Category: Theater

Time Stands Still is not a play that will wrap everything up for us in a tidy package, that will tell us what we need to know and feel about putting your life and values in danger to do journalism in a war zone. Rather, this comedy-drama requires that we do the work ourselves, guided by what the characters do and say: Sarah and John, together for eight years as foreign correspondents, and their friends Richard and Mandy, a May-December pairing that ultimately bears fruit and happiness. And they do not always express themselves consistently: photographer Sarah (the deeply resourceful Holly Twyford) especially, who shields herself from atrocity with her camera lens and a workmanlike defense that taking pictures is “doing my job,” and yet is shaken by a bleeding woman in a market, victim of a bombing, who smears blood on Sarah’s lens, crying “no pictures!”

It will come as no surprise that Sarah begins and ends her journey on the reporter’s side of the mental barrier that divides her from the civilian, despite her life-threatening injuries from a roadside bomb attack. What’s perhaps more interesting is the move to the nurturing center taken by her partner James (the funny, solid, loving Studio newcomer Greg McFadden), even if it does entail a retreat to pseudo-scholarly writing about pop culture and celebrity interviews for Vanity Fair. And let us not overlook Mandy (played by Laura C. Harris with serious depth), who begins the play as the earnest, pretty young thing girlfriend, a figure of ridicule by Sarah and James (Sarah’s look to Richard when Mandy feels it necessary to define “pro bono” is genius) and becomes a grounded, articulate voice for getting on with the task of living here and now.

John McDermott’s lovely live-in New York apartment set on the Metheny’s thrust stage at times presented a blocking challenge; a character would come to the extreme lip of the stage for a monologue with no reason to be there except to talk to us. And I had the feeling that occasionally light spill into the audience was a source of actor distraction.

The piece is one of Donald Margulies most accomplished, unified works, an equal to his Dinner with Friends (albeit with fewer working kitchens required).

• Time Stands Still, by Donald Margulies, directed by Susan Fenichell, The Studio Theatre Metheny Theatre, Washington

Bill Cain’s play is an accomplished piece of, shall we call it, imagined history. We know that William Shakespeare (however he really spelled his name) spun his plays (especially this histories) to suit the times: the last of the Tudors, the first of the English Stuarts, the unresolved religious conflicts. Cain asks, what if Shakespeare were more directly involved in contemporary political events than the annals of 400 years have revealed? What if a royal commission, objectified on stage by a red sack of money that is tossed from player to player like someone’s still-beating heart, overlay a complex political conspiracy and counter-conspiracy? His answer is an intriguing piece of theater with a wide sweep of echoes and allusions, ranging from The Parallax View by Alan Pakula, to The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard, to Shakespeare’s own Murder of Gonzago and Porter scene.

Indeed, the script is full of nuggets that tickle the fancies of the Shakespearean aficionados among us. It’s a little surprising that this production, a remount of the 2009 Oregon Shakespeare Festival premiere, is presented on Maine Avenue rather than father north along Seventh Street. The ensemble cast has had the time to fine-tune some wonderful characterizations, first among them Jonathan Haugen’s gimpy-legged government official, Robert Cecil. A powerful man, used to getting his way, Cecil can silence objections with nothing more than a “sst.” Richard Elmore’s irascible Richard Burbage and John Tufts’ comic turn as James VI/I are also quite fine.

As the play slips back and forth through flashback and theatrical “reconstruction” of the same events, one of the characters directly asks us, “A ‘true history.’ How could there be anything true about a play?” Cain’s answer may lie in my favorite definition of a myth: not a word of it is true, and every word of it is true. Perhaps the same can be said both of Cain’s piece and the historical record of the events that sparked it, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

• Equivocation, by Bill Cain, directed by Bill Rauch, Arena Stage Kreeger Theatre, Washington

An entertaining, quite funny dollop of dark blackout comedy and Chicago-style audience abuse that brings these holiday tidings: “the world is a creepy place.” Of the six-member ensemble, Travis Turner stands out in a sketch in which he is called on to impersonate a domineering, supportive mother. Woolly company member Jessica Francis Dukes gets to show her musical chops with some serious belting. Maribeth Monroe is handy with a swiffer, cleaning up after an especially bloody scene. All four men of the ensemble do well with perhaps the deepest sketch of the evening, an exploration of race and cultural values as personified by Chicago’s two hapless baseball teams. And a hat tip to the evening’s followspot operator.

• Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies, written and performed by Chicago’s The Second City, directed by Billy Bungeroth, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

We loved the details in this performance by which John Hurt and the production team make the piece their own: the cloud of dust when Krapp drops the ledger on the table; the overhead light fixture with one of its two bulbs burned out; the squeaky boots; the way that Hurt’s Krapp says spool like he’s enjoying a private joke. Perhaps most saucily, Hurt treats the squared pool of light that defines his den as something tangible: as he paces, he walks out of the light, then stops short, as if he’s hit a physical barrier.

He executes the material at a measured one-hour pace that some might find a little off-putting. And we missed the snatches of the hymn “Now the Day Is Over” that are scripted for Krapp. But in sum, it’s a performance to treasure.

I used to think that the piece could be adapted to more contemporary recording technology, but after seeing this performance, I doubt it. The meticulous fiddling and threading of a reel-to-reel tape recorder gives the play a breathing space, almost scene breaks, that would be lost if Krapp were merely popping DVDs into an optical drive slot.

• Krapp’s Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett, performed by John Hurt, directed by Michael Colgan, produced by the Gate Theatre Dublin, performed at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington

Sarah Treem’s The How and the Why explores some interesting topics in the way that science is practiced today, most notably, the apparent lack of interest in aspects of human biology that are specific to females: why does menopause occur? what function does menstruation serve towards the perpetuation of the species? But the piece suffers from a severe case of theatrical compression that compromises its believability.

Zelda Kahn (played by Liz Pierotti), a senior professor of evolutionary biology, meets for the first time a young unpublished researcher (graduate student? post-doc? the text isn’t clear) named Rachel Hardeman (with whom she shares a past that will come as little surprise). After some awkward moments that owe something to Oleanna, Rachel is invited to explain the gist of her research, which she does in a spirited monologue (played well by the passionate Nora Achrati). Although Rachel doesn’t yet have the data to back up her hypothesis, after one or two gently probing questions Zelda becomes a champion of her work and arranges for Rachel to present at an imminent conference—an slot has opened up unexpectedly. Look to plays such as David Auburn’s Proof for a more nuanced look at how minds are won in math and science; aha! moments like this don’t happen.

There’s also some confusion in language. The characters toss around the word “abstract” to refer to Rachel’s work, as if it comprised all the methods, evidence, reasoning, and citations. Anyone who’s ever cracked a journal understands that an abstract is no more than a précis of one paper: 150 words that tell you why you want to read the whole article.

The second act takes place after the conference, where the two scientists meet in a seedy bar (well designed by Richard Montgomery: nothing says underground rock club better than a row of 12×12 columns plastered with old show posters). Rachel’s youthful reaction to the Q&A after her presentation is plausible—she feels personally attacked, and is considering abandoning her research—whereas Zelda’s exhortation to buck up and continue working is undermined by Pierotti’s tentativeness in her role. Zelda needs to show more starch. On the other hand, her wisdom is an effective foil to Rachel’s fresh inventiveness.

• The How and the Why, by Sarah Treem, directed by Lee Mikeska Gardner, 1st Stage Theatre, Tysons Corner, Virginia

The opening image of A Bright New Boise is a powerful one: Michael Russotto’s Will stands under a highway overpass, shouting for the end of the world. Will, like all of us, is a seeker of truth, a man trying to find meaning in his life; however, the particulars of his journey are out of the theatrical ordinary, for Will has recently parted company with a millenarian congregation in northern Idaho, and perhaps has left his religious faith behind as well.

When the apocalypse comes, who’s to say it won’t come to the break room of a chain store specializing in arts and crafts?—a chain whose labor practices (enforced by Pauline, the excellent Emily Townley) would make many an HR professional’s hair stand on end. For it is there that Will tries to put his economic house in order, and maybe build some bridges to the past. A standout among his misfit coworkers is the limp-haired Anna (Kimberly Gilbert), a woman with an unmodulated voice and limited social skills.

In the end, Will remains a curiosity for us, despite an honest performance by Russotto. The barriers he has raised against the emotional and financial shocks of the world leave him isolated, and it’s difficult for his to feel empathy for him.

• A Bright New Boise, by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by John Vreeke, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Forum Theatre finds its way through the deep woods of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, a fantasia on the events in Romania before, during, and after December, 1989, when the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu was removed.

Acts 1 (before) and 3 (after) unfold in short, elliptical scenes, often wordless. A priest might converse with an angel, or a vampire with a dog, or merely a father with his wife, the family radio turned up to deafening volume lest the security police listen in. Everywhere is uncertainty: who fought whom during the regime change, and with what motive? Someone says, “we don’t know who we know,” while another explains an architect’s artifice of arranging for sunlight in an enclosed space.

The crux of the play is the compelling Act 2, in which the ensemble cast directly address the audience with the house lights turned up, each actor performing a single character’s monologue of what happened that December. From time to time, the voices overlap, bringing forth the image from Churchill’s epigraph, in which ancient Bucharest’s wooded plain, braided by multiple streams, was seen by outsiders as a place of madness. Matt Dougherty has an especially effective turn as a bulldozer driver and construction worker (on the job that became the Palace of the Parliament) sidelined by the political upheaval.

• Mad Forest, by Caryl Churchill, directed by Michael Dove, Forum Theatre, Silver Spring, Md.