Category: Theater

Along with economic dislocation, the 1970s are surfacing as a minor theme of the festival. That’s the setting for Allison Gregory’s very strong Wild Horses, a one-woman play in flashbacks to the Me Decade and its music of rebellion. Kate Udall portrays seven-plus characters in the life of a fractious 13-year-old girl. Udall’s young girl finds a couple of sketchy friends, raids her parents’ liquor supply, begins to understand the fraught system of human physical relations, and hatches a futile plot to rescue abused horses from a nearby ranch. The coming of age story has shades of Equus set in the Southern California foothills. Udall’s vocal choices are at times difficult to distinguish when three characters are speaking quickly, but she gives each a distinguishing gesture to keep things sorted out. Physically, she is even more accomplished—for instance, a darkly comic scene on a water bed—and especially when she conjures leading a horse with nothing but a looped belt. She gamely climbs on the roof of a vintage van to re-enact her girl’s escape from a bedroom window, even though the set piece could use some serious reinforcement. And she’s quick with an ad lib, whether it’s a bit of costume gone wrong or she’s gotten ahead of her story.

• Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
• Wild Horses, by Allison Gregory, directed by Courtney Sale

The Festival experiments with an immersive experience in Studio 112, seating audience members around picnic tables in the playing area (on backless benches, please note) and selling concessions from a side window let into the aforementioned van.

Welcome to Fear City, set in the Bronx of 1977, tells a straightforward, earnest story of economic uncertainty, racial profiling, random violence, and misguided choices. It’s much in the vein of Lorraine Hansberry. The 1970s dance break is entertaining, but perhaps that’s not playwright Kara Lee Corthron’s artistic objective. She frames the story with some fourth wall-breaking devices that are less than successful. At points, the characters speak their subtext in an exaggerated shuck an’ jive that is gratuitous. And the coda, a polyrhythmic chant, leaves us feeling a tad manipulated.

There’s a subplot that develops towards the end of the first act—is this a flirtation, or an incitement to arson?—that, unfortunately, goes nowhere.

• Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
• Welcome to Fear City, by Kara Lee Corthron, directed by Nicole A. Watson

Emily Townley brings considerable skill to the role of Paige, the long-suffering mother of a dysfunctional family in this preachy satire with themes of gender fluidity and the fight between chaos and control. She delivers a rainbow of colors in her line readings; of particular note is Paige’s signature phrase, “It’s fantastic,” when reality is anything but. Alas, the events that unfold constitute little more than a revenge fantasy.

Misha Kachman’s first act set is a treat, dressed in glitter, googly eyes, feather boas, and TP sculptures, and a smiley-face throw pillow. It’s as if a tornado blew through a Michael’s.

• HIR, by Taylor Mac, directed by Shana Cooper, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Pointless Theatre’s latest offering is an interesting blend of low- and high-tech stick puppetry and video projections. In a strange futurescape populated only by robots — yet powered by the life forces of Navi, the one remaining human — a small glitch in the system becomes transformative. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough plot or distinct characterization to carry the story. All of it is falls on the shoulders of Navi (ably performed by the nimble-tongued Navid Azeez).

• .d0t:: a RotoPlastic Ballet, Pointless Theatre, Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint, Washington

Alison Bechdel’s unflinching memoir, translated into musical theater, has effectively managed the transition from chamber musical to a more conventional proscenium, big-theater setting. Nevertheless, it is the quieter song moments that are most effective: Abby Corrigan captures the joy of Medium Alison’s “Changing My Major” with her voice and without overselling the number physically; Alessandra Baldacchino’s reading of Small Alison’s “Ring of Keys” is confident and still fresh. The cast is well supported by the sound team, allowing characters to turn upstage when it’s natural to do do without losing audibility.

• Fun Home, music by Jeanne Tesori, book & lyrics by Lisa Kron, based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, directed by Sam Gold, National Theatre, Washington

Woolly continues its admirable run of productions in which people of faith—specifically, Christian faith—are front and center, with their questions and fears driving the story. (I think of 2011’s A Bright New Boise as another fine example.)

In Baby Screams Miracle, Carol and Gabe, parents of young Kayden (an odd, withdrawn little girl) are beset by a mounting series of calamities. A storm sends a tree crashing into their house, the storm growing to tempestuous levels. The technical demands of the script are masterfully met by James Kronzer’s set and Jared Mezzocchi’s video projections.

As the punishments visited on the family rise to Old Testament proportions, we wonder what part Kayden plays in this narrative. Is she a malevolent instigator? Are these calamities all in her imagination?

• Baby Screams Miracle, by Clare Barron, directed by Howard Shalwitz, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s ambitious, admirable musical, with a story drawn from Kushner’s life, concerns an African-American maid (Nova Y. Payton, in the title role) and her relationships with the Jewish family that she works for in 1963 Louisiana.

The first act doesn’t give us much information about what’s going on in Caroline’s head, since much of the time she’s not singing to another person, but rather to the various appliances in her basement workspace—and, in a nice touch, they sing back: the Washing Machine (Theresa Cunningham), the Dryer (V. Savoy McIlwain), and girl-group trio Radio. Alas, sound mixing in some of the multi-voiced passages makes it difficult to follow the various lines.

Tesori’s spiky score of many influences unfortunately saddles the eight-year-old Noah Gellman, son of Caroline’s employers, with a clichéd, squeaky, pitchy vocal line for most of the show. And the musical passages for the Moon don’t get into orbit.

In the second half, a scene centered on a Chanukah party is energized by the arrival of father-in-law Mr. Stopnick (the sufficiently nimble Scott Sedar)—one of Kushner’s antediluvian radical stand-ins—and the flow of contentious dialogue. The klezmer-splashed music also gives this section a boost.

Payton’s late-act aria (“Lot’s Wife”) is quite powerful.

• Caroline, Or Change, music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, directed by Matthew Gardiner, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Md.

Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss is an ambitious, but unsuccessful attempt to bring the horrors of violence in today’s Syria into the American living room. A supposedly found text, a fluffy four-handed love triangle, is first interpreted as melodramatic soap opera, and then with cartoonish, expressionist violence.

Good theater takes real, specific events and reimagines them so that universals can be revealed. In this work, Calderón’s imagination fails him.

The play is presented not in Woolly’s auditorium but in its Smith/Melton Rehearsal Hall, with seats wedged in on risers. Viewers nostalgic for Woolly’s funky former space on Church Street will feel at home here.

• Kiss, by Guillermo Calderón, directed by Yury Urnov, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Come from Away is a celebration of the profound act of kindness performed by the citizens of Gander, Newfoundland, when 38 aircraft were diverted to its airport on 11 September 2001. For nearly a week, this community of fewer than 10,000 souls opened its homes and shelters to the stranded passengers from those flights.

The ensemble-driven musical tells, by composites, some of the many tales that these travelers have to tell; it doesn’t shy away from stories of loss (the penultimate number “Something’s Missing”) or of irrational fears (an Egyptian sojourner is eyed nervously), but it is fundamentally a play about sharing and hope. Generally fast-paced (the transition into a brief scene set in the maelstrom of an air traffic control tower on that horrid day is electric), there are brief moments when everything comes to dead stop for comedy—as you would, for instance, when a moose ambles in front of your bus. A revolve is used to good effect, giving the characters of Nick and Diane a way to stroll along the cliffs of the Dover Fault (“Stop the World”) while the cast scurries about placing chairs for them to step to. Most importantly, it’s a show that calls for an ensemble of mostly character actors, notably Astrid Van Wieren’s welcoming schoolmaster Beulah, Joel Hatch’s suite of local mayors, and Geno Carr’s slightly befuddled local constable.

The music is traditional Maritimes folk music with a strong rock and roll bottom—if not particularly challenging, it’s certainly rousing. It stirs the emotions.

• Come from Away, book, music, and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, directed by Christopher Ashley, Ford’s Theatre, Washington

A short post to call out just a couple of the exceptionally strong elements of the Round House/Olney Theatre Center joint production:

Jon Hudson Odom is delightful as Belize; Dawn Ursula’s keening as the Angel is other-worldly. The production relies much on fun projections by Clint Allen and lights by York Kennedy: the arrival of the Angel, the alien streetscape of San Francisco, the talking dummies at the Mormon visitor center.

• Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, by Tony Kushner, directed by Jason Loewith and Ryan Rilette, Round House Theatre and Olney Theatre Center, Bethesda, Maryland