Category: Theater

In their temporary digs in Crystal City, Arena delivers an effective, if modest, production of Guettel’s small-scale musical of an American mother and daughter on tour in post-war Italy, an abbreviated family unit in which daughter Clara may be less than she seems. The simple set is lit well by Michael Gilliam: moving instruments allow us to move adagio with Clara and her mother Margaret through the streets of Florence,—although elsewhere in the show, the projections of famous Florentine paintings against the set are sometimes a distraction.

Clara falls in (as American girls will do) with a charming, handsome Italian, one Fabrizio, who has an endearing partial command of English as well as the first act “Il Mondo Era Vuoto,” sung by Nicholas Rodriguez with muscular brio. Indeed, some of the best music in the show is sung in Italian, especially the spiky second act opening quintet, “Aiutami.”

But the story, and the evening, belong to Hollis Resnik’s Margaret, who brings a mature clarity to “Dividing Day.” In the second act, when she cuts short a long-distance phone call to her husband Roy, she gives a little yelp, as if startled by her own determination to carry out her plans.

• The Light in the Piazza, book by by Craig Lucas, music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, directed by Molly Smith, Arena Stage, Arlington, Virginia

Fourth wall-breaking opens this production of Charles Mee’s one act on the life and works of assemblage artist Joseph Cornell, a man who found both sides of the picture post card equally interesting. Preceding Wilderesque self-introductions, the cast solicits donations from the audience of found objects to be arranged into a box construction in the course of the play. (Can it be called a fourth wall when the stage in the black box Kogod is configured galley style?) In any event, it’s a nice touch to open this 70-minute fantasia, a co-production of the University of Maryland theater department and Round House Theatre. Scheduled for presentation at Round House’s space later in the year, let us hope that certain aspects of the production settle into more of a performance groove by then.

Mee’s intriguing, deceptively challenging, script effectively conjures the dream-like world of Cornell, one of infatuations with shop girls, devotional consumption of sweet treats, obsessions with movie stars, and tender caring for his infirm brother Robert. It’s a universe where a ballerina can drop by with a chocolate cake, or a lonely artist working in a basement can burst into song. The text enters Cornell (Equity member Scott Sedar, who approaches the role with bemused gravitas) into dialogues with his contemporary artists (Gorky, Duchamp, Matta) as well as a chorus of three men (coached by Leslie Felbain) who flounce like twittering birds—and in each case. we’re not sure how much of each dialogue is projection by Mee’s Cornell onto the other speakers. There are longish passages where Cornell watches Hedy Lamarr and Lauren Bacall in Algiers and To Have and Have Not, and he recites the dialogue along with—but to Sedar’s credit, not mechanically like a Rocky Horror Show fan, but rather a beat before or after the sound track, as one who is remembering in real time.

The standout among the ensemble cast of student actors is James Waters, as a member of the flittering birds chorus and as a character called the Astronomer: he delivers his monologues with a cool economy of means.

• Hotel Cassiopeia, by Charles L. Mee, directed by Blake Robison, University of Maryland Department of Theatre and Round House Theatre, Smith Center Kogod Theatre, College Park, Maryland

Mee himself constructs plays as a collagist. He writes:

…I try in my work to get past traditional forms of psychological realism, to bring into the frame of the plays material from history, philosophy, insanity, inattention, distractedness, judicial theory, sudden violent passion, lyricism, the National Enquirer, nostalgia, longing, aspiration, literary criticism, anguish, confusion, inability.

I like plays that are not too neat, too finished, too presentable.

For a man who spends two hours sitting behind a desk and talking, Mike Daisey reveals an energy and grace in his movement worthy of a tai chi chuan master. Steepling his fingers to make a point, then softly melting them to the side, storyteller Daisey explores in his current offering at Woolly Mammoth the peculiarities of the natives in the islands called Vanuatu and the big island called Long, and shows them to be hilariously ridiculous in equal measures.

If his analysis of the past years’ financial embarrassments is rather glib, bad economics, Daisey’s perception that we experience the spongy bottom of the current recession to be disappointingly mild—in his word, “AWK-ward,”—is acute. And his parsing of the false egalitarianism at a New England liberal arts college into the contents of the boxes unloaded by each arriving freshman, some of them with technological riches that inspire him to say, “our shit is AWESOME,” is well executed.

He is better off on his trip to a speck of land in the South Pacific, the island of Tanna, to observe the playing out of an annual rite, part village festival, part perverse appropriation of Western culture. At one point in the spectacle, a man is chased in circles by another man, the pursuer wearing a fright mask from the movie Scream: this is explained to Daisey by an interpreter as “President Obama being chased by a dragon.” Oh-kayy. Daisey, a generously proportioned man, figures that he is a match for anything unusual or unpleasant on offer by Tanna’s cuisine. But, as he comically bellows in a richly modulated voice, “the fermented yam paste proved me wrong.”

It’s Daisey’s control of his polychrome voice, which can range from the avuncularity of Garrison Keillor to the manic jeremiads of Chris Farley, often in the same paragraph, sometimes in the same sentence, that makes for such an entertaining evening.

• The Last Cargo Cult, created and performed by Mike Daisey, directed by Jean-Michelle Gregory, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Kern and Hammerstein’s breakthrough musical gets a simplified and trimmed production in Arlington. This 1927 show from the novel by Edna Ferber shows the traces of turn of the century operetta and music hall—songs that don’t fit into a simple verse-chorus structure are plentiful and two songs of the period are interpolated—even as it takes on social issues, chief among them race and class relations. Plays that capitalize on backstage shenanigans are so common as to pall (if I see one more riff on Moon Over Buffalo I can’t be held responsible for my actions), but the current piece, which follows 40 years in the life of a Mississippi River show boat of traveling players (something like vaudeville with a paddewheel), is still charming.

Some of the cast manage the challenge of aging four decades in the course of the evening more gracefully than others. Delores King Williams’s Queenie, of the supple voice, is a pleasure to listen to. She’s part of the most energetic and enjoyable number of the show, the playful “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” from Act 1. The dancing in this number is modest, but appropriate to its time. Elsewhen in the show, swing player Patrick Cragin, playing the role of hoofer and stage villain Bobby Smith last Saturday night, also shows some fancy tapping.

The show’s signature song, “Old Man River,” is a lovely piece, but I found the choice to reprise it twice (with little change in emotional temperature) a bit odd while chunks of plot were clearly jettisoned in Act 2 to keep the running time down. When Joe (amiable VaShawn McIlwain) takes the dynamics of “I’m tired of living,/And scared of dying” to a 10 the first time through, there isn’t any place for him to go. Notwithstanding, music director Jon Kalbfleisch’s orchestra of fourteen supports him with one clean, clear voice.

• Show Boat, music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, directed by Eric Schaeffer, Signature Theatre, The Max Theater, Arlington, Virginia

Tracy Letts is working here on a larger canvas than his earlier Killer Joe and Bug, but he has not left behind his signature deadpan violence, both verbal and physical. The tour of August: Osage County brings the darkly comic story of the crumbling of a small-town semi-patrician Oklahoma extended family, extended sufficiently that we are happy for the headshot-enhanced family tree in the program (the sort of thing that helps us through Shakespeare and Chekhov). Events of the play are sparked by the disappearance of the father, poet and professor Beverly Weston (the superb John DeVries, showing us some of the salt and grandeur of Robert Ryan in his day). Yes, there are shocking reveals and pandemonium, but the work’s theme is in the running down; as one character remarks in the third act, “Dissipation is much worse than cataclysm.”

With such an expansive script, every actor has a moment or a monologue in which to shine, chief among them the headliner Estelle Parsons as Violet Weston, the barbiturate-fogged wife of Beverly. Paradoxically, it’s her dinner table explosion of invective (fueled by drugs and decades of resentment) that sets up her even more effective quiet scenes later. Shannon Cochran also comes on strong as eldest daughter Barbara, who tries and fails to keep the shards of this house together.

The huge three-level set, the Weston homestead with the front wall sliced off (“a dollhouse for nasty people,” as one of us may have said), is impressive, but Violet’s final climb to the top takes so long that the beat seems to lose momentum. For a piece that depends on physical violence, the design and execution of the fight choreography is disappointing. But we liked the subtle flickering light effects that stand in for the television unit set in the fourth wall. And the subtle and nearly flawless sound amplification means that actors can sit on both sides of the dinner table and we can still hear everyone.

• August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

The most effective pieces in this year’s offerings (seen on December 8) don’t have much to do with one another. Some depend on Eliza Burmeister’s goofy gymnasticism, like “Zen and the Art of Flight,” or the politically charged “Dear NRA suggestion box: I would prefer not to be shot in the head.” Like comedy’s threes, it’s the third repetition of the final image of this piece, run in slow motion, that is the visceral payoff. Others are more ensemble pieces, like “Windsprints.” Bilal Dardai’s self-referential multi-layered sound soup “With All the Time I’ve Wasted Browsing the Wikipedia…” is another winner. And then there’s Mary Fons’s exuberant performance art “‘Crush’ (with Potato Stamp Stars)” to bring us back to the creative nexus of second grade art class.

Memo to front-row ticket holders: wear something waterproof.

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

Not even a minor technical derailment in the third act can hinder the momentum of this venerable piece of American theater, which first appeared in 1927. This light comedy still has the power to summon chuckles, albeit not guffaws. The first act’s biggest line can perhaps only be played for applause instead of a laugh, as it is in MTC’s production. Kaufman’s gift for mayhem blends well with Ferber’s deep-rooted sense of family tradition—whether she’s writing about Midwestern farmers or here, the Cavendishes, a slightly veiled stand-in for the talented and mercurial Barrymore family of actors at the top of the American twentieth century. It is a play that calls up W-words to describe it: waspish, wistful, wacky.

Director Doug Hughes spins up the tempo to near-farce levels, overlapping as much expository dialogue as he can and more. A booming sound effect for the front door (about which I am ambivalent) sets a bass drum rhythm that keeps the show on pace to stay under the three-hour mark.

Jan Maxwell as Julie, flinging herself about the stage in the first act like the colt she once was, is nicely balanced by Ana Gasteyer as the grasping, talent-free Kitty. In early scenes of bickering with her husband Herbert (John Glover as a graying leading man), Gasteyer’s elastic mug looks like she’s just gulped a glass of vinegar. However, as the frenzy spirals up in the second act, both of the ladies’ performances skate on the edge of caricature.

Reg Rogers brings the swash and buckle as rakish Tony (the would-be John Barrymore), especially in a very good fencing sequence at the top of Act 2 with Rufus Collins.

A meticulous, beautiful two-and-a-half level set by John Lee Beatty is lit by Kenneth Posner (who places countless practicals in this grand New York apartment).

• The Royal Family, by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, directed by Doug Hughes, Manhattan Theatre Club, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York

The set (panels of corrugated tin) for Bill T. Jones and his collaborators’ new production spills out into the auditorium of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre (even as far as the exit doors), promising to break the boundaries between performance and viewer. As we enter, the ten-piece band, led by Aaron Johnson, is already rocking. Yes, there will be dancing in the aisles.

What the evening delivers is not quite so revolutionary, but entertaining nonetheless. This review of songs drawn from the work of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Nigerian musician and activist, is brought off with high energetic athleticism, heart and soul, and fiery politcal rage. The book for the musical, however, is inconsequential and choppy: Fela is haunted by the ghost of his mother Funmilayo, who apparently died in the course of a government raid on Fela’s compound. It is his mother, we can only conclude, who actually accomplished more towards reform in West Africa in the 1970s. Fela takes a spirit journey (admirably realized with fancy light effects, video projections, and lasers) to reconcile with her, and then the show’s over. (Alas, some of those lighting effects tend to blind us in row Q.)

Jones’s production doesn’t put a face on the corruption against which Fela (on this evening, the charismatically muscular Sahr Ngaujah) militates; there’s no dramatic arc to the work. As an audience member, one always feels vaguely manipulated when asked to stand and perform a bump-along of hip-shaking dance moves. And the jokey passage about crap and marijuana should be cut.

The unseen (but not unheard) star of this show is Stuart Bogie on tenor and percussion, who ghosts the wailing sax played by Fela.

(Disclosure: I saw this production thanks to the generosity of one of the technicians on the production staff.)

• Fela!, conceived by Bill T. Jones, Jim Lewis, and Stephen Hendel, music and lyrics by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, Eugene O’Neill Theatre, New York