Category: Reviews

The last play in August Wilson’s cycle of Pittsburgh plays, Radio Golf, is set in 1997, at a time when the city’s black upper-middle class is enjoying both economic good fortune and the prospect of genuine political power. The parallels between protagonist Harmond Wilks—African-American real estate developer and aspiring mayoral candidate—and the Current Occupant are emphasized in this production, right down to a Shepard Fairey-inspired campaign poster. Yet , inasmuch as Wilks’s fortunes rise and fall on the basis of some illicit real property transactions, he more closely resembles the more self-destructive President from his own decade.

Walter Coppage’s Wilks, empowered to the point of smugness, as well as the rest of the cast, seem pinned down by the staging in this production: there’s too much of a feel of “this is where I stand for my monologue.” Some transitions are forced: characters change the topic of conversation for apparently no reason. At least that’s the case until the electrifying closing scene when all of Wilks’s deals fall apart and Coppage gets to cut loose.

Easily stealing the show is Frederick Strother in the chewy comic role of “Elder” Joseph Barlow, a shuffling street person who resists Wilks and partner’s attempts to gentrify his Hill District neighborhood.

• Radio Golf, by August Wilson, directed by Ron Himes, The Studio Theatre, Washington

Fever/Dream is a manic comedy of ups and downs on the corporate ladder. In a way, the fortunes of its protagonist Segis (Daniel Eichner) reflect the wild swings of stock market prices and corporate health, as we say, In This Economy.

Segis, a customer service drudge literally chained to his desk (yes), one day is lifted by his hitherto unacknowledged father to a different desk, one in the executive suite. How he squanders that opportunity and falls back into his previous life (as if the changes were nothing but a dream), then finds a new way to the top is the engine of the play’s narrative. Playwright Sheila Callaghan has brought forward a four-century-old classic by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream) and given it new life, while retaining most of its structure and themes—suppression of a child, succession to empire. The current play works as a corporate spoof, eager to let us see its own artifice, and as such brings to mind a meld of Urinetown, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, and classical soliloquizing drama.

An ensemble of cubicle drones and bean counters, choreographed by Meisha Bosma, keep the scene transitions snappy. A massive set piece, running down right to up left, looking like a Madison Avenue skyscraper lying on its side, serves as projection screen for the vlogging chorus, and with its five doors, it provides the requisite insides and outsides. This high-rise screen also backdrops a juddering Bloomberg ticker and an early expository text message exchange between corporate plotters Stella Strong and Aston Marton (the always welcome Kate Eastwood Norris and KenYatta Rogers). Scenes set in Segis’s call center dungeon are less successful, as the lowering of the stage floor creates sightline problems for us in the orchestra.

In a parallel plot, Kimberly Gilbert’s Rose seeks the lover who has forsaken her, and she is accompanied in her quest by the dweeby figure of Claire, played by Jessica Francis Dukes. Known to us for her straight roles, Dukes’s superb turn as a comic dork is a revelation.

• Fever/Dream, by Sheila Callaghan, directed by Howard Shalwitz, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Headbanging intellectuals! Joy Zinoman and her team bring to life Stoppard’s retrospective look at the last decades of Communism in Czechoslovakia, filtered through a haze of pot smoke and scored by the popular music of the time. Her coup is the casting of Stafford Clark-Price as the Czech dissident Jan, a stand-in for the playwright; Clark-Price’s uncanny resemblance to Sir Tom is matched by a nuanced performance, especially touching when emotions force a choked cry out of Jan. Also noteworthy is Lawrence Redmond’s scene as the flinty interior minister of this once-satellite of the Soviets.

Seeing the show late in the run, we noted an uncharacteristically squeaky floor on the set, as well as some perplexing costume and makeup choices. But the key challenges of this script rich in language (think of how many of Stoppard’s stories begin with a language lesson, often a translation) and steeped in Socialist history are met by this production, and the text’s burdens borne lightly.

• Rock ‘n’ Roll, by Tom Stoppard, directed by Joy Zinoman, The Studio Theatre, Washington

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.

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

The designers for Round House Theatre’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice have produced a masterful solution to the challenge presented by this, shall we say, post-modern Romantic play. It’s a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus (Adriano Gatto)—the skilled musician who loses his wife to death, goes to the Underworld to retrieve her, escorts her back to to life on condition that he not look at her, and loses her again—told this time largely from her point of view. What should you do when you are lost to someone you loved? Is is less painful to remember and regret, or to drown in the waters of forgetfulness?

Rather than precisely specify a ground plan and a look for her plays (think of the precision of Williams or Beckett), and rather than leave everything up to imagination (Shakespeare), Ruhl demands that the director and designers fill in the gaps with their own creativity. Consider, for instance, these stage directions from movement 2, scene 3:

The father creates a room out of string for Eurydice.
He makes four walls and a door out of string.
Time passes.
It takes time to build a room out of string.

Set designer Clint Ramos, lighting designer Colin K. Bills, sound designer Matthew M. Nelson, costume designer Kathleen Geldard, and movement coach Karin Abromaitis have collaborated to create a techno Hell to hold Eurydice (wide-eyed Jenna Sokolowski) and her father (Harry A. Winter, a petit bourgeois with quiet dignity): multiple playing levels on a grid of industrial scaffolding, a series of water effects that start very small and end up harrowing, punked-out kandy-kolored costumes for the Greek chorus of stones, Big Stone (KenYatta Rogers), Little Stone (Linden Taylor), and Loud Stone (Susan Lynskey). (In an inspired last-minute response to recent laryngitis, Lynskey is currently signing her part in ASL, no easy trick when you’re hanging off the side of that scaffolding.) Presiding, as it were, as the Nasty Interesting Man/Lord of the Underworld, is the always-fun-to-watch Mitchell Hébert.

• Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Derek Goldman, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland

The friendly space at 7th and D welcomes a traveling production from Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company of the provocative Hell Meets Henry Halfway, with text by Adriano Shaplin, after a work by Witold Gombrowicz. Gombrowicz, Polish playwright and novelist of the avant garde, is best known (if at all, in this country) for the novel Ferdydurke.

The current offering, according to playwright Shaplin, is an adaptation of the first 40 pages or so of a gothic novel that Gombrowicz himself considered hack work. And frankly, not a lot happens, but it’s intriguing to watch it unfold. Traveling separately, a pudgy tennis pro (Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel) and a doctor of unspecified discipline (Steve Cuiffo) arrive at a small pension, the pro to give lessons to spoiled young woman Maya Okholovska (bitchy, neurasthenic Sarah Sanford) and the doctor to attend to the deranged sole resident of the fourth floor, known only as the Prince (actress Bel Garcia). The establishment is overseen by the titular Henry Kholavitski (wound-up-tight Dito van Reigersberg), fiancé of Maya. Serving the role of engaging us in the story is Jon the Ball Boy, played with juvenile goofiness to the point of idiocy by James Sugg. There is savage, ironic coupling; there is betrayal and death; there are rewards and returns.

Pig Iron’s approach is heavily movement based, as evidenced by a painstakingly slow, small, precise series of actions in a scene for Cuiffo’s Dr. Hincz; it makes for a nice opposition with the delicious, quotable language by Gombrowicz/Shaplin. Sugg and Shaplin provide the score for the production (nearly every scene has music behind it), featuring a menacing pulse that sounds like half of a heartbeat. The small-footprint set is by Matt Saunders, anchored by back flats painted in grisaille like the most fatal of Mark Rothko’s dark horizons. At the center, nearly a seventh cast member, is a magic wardrobe, which pivots into position or takes on additional furniture to become, for instance, an entrance hall, a railway carriage, a dining table, or a bedroom.

A running gag, if you can call it that, is Henry being pelted by tennis balls thrown from the wings, as if in some Beckett outtake. This play is Beckett grown more expansive, sexier, more grotesque; our polite titters of dread at times erupt into guffaws. But in the interest of accentuating the positive, let’s give Jon the last word: “How many for nothing? Hands up! How many for something? Hands! Okay! Something wins! Me too!”

• Hell Meets Henry Halfway, conceived & created by Pig Iron Theatre Company, text by Adriano Shaplin, after Possessed by Witold Gombrowicz, directed by Dan Rothenberg, presented at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Woolly Mammoth brings the Chicago zanies back for another entertaining, provocative installment of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (previously reviewed). At December 17’s manifestation, the troupe nearly succeeded at packing all 30 plays into the allotted 60 minutes, bailing out only on #11, “Lacquer This to Your Driftwood Clock.” This team—Sharon Greene, Jacquelyn Landgraf, John Pierson, Caitlin Stainken, and Jay Torrence—could be tagged as “Now! With More Estrogen!” as the strongest pieces of the evening were written from a female perspective. Among these were seeking-validation “Let’s Pretend Mommy and Daddy” of universal applicability, the love letter with soap bubbles “Non-Toxic Miracle,” and the, shall we say, informative “One for the Ladies” about toilet seat etiquette. Warning: “Les Lesions Dangereuses” is not SAFD-certified. Fans of the Neo-Futurists’ preposterous titles were rewarded with “Having Missed Its Cue, the Orange Entered Hurriedly, but Once on Stage It Found That It Had Forgotten Its Lines Entirely and Remained Paralyzed Before the Audience for What Seemed Like an Eternity.” At least the orange hit its mark.

• Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, created by Greg Allen, written, directed, and performed by The Neo-Futurists, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington

How did we get here? How we know for sure? And most importantly, how do we tell the story of how we got here? These are the questions explored in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s thought-provoking Boom, a highly theatrical science-fiction riff on one culture’s creation story.

Thomas Kamm’s set design for the show does its darnedest to treat Woolly Mammoth’s proscenium-shaped space like a black box. A basement biology research lab with attached living quarters is pushed forward into the auditorium, removing the first three rows of seats; while an upper-level playing space is extended to wrap around to the balcony seating: the effect is a little like the bowl of an operating theater.

In the lab, mysteriously fortified like a bunker, Jules (ever-endearing Aubrey Deeker) and Jo (tough chick Kimberly Gilbert) meet up for a few drinks and some premeditated casual sex—or perhaps the poorly socialized marine biologist Jules has other plans for the two of them. Deeker finds a way to reveal Jules’s unique geekiness without sliding into stereotype. The action is punctuated by loud Kubrickian movie music and louder timpani rolls from Barbara (infra-manic Sarah Marshall), up in the gallery. Jules and Jo don’t seem to be aware of her, although Jo gets a migraine every time Barbara hits the drums, but Barbara seems to be following their story as if she were reading a score.

When disaster strikes, Jules is prepared, more or less; Jo lodges herself somewhere between the denial and anger stages of grief; and Barbara seems to have it all under control.

The piece has some lyrical, positive moments. Jules explains that “biology is optimistic” (somehow I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before) and that even mass extinctions result in the favorable outcome of new life: the radiation of the mammals from shrews, for instance. And there are some quite funny bits: we all loved the story of the “Halliburton Shale.”

Are there gaps in the narrative? Perhaps. Does the quality of Jules and Jo’s sexual history make sense? Not really. But then there are “gaps in the fossil record,” too.

It all comes unravelled in the end, of course. Jules holds the keys to new life, but doesn’t know it. And as for Barbara, well, imagine Zardoz in charge of the Creation Museum.

• Boom, by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, directed by John Vreeke, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Jason Grote takes his characteristic approach to a “kitchen-sink drama” in the new Maria/Stuart. Three sisters in suburban New Jersey-Pennsylvania revisit some frightful family history and eventually confront a sordid, if petty, secret. A slight story, as it goes, but Grote drapes the story on the armature of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 play of nearly the same name, Maria Stuart. The earlier play, part of the canon of so-called Weimar Classicism, is a retelling of the sixteenth-century politico-religious conflict between Elizabeth I of England and Mary I of Scotland—a retelling that is particularly sympathetic to the cause of Mary, who was eventually executed by Elizabeth.

Dry stuff? Not at all, for Grote’s aesthetic is a magical, goofy, yet cerebral theatricality that can encompass lowbrow and high: food fights and references to Chekhov, Pynchon, and Borges (well, at least I thought the Borges joke was funny). Not two scenes into the first act and we’ve seen soda pop, stuffed olives, and cornstarch spilled on the floor. It’s not for nothing that house management tries to leave the front rows of the theater unsold.

The two families (Marnie’s and Lizzie’s) are haunted by a shapeshifter, who appears as other members of the family and is (conveniently) played by in turns by the corresponding cast members. The shapeshifter arrives in a tinkling of sound and disappears in a nice let-the-wires-show “poof!” of actor-blown dust. The shapeshifter, spouting bits of Schiller (its first scene calls for the complete German-text libretto of the closing movement of Beethoven’s choral symphony) and digging around in family cupboards looking for the evidence of past misdeeds, turns from sprite to demon as the Marnie and Lizzie resist the story’s revelations.

The third sister, emotionally wounded Sylvia, played by company favorite Naomi Jacobson, has lost both her hands in a failed suicide, so the part gives Jacobson a star turn opportunity to show us Sylvia the compulsive eater, scarfing junk food and using prosthetics to pick cheese puffs out of a Costco-sized jar of them. Washington theater vet Sarah Marshall also produces some good shades in her work, in the first act as the grandmother Ruthie and in the second act as the menacing shapeshifter.

Not all the theatrical effects work well: smoke and fog effects seen through the window of the set that doubles as Lizzie’s and Marnie’s kitchens seemed to come and go at random. And, in the end, the awful truth that links Marnie, Lizzie, Marnie’s son Stuart, and Lizzie’s daughter Hannah comes across as inconsequential and the acts leading up to it unmotivated. Perhaps this story of the twenty-first century is but the tip of the shadows cast by the plots of Mary and Elizabeth, the ones that led to the rise of the Stuarts.

• Maria/Stuart, by Jason Grote, directed by Pam MacKinnon, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Rabbit Hole explores the grieving of a Westchester family stricken by the senseless, random death of their four-year-old boy Danny. Alas, the exploration—at least in this production—doesn’t dig very deep.

While Danny’s father Howie (sturdy Paul Morella) turns to external ways to deal with his pain—group therapy, and (it is hinted) some extramarital support—his wife wife Becca (Deborah Hazlett) copes with the loss by more subtle, effacing means. She “accidentally” erases a home movie of the boy, puts the family home on the real estate market, and just tries to forget.

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire is better known for his offbeat comedies (Wonder of the World, Fuddy Meers), so the character of Izzy, Becca’s kid sister and general screwup, comes to his keyboard easily. She pumps some energy into the piece, especially as played by Megan Anderson. Izzy starts the show looking into the refrigerator, and is never far from the kitchen, scarfing bites of torte from the pan or washing down creme caramel with orange juice. Izzy, in time, accomplishes some growth of her own along with Becca and Howie.

But apart from a well-crafted monologue for Becca’s mother Nat, there isn’t too much that’s flashy in the writing of this piece. It proceeds in its own quiet, suburban way.

• Rabbit Hole, by David Lindsay-Abaire, directed by Mitchell Hébert, Olney Theatre Center, Olney, Maryland

Longacre Lea’s new production is a lyrical brain tickler, a serio-comic mystery packed with erudition. Perhaps too well-packed: at a running time of three hours, the piece is on a par with much of the work of one of the playwright’s touchstones, Tom Stoppard.

In the fall of 1963, Elizabeth and Barbara Sweeny, ostensibly daughter and mother, travel to an obscure French pension to consult in discretion with Dr. Giraud (played with hilarious sniffy eccentricity by Jason Lott) to learn the cause of Elizabeth’s mysterious affliction. The only other guests in this small hotel are a CIA-ish American and two playwrights: Tennessee Williams drinking incognito and the yet unpublished Stoppard himself. While the opening scene suggests Stoppard’s Travesties, the hotel’s smugly efficient proprietor (nice work by Daniel Vito Siefring) speaks with an accent more in keeping with one of Sir Tom’s adaptations of Molnar.

Elizabeth soon meets the shadowy Mr. Asher (oh-so cool Michael John Casey), who explains that he is a collector of sun myths from cultures around the world. In his evening visits, Asher tells several of these to Elizabeth, and each is a lovely bit of writing, a set piece for the cast/ensemble to illustrate choreographically. Unfortunately, it’s only in the story told solo by Casey that the play’s solar fables really shine.

The play, premiering in this production, needs some tightening. There’s an awkward transition in the second act that reveals the facts of Elizabeth’s complaint to the rest of the guests. However, the arc of Elizabeth’s journey is compelling, and its resolution (with its whiff of another master of contemporary fantasy, Craig Lucas and his Prelude to a Kiss) is quite satisfying.

• Theories of the Sun, by Kathleen Akerley, directed by Jonathon Church and Kathleen Akerley, Longacre Lea, Callan Theatre, Washington