Month: April 2009

Red Herring

Fairfax County’s newest professional company turns in a balanced ensemble performance of John Hollinger’s waterfront sendup of assumed identities, 1950s-era Commies, and the G-women who chase them. 1st Stage meets the challenges inherent in the script—lots of little scenes scattered across “Boston, Wisconsin, and the South Pacific”—with a masterful yet inexpensive set design (uncredited) built from a palette of packing crates and plywood and a crew of two period-costumed Grips (Kate Karczewski and Conor Dinan) who perform most of the scene shifting. Thus an entire kitchen is conjured from a waist-high box, a mixing bowl, and a package of oatmeal. The cast of six doubles up to cover seventeen speaking roles, each with a clearly distinguished dialect. Wireless audio embedded in several of the moving set pieces is also a nice touch to localize the sound of a radio or television.

Hollinger’s script offers some tasty technical turns to the actors, including a second-act opener that hinges on the audio delays on an overseas telephone call: the bit calls for syllable-level timing from Katie Foster as Lynn and Lucas Beck as James. The playwright sometimes strains to put a comic button on the end of each of those little scenes, and the plot left a few of us mystified at intermission.

  • Red Herring, by John Hollinger, directed by Jessica Lefkow, 1st Stage, Tysons Corner, Virginia

1st Stage’s performance space is a generously-ceilinged black box with good sight lines (seating about 140) in an industrial park. The company’s web site, unfortunately, is overburdened with Flash effects and rather opaque when it comes to providing information.

At the park: 29

The subject of my term paper for the Introduction to Ecology class that I recently completed is Huntley Meadows Park. The paper is a little long on data and short on analysis, but I’m happy with it. From the introduction:

Huntley Meadows Park comprises approximately 1,425 acres (577ha) of freshwater wetland and surrounding forest in southern Fairfax County, Virginia. Managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA), it is the County’s largest park, and features the largest (70+ acres, 28+ ha) non-tidal marsh in the area. Bounded by housing subdivisions to the north, east, and south, and government installations to the west and southwest, the Park is an island of blue and green prized by casual strollers and scientific specialists alike. It is particularly valued by naturalists for the unique diversityof the habitat to be found there, especially considering its urban/suburban surroundings. Guidebook writers and editors like Scott Weidensaul [Weidensaul92] and David W. Johnston [Johnston97] have singled out the Park for special attention, noting that its mix of woods and water makes it a popular spot for Big Day birders; Weidensaul calls the Park’s very existence “utterly improbable,” encroached on as it is by the busy traffic corridors of U.S. 1 and Interstates 95 and 495. The main entrance to Huntley Meadows Park is only three miles from the Huntington terminus of Metro’s Yellow Line, and hence the Park is a short trip from anywhere in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

At the park: 28

lone egretadaptive reuseMaples are leafing out, offering some shade in the unseasonal midsummer heat. Frogs are everywhere, including a pair of Green Treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) resting inside our one plastic nest box. At least something is getting some value from it. New arrivals seen/heard/reported: Yellowlegs sp., Solitary Sandpiper, Great Crested Flycatcher, White-eyed Vireo, Red-eyed Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler (a singing male and a no-bins look at a foraging female), Ovenbird. A Tufted Titmouse is squatting in box #5 again.

Another one down

From Missy Frederick for the Washington Business Journal comes the unhappy news that Timberlake’s restaurant in Dupont Circle will be closing at the end of May, to reopen under a new identity. Timberlake’s was one of my favorite places to get brunch and a glass of wine before a 1:30 movie on Saturday afternoon—at least, back in the days when I could knock back a frittata without thinking about the cholesterol impact. The decor was nothing special, garden variety wooden booths and pub furnishings: the place was just dang comfortable.

All My Sons: an update: 1

We did a stumble-through of Act I of All My Sons outdoors in the Saturday sun, which is appropriate as that act takes place on a hot weekend morning. Then we moved indoors to get through most of Act II. I/we haven’t worked much on the top of Act III, which is actually OK because I haven’t learned the words yet.

One of the advantages of working with Providence is that the company has generous access to the performance space in the James Lee Community Center for rehearsals and set building. Indeed, we start building set, in place, next weekend, five weeks in advance of opening. Every performance space has its good points and bad. The stage at the Lee is a conventional proscenium, I’m guessing twenty feet by fifteen; but the wing space is extremely shallow (about three to four feet) and there is no fly space: all the curtains only travel. Dressing and green rooms are off left; since the white cyc lies nearly flat against the upstage wall, I don’t yet know how actors get into place for stage right entrances. Something else I noticed: there’s no fire curtain.

At the park: 26

New cattail growth is ankle-high, and the understory in the forest is starting to green up. We had our first box hatch out on Friday (according to reports from a photographer), and the hen and thirteen ducklings put on a show skittering about the main pond this morning. Unfortunately, we’ve also had our first nest failure, as box #3 has been predated and the remaining two eggs abandoned. Common Yellowthroats and American Coots made their first appearance this week; Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers were numerous. Myra found a Meadow Vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus) feeding by the boardwalk.

In past weeks, at least one Virginia Rail (Rallus limicola) has been audible and fleetingly visible, and a passing-through Sora (Pozana carolina) was reported the week of March 29. Jennifer spotted a Beaver on that trip, too. Common Snipe and Great Egrets have also arrived.

No applicable category

Very nice profile of sui generis cartoonist Lynda Barry by Christopher Borrelli for the Chicago Tribune. The richest praise is from fellow cartoonist Chris Ware:

“…just as Charles Schultz created the first sympathetic cartoon character in Charlie Brown, Lynda was the first cartoonist to write fiction from the inside out—she trusted herself to close her eyes and dive down within herself and see what she came up with. We’d still be trying to find ways into stories with pictures if she hadn’t.”

I read with dismay that Barry has discontinued her weekly Ernie Pook’s Comeek, but then again the local free weekly stopped running decent cartoons before that.

Antebellum

A young and naive Jewish woman of Atlanta, looking forward to seeing the world premiere of Gone with the Wind with her husband, is accosted by a mysterious black woman; while the commandant of a mid-1930s German prison camp maintains a peculiar relationship with one of his black prisoners: the links between these two stories drive the action of Robert O’Hara’s play, one that is not altogether satisfying and at times overcome by didacticism. The connection that is eventually revealed between two of the characters is not backed up by some necessary physical and character choices. On the positive side of the ledger, each of the cast of five delivers committed performances in challenging roles that require, by turns, physical intimacy and vulnerability and raging power.

  • Antebellum, by Robert O’Hara, directed by Chay Yew, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington