Category: Theater

Lance Coadie Williams runs away with the show with his opening scene, a monologue by Reverend Benson, a neighborhood preacher who gives up some of his own revelations from the altar: Williams’s mastery of rhythm, dynamics, and timbre is marvelous. Perhaps the work as a whole, a series of scenes (calling on the five actors to play multiple roles, sometimes even within the same scene) that show facets of the life of a young man growing up gay and black, doesn’t quite hang together. The closing scene of Act 1 offers a frame into which all the pieces might fit, and it certainly provides a novel, anti-climatic way to end an act, with the house lights already up and the characters slouching off one by one. But playwright O’Hara gives us a confusing message about the dynamics of racial and sexual identity: the black and/or gay playwright/characters in the scene refuse to engage with the gormless white moderator of the “Conference.” And maybe that’s the point.

Certainly there is much here that’s entertaining, such as the scene in which a couple and their friends get away to a sunny island for a “non-commitment ceremony” to give back their rings and exchange handwritten vows of “F U!” Company member Jessica Frances Dukes is one of the best parts of the “Happy Meal” scenes, as she’s asked to play a pre-schooler, almost wordlessly. And the intriguing “Mug,” another monologue, this time for the fearless Sean Meehan, is dressed cleverly by set designer Tom Kamm. To suggest a late-night Brooklyn street corner, he brings in a bus stop sign, but since the post itself isn’t needed, it’s only the sign itself that flies in.

• Bootycandy, written and directed by Robert O’Hara, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Using a cast of three, Brook and Estinenne present four of Beckett’s short dramatic pieces, plus a bit of prose serving as transition, in a production that takes the Angl0-French-Irish master’s limited theatrical requirements and strips them down still further. Perhaps not surprisingly, generally this works, as in Rough for Theater I, where B’s wheelchair is nothing more than a black rehearsal box fitted with wheels. As B poles himself along, he takes on the grandeur of a quondam samurai. And Rockaby is improved by eliminating the recorded voice and giving all of those lines to Hayley Carmichael, who delivers a clear, multi-colored, wrenching reading. But we do miss the rocking chair.

In Act without Words II, Yoshi Oïda as A is completely overmatched by Bruce Myers as B in the physical comedy departments; Oïda is reduced to mugging. In his spoken pieces, Oïda’s command of language also introduces an unwanted barrier.

The suite closes with a truly peculiar and graceless version of Beckett’s Noh piece for three aging schoolgirls, Come and Go, with two-thirds of the cast in drag.

• Fragments, texts by Samuel Beckett, directed by Peter Brook and Marie Hélène Estienne, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

The use of a prison setting for the recital of familiar material is well-known for its effect in theater, from Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, set in colonial Australia, to the legendary production of Waiting for Godot by the San Francisco Actors Workshop at San Quentin. And here it works again, in the powerful Oedipus El Rey by Luis Alfaro, an ensemble retelling of the myth from Sophocles and the Greeks by tattooed inmates of a correctional facility in southern California.

In Alfaro’s version, Oedipus (the flexible Andres Munar) is born to a Latino drug kingpin in Los Angeles and spends his exile in North Kern State Prison; on his release, he follows the fated steps of killing his father Laius (David Anzuelo, an onstage character added from the Sophocles version) in a road-rage incident, taking over the family narcotics business from Creon (the intense Jose Joaquin Perez), and marrying his mother Jocasta (the fearless Romi Diaz).

Classical and contemporary elements blend well in this piece. A runway thrust stage (designed by Misha Kachman) ends upstage with a pair of industrial doors that evoke the devices in Greek theater, traditionally sliding away to reveal the results of bloodshed offstage—but here the sex and violence is front and center. The blinding of Oedipus is especially well-done: terrifying without making us fear for the safety of the actor. Choral work by Mando Alvarado and Jaime Robert Carillo is short, sharp, and sometimes funny, rather than rhapsodic; we liked the Coro’s remarks that explain the cruelty of Laius’s abandonment of Oedipus as “fathers sometimes do that.” Yoga, doo-wop, tai chi—all the pieces come together. While there are few passages of monologue, there is at times in the writing a gritty lyricism, as when Jocasta likens her tears to the Los Angeles River, usually dry and channeled, but gushing when in flood.

• Oedipus El Rey, by Luis Alfaro, directed by Michael John Garcés, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Tracy Letts returns to the trope of onstage violence with Superior Donuts, set in a seedy Uptown Chicago neighborhood. And the impressive fight, choreographed by Robb Hunter, is well executed by Richard Cotovsky (as donut shop proprietor Arthur) and Chris Genebach (as small-time criminal Luther). But the acting laurels go to Johnny Ramey in an endearing performance as Franco Wicks, an African-American youth with issues; in the course of working through them, he helps Arthur to master some of his own.

Arthur, a Vietnam-era draft evader who still hasn’t given up his beard and pony tail, has made it his life’s work to keep other people at arm’s length. So perhaps it’s a character choice, or perhaps just the length of the show’s run (it opened 10 November), that Cotovsky in his monologues of remembrance doesn’t take his time and make a connection to us in the audience.

Gregor Paslawsky does well with the character of Max, a neighboring merchant with designs on Arthur’s real estate, shifting from menace to exasperated comedy with ease.

The ground plan of Russell Metheny’s set excellently solves the familiar problem of actors being trapped behind a store counter by turning around the U of display case and seating so that its open section is downstage, placing the street entrance door directly upstage. The scene transition that calls for Arthur’s shop window to be boarded up is also smoothly handled.

• Superior Donuts, by Tracy Letts, directed by Serge Seiden, The Studio Theatre’s Metheny Theatre, Washington

For the holiday break, this is an entertaining evening of blackout comedy, mixing political caricature and straight-up social satire, with a good salting of silly cabaret songs. Although our audience dotes most on the monologues by Todd Palin and Nancy (“I’m not bitter”) Pelosi, the strongest material includes sketches like Joey Bland and Lili-Brown’s study in race relations reversal. Klyph Stanford’s minimal Metro-inspired set is clever (and up-to-date, with red platform lights). Of the five-member ensemble, Brooke Breit stands out with the widest spectrum of sharply realized characters, ranging from a twelve-year-old with an overactive sense of entitlement to an apoplectic consumer finance adviser. The bits, 30 seconds or five minutes long, transition swiftly with no more set or prop requirements than a couple of black IKEA chairs. There are some genuine good laughs on offer here.

• A Girl’s Guide to Washington Politics, written and performed by Chicago’s The Second City, directed by Billy Bungeroth, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

The technical team shines in House of Gold, Gregory S. Moss’s satirical fantasia on hypermultimedia and sexualized celebrity that leaps off from the JonBenét Ramsey murder case. David Zinn’s three-level set incorporates any number of devices that simultaneously heighten our experience and put distance between us and the proceedings: mirrors above an attic bedroom, a candy-colored dungeon in which our best views are not live but rather via video projections. The glossy white kitchen on the middle level is of necessity serviceable to the closing scene’s mayhem.

The play’s narrative covers some familiar ground, but it is not concerned with the facts of the case, considering that all of the principals (an over-committed investigator, a skeevy neighbor, a fat schoolfriend with identity issues, parents with their own fading dreams) share in the culpability—not a whodunit but a wedunit. As audience, we are asked why we devote so much energy to such a tawdry, gruesome case: at one point, The Girl (the assured Kaaron Briscoe), trying to avoid hearing a horror story told by Jasper (the generously endowed Randy Blair), cries, “That’s awful!—Then what?”

Emily Townley as Woman has an arresting monologue about her own loss of youth, “…when I no longer bent the light.”

Matt Tierney’s sound design is killer. It ranges from a subtle, almost inaudible easy listening underscore to dangerously loud piercing alarm sirens. Actors wear body mics or use handheld mics on stands: often it’s the electronically amplified words that express a character’s innermost thoughts. Those handheld mics capture other sounds on stage, as in the stunning opening breakfast scene where the noises of frying sausage and crunching toast are fired like domestic weapons.

• House of Gold, by Gregory S. Moss, directed by Sarah Benson, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington