manifestation of double consciousness, except in the sense that we all have an exterior and interior self.

Mosaic Theater and Psalmayene 24 have put together a slam-bang production, long on dramatic tension, and when Kelley permits the narrative to move forward chronologically — I’m thinking in particular of the scenes in which Bigger and The Black Rat are on a doomed flight from the Chicago police — the play succeeds beautifully. There are some terrific performances — in particular, Pelham and Midder, who while they present wildly different personas weirdly seem to parallel each other, and Flaim, whose Mrs. Dalton seems oblivious to her own toxicity. Schmidt nails the sort of bigoted cop who, sadly, is extant even today. There are some choral parts, which allow us to hear Lolita Marie’s wonderful voice. I did not fully buy Rose as Mary, but in fairness the script does not give her much to work with.

Ethan Sinnott’s set features a huge photo of Bigger broken into about twenty separate shards. It is distorted, but still recognizable. This may have been meant as a metaphor for the effect which White racist society had on Bigger, but it also serves as a capsule description of what Kelley has done to Wright’s story, which is also distorted, though still recognizable. Before seeing this play, you might want to read the novel.

Native Son by Nambi E. Kelley, based on the novel of the same name by Richard Wright. Directed by Psalmayene 24 . Featuring Clayton Pelham, Jr., Vaughn Ryan Midder, Madeline Joey Rosem, Melissa Flaim, Lolita Marie, Renee Elizabeth Wilson, Tendo Nsubuga, Drew Kopas, and Stephen F. Schmidt . Set design: Ethan Sinnott . Lighting design: William K. D’Eugenio . Costume design: Katie Touart . Projections: Dylan Uremovich . Sound design: Nick Hernandez . Properties: Willow Watson . Movement and fight choreographer: Tony Thomas . Intimacy coach: Claudia Rosales Waters . Dramaturges: Isaiah M. Wooden and Khalid Y. Long . Stage manager: Simone Baskerville . Produced by Mosaic Theater Company . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.

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Note:  James Baldwin wrote an explosive response to Richard Wright’s Native Son titled Notes of a Native Son. Psalmeyene 24, who directed this piece, has written a new play, Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son, in which he envisions a meeting between the two writers. It will run in rep with Native Son at Mosaic Theater, starting April 7.  Details and tickets.

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New York City Ballet returns to Washington this week for its annual visit to the Kennedy Center with two programs that include two works from the company’s legendary founder George Balanchine, a Justin Peck ballet, a new work from Kyle Abraham, and a number of offerings from Jerome Robbins. There is a lot to see and some of it is thrilling.

The company’s opening night program on Tuesday began with Composer’s Holiday by the fledgling choreographer Gianna Reisen. Trained at the School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s affiliate school, Reisen’s work is clearly informed by her time there and the dynamic patterns and fast-paced style of movement Balanchine’s ballets and those of his imitators are known for.

Composer’s Holiday is interesting and lively if somewhat derivative. It’s a good early effort but could use some editing. On the plus side, Reisen has cast dancers from the company’s corps de ballet in all of the work’s principal and other roles which gives it an eagerness and youthful energy that is pleasing to watch.

Balanchine’s 1978 ballet, Kammermusik No. 2, which is rarely done, is fascinating, intense, and stressful. The contrapuntal music, written in 1924 for piano and 12 instruments by the composer Paul Hindemith, is difficult listening in places.

Two couples dance in counterpoint to an eight-man ensemble that simultaneously dances to the orchestra. The choreography in some sections is frenetic and quirky (and a little dated). Coupled with the music, this ballet’s impact on a viewer is either dizzying or monotonous depending on the cast. On Tuesday night Abi Stafford, Joseph Gordon, Teresa Reichlen, and Russell Janzen were the leads and in their capable hands the ballet mostly avoided the sense of mayhem the music inspires.

Jerome Robbins’ lush Opus 19/The Dreamer provided welcome relief to the noise and chaos of the previous two ballets on Tuesday night. The stellar principal dancers Sterling Hyltin and Gonzalo Garcia led a group of six men and six women through a radiant series of ethereal dances to Sergei Prokofiev’s beloved Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major.

Without a doubt the evening belonged to Symphony in C, one of George Balanchine’s early masterpieces. Originally called Le Palais de Cristal, Balanchine created the ballet on the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1947 and reworked it for City Ballet one year later.

Symphony in C exemplifies the grandeur and integrity of classical ballet. Set to Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C Major, 52 dancers are separated into groups of 12 or so throughout four movements with the entire group coming together for a dramatic and heart-stopping finale.

There were numerous standouts among the cast on opening night, chief among them Sara Mearns and Jared Angle in the ballet’s second movement, an adagio of impossible beauty. Mearns brought to bear the full force of her trademark mystery and elegance on this section and with Angle’s confident partnering she danced with an abandon that was at once steely and delicate. There was an audible sigh of awe among the audience at that movement’s end.

Baily Jones, a corps de ballet member who joined the company in 2015 was a happy surprise in the principal female role in the third movement and shows true promise, and veteran soloist Erica Pereira dazzled in the fourth movement with her usual precise footwork and gracious demeanor. The lead men exhibited spirited jumps and vibrant dancing throughout, as did the entire male and female corps de ballet.

One among them deserves a special mention. Mary Elizabeth Sell, a member of the corps de ballet for 13 years, never fails to stand out among the crowd in the ballets in which she is cast and her performance on Tuesday night in one of the secondary couples highlighted in the third movement was no exception. With beautifully arched and articulate feet, a gorgeous and graceful line, and an innate musicality this dancer has Balanchine in her blood and bones.

I hope we get to see Sell and other currently underused dancers featured much more in the future as the company emerges from a particularly gruesome period of scandal and embarks upon a new era with new leadership and a revived outlook. More than ever these dancers deserve our applause as well as the attention and care New York City Ballet’s newly appointed directors have publicly promised to provide.

The New York City Ballet is onstage at the Kennedy Center through April 7, 2019. “New Yorks/New Productions performs April 4, 5, 6
Details and tickets

New York City Ballet. Artistic Director, Jonathan Stafford; Associate Artistic Director, Wendy Whelan. Choreographers featured: Kyle Abraham, George Balanchine, Justin Peck, Gianna Reisen, and Jerome Robbins. Reviewed by Maria Di Mento.

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As King Lear, Glenda Jackson enters with a casual swagger, giving off a scent of power that’s lasted a lifetime.  But Lear is portrayed by an 82-year-old woman, lean and light and, at 5’6, dwarfed by the dignitaries and daughters who share the stage in the opening scene at the Cort Theater.

If Jackson’s performance turns this inventive but imperfect production into a must-see of the Broadway Spring season, it’s not just because of her impressive stamina and control. It’s also the appearance of physical fragility that helps make her Lear stand out.

Shakespeare’s text has Lear gathering his three daughters to give them his kingdom so that, “unburdened,” he can “crawl toward death.” Yet most actors I’ve seen in the role start off as powerhouses. If they’re still so strong and mighty, why are they giving up their kingdom?

One recent exception was the Lear of Antony Sher (which I saw last year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) but his Lear didn’t just start out old and tired; he also lacked any sense of command, which made his descent less vertiginous and thus less compelling.

Dressed in a casual modern suit and a short androgynous hairstyle, Jackson’s Lear offers the evidence of age while exuding an easy authority. When Lear orders his daughters to compete for the largest share of his inheritance by proclaiming their love for him, Cordelia (Ruth Wilson) refuses to flatter him. Lear at first laughs good-naturedly.

It’s as if his youngest daughter were surely just making a joke; who would deny their king?  When he realizes she’s serious and will not yield, he abruptly disinherits her. In these first few moments, Jackson presents a portrait of Lear closer to a modern dictator than an ancient warrior — charismatic rather than physically imposing; not a blusterer nor a brute, but just as mercurial and cruel.

See all production photos at NewYorkTheater.me

The King Lear at Broadway’s Cort Theater is an entirely different production than the Lear at London’s Old Vic in 2016 that marked Glenda Jackson’s return to the stage after a 23-year career as a member of the British Parliament. Sam Gold directs the Broadway production. Gold has done wonders with new plays, such as Fun Home andA Doll’s House Part 2.  He is no less inventive with the classics. For Othello, he rebuilt an East Village theater into a modern military barracks, and presented some extended scenes completely in the dark, the seating and the lighting threatening to upstage his stars David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig. Oscar Isaac walked around in his underpants in Gold’s production of Hamlet. Unwilling to tread carefully with cherished texts, he’s sometimes accused of stomping on them, such as with his Glass Menagerie starring Sally Field, which was so stripped down it didn’t even include a glass menagerie.

At their best, directors like Gold and Ivo van Hove create productions featuring some memorable theatrics that illuminate the classic text; at their worst, some memorable theatrics that undermine the work.

Gold creates some memorable theatrics in his King Lear, some of which illuminate the text for us, little of which undermine it for me.

Simply by casting women as male characters — Jackson in the title role,  Jayne Houdyshell as the Earl of Gloucester, and Ruth Wilson (in a second role) as the Fool – Gold gets us thinking about gender and its connection to power. We notice, perhaps for the first time, that there are no mothers in King Lear.

Although Shakespeare wrote the tragedy in 1605 about a king who is said to have reigned more than 2,000 years earlier, Gold sets the story in the modern age. The characters are in modern dress and use guns instead of swords. Miriam Buether’s set  before intermission looks like an embassy reception hall, all gold walls and flags, along with a porcelain bulldog and little roaring lion.  (The change in the set after intermission,  which I won’t spoil, is simple but dramatic, as well as a spot-on metaphor.)  The contemporary setting for the play is far from unprecedented, yet it seems especially well timed given this story about a foolish ruler swayed by flattery.

The one directorial choice that I found most problematic was the original music by Philip Glass — who, tellingly, van Hove also hired to score his 2016 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.   As in that production,  the near-constant underscoring of Glass’s trademark staccato composition seems at times to be competing with the dialogue rather than enhancing it. There are also moments that come close to parody, when the graceful string quartet dressed in elegant black concert apparel takes up a perch on stage near the desperate, battling characters.  But most of the time, the music adds to the mood and the tension.

As with almost any director, it’s in the casting of Lear that Gold most makes his mark. He has chosen a diverse and talented cast. Many are New York theater pros who have long track records or made recent splashes.  Three such performers make notable Broadway debuts: Matthew Maher (so wonderful in The Flick and Mr. Burns Off-Broadway) is an appropriately sniveling Oswald, which gets deserved laughs, unusual for the role. Sean Carvajal (who at the last minute took on the role of the imprisoned killer Angel in Jesus Hopped the A Train and won a slew of awards for it) is a captivating Edgar, though frankly I’ve never seen anybody less than watchable in this juicy role of the legitimate son of Gloucester who pretends to be crazy but perhaps becomes half-crazy in the process. Dion Johnstone (Barrow Street Theater’s Coriolanus) makes a suitably upright, outraged and cuckolded Duke of Albany.

John Douglas Thompson, always phenomenal (Jitney, The Emperor Jones, most recently on Broadway in Carousel)  is a stand-out as  the Earl of Kent, the king’s loyal defender; his robust physical presence as a man of action is as much a joy to watch as is his command of Shakespeare’s language a treat to listen to.

Elizabeth Marvel, who is probably best known for her screen roles (such as President Elizabeth Keane on Homeland), has a long list of New York stage credits. Her portrayal of Goneril, the eldest of Lear’s daughters and Albany’s unfaithful spouse, is sure to generate some controversy, because the character is not just power-mad but sex-crazed. There are some explicit scenes (obviously a directorial choice) that Marvel executes bravely.  If her actions are too vulgar to be a turn on, neither was I turned off by this effort to emphasize a different aspect of her villainy.

Sure to be even more controversial is the casting of Russell Harvard as the vicious Duke of Cornwall, as well as of Michael Arden, who is listed in the credits as “Aide to Cornwall.” I personally think this dual casting was inspired. Harvard, who made a remarkable New York debut in Tribes in 2012, and then his Broadway debut in the Deaf West production of Spring Awakening in 2015, is deaf. As Cornwell, husband of Lear’s daughter Regan, he primarily communicates in American Sign Language.  Arden, who was the director of Spring Awakening, portrays Cornwall’s sign interpreter.  When Cornwall signs, Arden speaks English. When others are talking in Cornwall’s presence, Arden signs for him.  (It’s an extra treat that when Maher as Oswald is delivering messages to Cornwall for his master Goneril, he both speaks and uses sign.) What is most inspired about the pairing of Harvard’s and Arden’s characters is that Arden’s aide becomes the character in Shakespeare’s text, identified only as a servant, who tries to stop Cornwall from mutilating Gloucester, only to be killed by his master. Unlike the script, the character in this production doesn’t just spring out of nowhere; we’ve witnessed their relationship, which makes their fight to the death all the more intense.

The other principal cast members make less of an impression. Ruth Wilson is better as Cordelia than as the fool. Pedro Pascal (known for Game of Thrones and Narcos) doesn’t feel enough of a dastardly, two-faced schemer. Most disappointing is Jayne Houdyshell as Earl of Gloucester. Gloucester is perhaps the most memorable character after Lear because he gets his eyes gouged out. He is also important to the play because of his parallel story – Gloucester puts his trust in the wrong son, just as Lear puts his trust in the two wrong daughters.  Houdyshell is best known for her Tony winning performance as the mother in The Humans, followed by a Tony nomination for her role as the servant in A Doll’s House, Part 2, and has been a mainstay of New York theater for decades.

I have never seen Houdyshell give a bad performance, and indeed I’ve even seen her masterfully portray authoritative figure, such as a battling public intellectual feminist in a play called Relevance. She turns out to be adept at Shakespeare’s language, but Houdyshell’s Gloucester lacks a sense of authority or energy, and her ultimate pathos is less devastating to me than other Gloucesters I’ve seen.  Is this a role, one starts to wonder, that is simply resistant to gender-blind casting?

The contrast with Glenda Jackson’s performance might make the British actress’ accomplishment feel all the more remarkable.  The daughter of a bricklayer, Jackson won two Oscars nearly back to back (for Women in Love and A Touch of Class) and was nominated for two more (Sunday Bloody Sunday and Hedda).  But that was more than 40 years ago. Just a year ago, she returned to Broadway after an absence of 30 years in Three Tall Women , winning her first Tony. But that role, a rich old woman of 92 who is dying, seems a more obvious fit, and makes fewer physical demands. And although that play won Albee his third Pulitzer, it has none of the intimidating centuries-old reputation of both the play and the role of King Lear.

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” King Lear exclaims famously, as he sees his daughters betray him, and begins his descent into madness and tragedy. Is it hubris to attend this first Broadway production of King Lear in 15 years, and think: Glenda Jackson can!

King Lear is on stage at the Cort Theater (138 W 48th Street, between 6^th and 7^th Avenues,New York, NY 10036) through July 7, 2019.
Tickets and details

King Lear. Written by William Shakespeare, directed by Sam Gold, original score by Philip Glass. Scenic design by Miriam Buether, costume design by Ann Roth, lighting design by Jane Cox, and sound design Scott Lehrer. Featuring Glenda Jackson as King Lear, Jayne Houdyshell as Earl of Gloucester, Elizabeth Marvel as Goneril, Aisling O’Sullivan as Regan, Pedro Pascal as Edmund, John Douglas Thompson as Earl of Kent, Ruth Wilson as Cordelia and the Fool, Sean Carvajal as Edgar, Dion Johnstone as Duke of Albany, Russell Harvard as Duke of Cornwall, Matthew Maher as Oswald, Michael Arden as Aide to Cornwall, Justin Cunningham, Ian Lassiter, Che Ayende,Therese Barbato, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Daniel Marmion, and John McGinty.

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The D.C. theater and arts community is about to go where it’s never been before as the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics is introducing the first-ever D.C.-wide biennial CrossCurrents festival, which will showcase innovative artists who are harnessing the power of performance to humanize global politics.

Performance artists from more than 40 countries will be represented and the festival will boast a collection of interesting socially-engaged performances from around the world, hoping to spark conversations about critical topics here in the nation’s capital such as the global refugee crisis, climate change, the rise of hate and polarization, and countering violent extremism.

Derek Goldman, founding director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and curator of CrossCurrents, says in many ways the festival is the culmination of The Lab’s seven years of work to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics.

“We are so privileged at the Lab to engage deeply with path-breaking artists around the world—and here in our own DC community,” he says. “While we have developed, produced, and presented dozens of performances and events, we work in so many different contexts and spaces and we recognize it can be hard for audiences to get to know us here at home. With CrossCurrents, we hope to build a more visible continuing presence here in D.C.”

With that in mind, the festival organizers are thrilled to share the work of such a diverse roster of artists with D.C. audiences, and to be collaborating with so many inspiring partners from around the world.

“D.C. of course provides such a singular context for this kind of work at the intersection of art and politics,” Goldman says. “The vision of the festival, like all of the Lab’s work, is built around a belief in relationship-building and in catalyzing necessary conversations across sectors and communities. CrossCurrents is intentionally aiming to bringing together a wide range of publics who do not always encounter one another—students, everyday residents, thought-leaders, policymakers, activists, global artists—and one of my deepest hopes is that CrossCurrents fosters new relationships and collaborations between our amazing community of D.C. theater artists and their global counterparts and thus helps make our theatre ecosystem even more dynamic in its global inclusivity.”

A Solid Roster of Guests

Among the special performers at the festival are Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Martyna Majok, (whose play Ironbound was a breakout hit of the 2015 Women’s Voices Theater Festival, actress Kathleen Chalfant, and a roster of leading artists and companies from more than 40 countries.

The festival’s lineup was very intentionally built not as a top-heavy gathering of “usual suspects” but geared toward some of the most exciting and innovative emerging artists around the world,  as well as those who may be more established but who continue to push boundaries of form and content in their work.

“So while no one would call 84-year-old Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka ‘emerging,’ we are so delighted to be hosting him and having him share brand new work inspired by a devastating story that is very much still unfolding (The Chibok Girls),” Goldman says. “Part of the power of CrossCurrents is bringing a legendary master like Soyinka together with artists who are working at the most dynamic intersections imaginable.”

The Phantom Limb company is uniting puppetry, multimedia and butoh dance to explore the ongoing legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster (Falling Out); award-winning recording artist Somi is using jazz to engage with the legacy of South African legend Miriam Makeba (Dreaming Zenzile); and Petite Afrique immigration and gentrification in Harlem today.

Theatrical Performances

Goldman describes Wole Oguntokun’s The Chibok Girls: Our Story, which will make its U.S. premiere at the Davis Performing Arts Center (May 7, 8 and 11), as a “searing and beautifully humane work of testimonial theater about the abduction of 276 girls from their school in the Nigerian town of Chibok by the Boko Haram in 2014”

“The play speaks to not only the story of what happened to the girls but to the continuing reverberations of their story,” he says. “Whether one is familiar with this history or not—it became more widely known to many through the work of Michelle Obama and #BringBacktheGirls—it is told here with heartrending immediacy and opens out into urgent discussions about what is still unfolding right now.”

Republic of Imagination, which will play Woolly Mammoth on April 15, is based on Azar Nafisi’s book of the same name, which explores the singular power of literature in repressive times.

“Here we extend that into the realm of theater with a range of works encompassing plays, poetry, fiction, essays and more from around the world and from across history,” Goldman says. “Selections will include material from James Baldwin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Persian women poets from centuries ago, Israeli author David Grossman, Wole Soyinka, Cambodian genocide survivor and musician Arn Chorn Pond and more. Once again, as with the larger CrossCurrents Festival, the range is expansive but the resonances and connections across them run deep.”

Woolly Mammoth will also perform an excerpt from its upcoming production of Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night.

Putting it All Together

To take on a festival like this, especially with limited resources, one needs an enormous appetite for risk, volatility, and last-minute change, and those words personify Goldman and his commitment to making this a success.

“You have to really believe in the essential core of what you are doing. At this point in the process, every single day—and night—is a true roller-coaster of emotions, someone we were building an event around drops out, but something else falls into place etc. Every day we try as a team to return to the big picture and remind ourselves why we are doing this,” he says. “This year is the pilot and we are learning a great deal, and of course making tons of mistakes, and of course there are many things we hoped to achieve that we are putting in our hip-pocket for next time.  We know we will have lots of fodder from which to build something even more special going forward.”

The Lab also depends enormously on its partners, on “creative sharing,” and on the passion of the extended tribe of Lab devotees (the Lab’s global fellows, its Think Tank made up of collaborators around the world, faculty colleagues, students, volunteers etc.) to make stuff happen.

“Our brilliant CrossCurrents producer Teddy Rodger has been indefatigable and is truly a rock at the center of the storm, and we have built a beautiful team of part-timers converging in targeted ways to help us pull this off, but this is definitely stretching every organizational muscle we have,” Goldman says.

He also notes the Lab is fortunate to have a Lab Fellows program with inspiring and path-breaking artists from around the world (Cambodia, Colombia,  Palestine, Syria, Zimbabwe, etc.) working at the intersection of theater and politics.

“Working with amazing young artists like our Fellows has been an inspiring reminder that theatrical performance can be an incredibly powerful vehicle for forging human connection across differences, and these connections become even more essential and potent in times of divisiveness and misunderstanding,” he said.

The Gathering

The festival will culminate with The Gathering, a four-day event with 200 visionary artists from around the world. The Gathering will feature inspiring productions, pop-up performances, street theater, workshops, and vibrant discussions around a suite of topics, including migration, climate, political polarization, preventing and recovering from conflict, countering violent extremism, the impact of the arts on health and well-being, and more.

“At its core, this event is about bringing together visionary artists, thought-leaders, policymakers, activists, scholars, and the next generation of change-makers from around the world in an innovative format,” Goldman says. “But really in many ways it’s about bringing people together to break bread together and to laugh and share stories and to celebrate and highlight the wide range of ways their work is harnessing the power of performance to address the pressing challenges of our world.”

While some of these events by necessity are invitation only due to our capacity issues, all of it will be available via Livestream.

“We want this to be a truly inclusive space that is accessible to anyone invested in these questions or just those curious and looking to be inspired by ways theater is making an impact on our troubled world,” Goldman says. “There will be a lobby bar open to all in the evening where people can connect in between and after the performances and our hope is that many new friendships and collaborations will be sparked here. If you’re reading this, be sure to come hang out with us.”

For more information, tickets and a complete schedule of events, visit crosscurrentsfestival.org
 

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The 20th anniversary of the mass school shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado, will be on closing night for columbinus at 1st Stage. The play was written by  Stephen Karam (The Humans) and PJ Paperelli a few years after the event.

The questions we had were the same 1st Stage had already heard from their constituents: Why produce this play now? What are your concerns about triggers which the graphic play could produce in this post-Columbine climate? Alex Levy, Artistic Director of 1st Stage, is directing the play.  Here are his responses in an emailed conversation.

Why did you decide to add columbinus to your season?

It’s a show we’ve considered for years but I was especially drawn to it as we approach the 20th anniversary of the events.  We have had interns that have never heard of Columbine because they have never known a world before it.  They have gone through their entire education understanding their schools to be targets.  I wanted them to know that there was a time before that.  This is not normal.

As a director, what were your thoughts about possible triggers from the production, due both to the fact that, as you said, some young people have never known a world without school shootings and some may have even experienced them? 

We had such a shooting here in Southern Maryland not that long ago, not only traumatizing the survivors, but the teachers, who are from the Columbine generation and to the fact that some young person in your audience may be fantasizing about carrying out something similar in the names of those shooters?

We talked about this quite a bit.  In the 15 years since the show was originally staged, a lot has changed.  So many people have been traumatized by gun violence.  It was important to Juan and me and the entire creative team that we take a different approach than the original production.  Where PJ’s production really overwhelmed us with visceral stimuli to disorient us and create a sense of terror, Juan and I have tried to find another way to tell this story.  The hope is that it is elegant and manageable.  Also, by not overwhelming with the sounds of gunshots and terror, we are able to shift the attention away from the shooters and towards the survivors who share their stories.

When we interviewed PJ Papparelli in 2012, he held parents partly responsible because he discovered many of the students were being treated medically for behavior disorders.

I won’t speak for PJ but I will say that I think it is a dangerous idea to accuse parents of a neglectful act when they allow their children to be treated medically.  I am not in anyway interested in further stigmatizing mental health issues.  Whatever personal views PJ may have had on the issue, I don’t think they appear in the play.

As a parent, I know it is an incredibly difficult time in which we raise our children.  There are so many outside forces and fewer and fewer trusted adults our kids can turn to.  I think most parents are doing their best to navigate a very difficult terrain and while there is certainly no doubt that teenagers are often living in an increasingly isolated world, I don’t think that is because of something as simple as parental neglect or neurological medicines.

What do you think will be the takeaway from your production about responsibility?

I always hesitate to say what people will takeaway from a play.  Everyone brings their own history and experiences into a story and thus they will take different things away.  I do think the play helps us understand how insignificant most teenagers feel on a day to day basis and how they act out.  Most will not turn to this sort of violence but that feeling of insignificance and not being understood never results in positive actions and when mixed with an ill mind, can be extremely dangerous.

What do you think we’ve learned since Columbine?

While, we’ve learned a lot about Columbine itself, we’ve learned very little about how to prevent these shootings.  The problem has only gotten worse and the conversations about how to fix this problem are depressingly simplistic when they happen at all.

How does your young cast regard Columbine and the subsequent shootings?

The thing that I have found is that young people are having this conversation every day.  It is my generation and older that are avoiding it.  When we announced this show, I got calls from college students and grad students asking how they can help.  They want this conversation in the public square because they are living with it daily.  Similarly, I got calls from older audience members asking why we would do this.  They felt this story was too depressing to talk about or create a show about.  Young people are begging us to have this conversation and we are largely, as a society, responding with “It’s too hard.  Let’s not talk about it.”  I think the cast is grateful for an opportunity to have the discussion.

How did they react to the two recent suicides from Parkland?

It’s heartbreaking.  We lost two survivors from Parkland and a parent from Sandy Hook in the same week.  One of the things we have spoken about a lot is that we often frame this conversation as the number of people killed in the school by a bullet.  So Columbine had 13 victims or Parkland had 17.  Of course, the number of victims is far greater.  The Washington Post estimates that since Columbine nearly 250,000 students have been in a school while a shooting occurred.  That doesn’t even count teachers, staff, family members and the rest of the community.  These shootings are taking an enormous toll on our society that lasts for decades.  We haven’t even begun to understand the ramifications of this violence on our society.

Do they or you see arming teachers as a preventative?

I won’t speak for them.  I do not and I work with a lot of teachers and have yet to meet a single one who supports this idea.  Most have told me they would leave their profession if teachers began carrying firearms in schools and many have told me they would pull their own children out of school as well.

Are any of the methods now in use helpful?

One thing I think we have to get away from is thinking that a single act will cure the problem.  It’s far more complex then that.  Lately, it has entirely fallen to the question of gun control and yes, I am in favor of making it harder for people to get extremely lethal weapons.  But the issue has to be approached on multiple fronts.  Children need more access to mental health.  We need more counselors and those counselors need more options when they have concerns.  Our schools need to be structured so that students feel seen and heard.  We need a society that supports parents better.  There is no single solution that will solve this problem.

columbinus is on stage now at 1st Stage in Tysons Corner.
Details and tickets

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