Category: Theater

Keegan Theatre delivers a solid production of this story of the accomplished businesswoman Marlene (Karina Hilleard), recently promoted to managing director of her employment agency, who may be having second thoughts about the sacrifices she has made to ensure her success. The trippy opening scene, a dinner party to which Marlene has invited five women from history and legend, crackles with energy, a mashup of the real and the imagined.

The core drama, set in early Thatcherite Britain, hasn’t lost any of its bite in today’s world of grabby reality show hosts, underserved people in need, and open secrets. Caroline Dubberly is a standout as Angie, a special needs young girl who’ll likely never finish high school, but who understands things that none of the adults in her life ever will.

• Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, directed by Amber Paige McGinnis, Keegan Theatre, Washington

The standouts in this frothy entertainment are old school Eddie Korbich as Hines, the officious time and motion man, and Prez, played with gawky grace by Blakely Slaybaugh. Korbich gets his taps on for “Think of the Time I Save” and takes a turn with Broadway éminence Donna McKechnie in “I’ll Never Be Jealous Again”—two dance breaks that aren’t frequently seen. Slaybaugh gives us a comically acrobatic “Her Is.”

Which is to say that the choreography by Parker Esse and its execution are top notch: we loved the tape measures as streamers and hula hoops for “Once a Year Day.”

• The Pajama Game, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, directed by Alan Paul, Arena Stage Fichandler Stage, Washington

In the Heights is a richly-textured soundscape and dancescape of immigrant life in New York’s Washington Heights in the early years of this century. From the broad strokes of redevelopment pressures to the fine details of transit (“There’s no 9 train now”), the rendering is vivid and precise. Miranda and Hudes skillfully advance character and plot within a big set piece like “The Club”/”Blackout” in short, economical phrases.

The text is brought to marvelous life by director/choreographer Marcos Santana. For the most part, the downstage thrust area is kept open; Milagros Ponce de León’s set pieces can be pulled on wagons to bring us into the interior of Usnavi’s bodega, or Daniela’s hair salon, or Kevin and Camila’s car service office.

Although the young people’s hopes and dreams drive most of the story, I was particularly smitten by Danny Bolero’s “Inútil,” a song of mature longing in which he sings of the frustrations of being his father’s son and of not being able to do well enough for his family. And the Piragua Guy’s (Tobias A. Young) interludes are a pleasant mood-relaxer.

The offstage band sounded somewhat disembodied, and at Sunday’s show, some of the mic cues could have been executed later rather than sooner.

• In the Heights, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, book by Quiara Alegría Hudes, directed by Marcos Santana, Olney Theatre Center and Round House Theatre, Olney, Md.

Woolly Mammoth takes a bold step… into the past, with its mounting of a play from the mid-20th century. The Swiss playwright Max Frisch’s fable, first presented in 1958 (as Biedermann und die Brandstifter) and in a new translation by Alistair Beaton, is a cry against middle-class complacency when confronted with looming evil. It’s not a particularly subtle work, with a narrative arc that angles straight down. There are Brechtian touches of distancing. Bits of dialogue are repeated, and the language can be rather stilted–cut across with fourth wall-breaking direct addresses to the audience.

Businessman George Betterman (Howard Shalwitz, dusting off his nebbishy) is visited (or invaded?) in his living room by Joe Smith, a down-and-outer, played by Tim Getman. Getman (skinheaded and bushy-bearded) does some strong work here, riding a line of simmering threat and emotional blackmail. Betterman (a bit of a sketchy dealer himself, truth be told) invites Joe under his roof, probably against his better judgement. There is a suspicion, at first just a soupçon, that Joe has something to do with the rash of arson fires that have plagued Betterman’s city. Betterman wants to show compassion, to engage with Joe. But Joe just ramps up the stakes, first bringing his friend Billie Irons (Kimberly Gilbert, all sweetness and sand) into the house without asking, and then rolling in some very ominous looking storage drums. There’s no guile to Joe and Billie: every time they’re asked, they tell you what they’re doing at that particular moment.

The question that Frisch poses to us (nay, flings at us) is simply: at what point do you say no to Joe and Billie? When Joe first walks in the door? When they are asked what’s in the drums, and they flatly reply, “Gasoline”? When, at the play’s culmination, they ask Betterman for a mundane favor that is the key to the final conflagration?

The play’s strength is its weakness. We can read so many different conflicts into it, from freedom fighters vs. fascists of all stripes, to narcissist national leaders who escalate pissing contests into nuclear exchanges.

• The Arsonists, by Max Frisch, in a new translation by Alistair Beaton, directed by Michael John Garcés, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

This wistful drama with comedy from 1990 gets its first Broadway run, powered by a name-brand cast. The technical means afforded by the American Airlines Theatre make for smooth scene changes (and there are a lot of them); the revolve makes sense here. The cast is gently amplified. Nevertheless, this is a play that wants to be in a smaller house.

Celia Weston is a good sport in playing Ruth, a character who largely serves to provide comedy in the form of euphemisms for constipation and an improbable remote control device.

It soon becomes clear that the important, interesting story arc is the relationship between Bessie (never flashy, always on task Lili Taylor) and Hank (Jack DiFalco). Their quiet one-on-one scenes, well directed by Anne Kauffman, take the time that they need. (But at times, we wish that Hank’s volume to be pumped up a bit.)

• Marvin’s Room, by Scott McPherson, directed by Anne Kauffman, produced by Roundabout Theatre Company, American Airlines Theatre, New York

The Book of Mormon is an entertaining mix of potty-mouthed irreverence (it takes balls to trash a faith shared by fifteen million people) and old-school, conventional stagecraft. Set pieces roll in on wagons; curtains fly and travel in and out; a brief side diversion to Orlando, Florida is accomplished by nothing more than a vividly painted drop. The proscenium frame, suggesting a temple, with its clumsily animated Moroni, is the right mix of splendor and cheese. Musically, there’s nothing challenging here.

Even more subversive is the white boys’ chorus (set against a second ensemble of actors of color and both genders): as young missionaries ready to go out and convert the world, they are squeaky clean, with just a hint of possible man-to-man attraction. That tension is completely blown up by the number “Turn It Off,” led by Elder McKinley (the very able Stephen Ashfield) and sexily choreographed by Casey Nicholaw. A transformation enabled by a reference to The Clapper is too good to spoil (and how did they manage the shoes)? Some of the boys appear in drag in re-enactments of Joseph Smith’s days on the frontier, and the drag works here.

If the running gag with Elder Cunningham’s inability to pronounce Nabulunhgi’s name wears out its welcome immediately, the confrontation between Elder Price (Nic Rouleau gives good teeth) and the General (working that eyepatch is Derrick Williams) that caps “I Believe” is quite tasty.

My takeaway is that, no matter what our belief system, the stories we tell ourselves are “so fucking weird.”

• The Book of Mormon; book, music, and lyrics by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone; directed by Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker; Eugene O’Neill Theatre; New York

Chelsea Marcantel’s examination of group dynamics within an Amish community, when it is subjected to both the external shock of an outsider committing a careless deadly act as well as the eruption of casual, intimate violence between two of its members, is called Everything Is Wonderful, a title with irony as solid as a horse. Telling one of its stories through fragments of the past and present, it follows Jessica Savage’s Miri, a young young Amish girl who leaves the community under a cloud and seeks a way to return. Savage masters the younger Miri’s innocence, her older self’s sarcasm, and her constant headstrong feistiness. Paul DeBoy is the stolid Jacob, Miri’s father. Director Ed Herendeen, festival helm, puts the expansive Frank Center performance space to excellent use, composing effective stage pictures while managing a couple of the script’s messier technical challenges.

The spine of this piece is a remark by Jacob (helpfully reprinted in the program book: “Forgiveness is a choice. It happens in an instant. Reconciliation is a journey.”

We Will Not Be Silent, by David Meyers, picks up the case of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance movement in 1943’s Germany. An imagining of the interrogation of Sophie (the delicate Lexi Lapp) during the shockingly short period of time between her arrest and her trial and execution (five days), the play zeroes in on the question of conscience vs. self-preservation. Like Arthur Miller’s John Proctor, Meyers’ Sophie vacillates between signing a confession, a mere tissue of words, and maintaining her integrity. Her interrogator is the urbane Kurt Grunwald (Paul DeBoy, again), who can play good cop against his own bad cop. He lets a simple line like “I see” hang in the air like a dagger.

Lest readers infer that playwright Meyers approaches this material from the same point on the political spectrum as Miller, be advised that he is a former intern in the George W. Bush White House.

The title town of Evan Linder’s Byhalia, Mississippi lies just southeast of Memphis, and it earned a page in this history of American civil rights with the shooting of Butler Young, Jr. in 1974, the exoneration of his killer, and an ensuing backlash. Linder’s play, set in the present day, looks at the dysfunctional marriage of Laurel and Jim, a young white couple trying to get by, while the town’s history echoes all around.

• Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
• Everything Is Wonderful, by Chelsea Marcantel, directed by Ed Herendeen
• We Will Not Be Silent, by David Meyers, directed by Ed Herendeen
• Byhalia, Mississippi, by Evan Linder, directed by Marc Masterson

The Niceties, by Eleanor Burgess, is this year’s festival production most likely to spark discussion in the car on the way home. Zoe (the centered Margaret Ivey), an African-American junior at an elite university somewhere in Connecticut, is in conference with her Polish-American history professor Janine (the buoyant Robin Walsh, who brings a little Christopher Durang to the part), reviewing a draft term paper. What begins as guidance about Zoe’s research methods (Janine urges fewer online links, more primary sources) spirals into an extended argument between the two women, who are separated by generation, race, and perhaps other qualities. Granted, Janine is sometimes culpable of some measure of whitesplaining. Zoe’s need to call out Janine for certain insensitive remarks (a gleeful anecdote about wordplay and British imperialism on the subcontinent, for instance) spirals into a full-on shouting match. The piece compensates for its lack of theatricality by being smart and balanced. We eventually learn that Zoe has enjoyed many advantages unavailable to those she considers her peers, while Janine has suffered some long-simmering prejudice.

There is a power reversal reminiscent of David Mamet’s Oleanna, and a somewhat unclear denouement. Will Zoe work incrementally within the system, as Janine advises, to shape curricula and faculty that better reflect the experience of marginalized people? Will she rage against the machine from without, refusing compromise? Or will she escape the fight altogether, becoming a 21st century Josephine Baker?

Easily overlooked in the play’s back and forth about class and race is the conflict over what constitutes historical scholarship in this century. What weight are we to give crowdsourced emotional responses, for instance, against a documentary record dominated by a particular socioeconomic group? How do we match the unwritten experiences of 18th-century enslaved people with the Federalist of Hamilton, Jay, and Madison? The rage of a Trump rally with a peer-reviewed research paper?

The provocative exchange between these two intelligent women, alas, outstays its welcome. The text needs some trimming.

• Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
• The Niceties, by Eleanor Burgess, directed by Kimberly Senior