Superior Donuts

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

An alternative

They are the worlds that obey me, kinder and finer worlds: in many of them, for example, I’d have no teeth.

Because I believe I’d do better with a beak. So why not have one? That shouldn’t be impossible. I feel a beak could make me happy, quite extraordinarily content: sporting something dapper and useful in that line—handy for cracking walnuts, nipping fingers, tweezing seeds. Not that I’ve ever fancied eating seeds, but one can’t predict the path of appetite.

And beaks come in different sizes: that’s a plus, along with the range of designs. The toucan would be good for parties, shouting, grievous bodily harm. Ibis: mainly funerals and plumbing. Sparrow: best for online dating and eating crisps.

—A. L. Kennedy, “Story of My Life”

Bits are cheap

And clicking a Like button is too easy.

These are the organizations to which I gave coin, property, and/or effort in 2010. (Some of these were Christmas gifts to family members.)

A Girl’s Guide to Washington Politics

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

Yes, somehow, we are related

Kate Gosselin guests on Sarah Palin’s Alaska: Kirkland Hamill has the recap.

“I’m standing in the ‘not rain,’ that’s what I’m doing.”

* * *

Meanwhile, Sarah is becoming perkier the more Kate comes unglued. It has grown increasingly apparent as the show has progressed that her appreciation for Alaska is based partly on how miserable it makes non-Alaskans.

At the Park: 40

I was clearing out some old files, and came across this species list in a Friends newsletter from a couple of years ago. It’s a checklist of target species that Huntley Meadows Park staff are seeking to manage for. Hence the hemi-marsh restoration project. Observers are encouraged to make note of these species in the park’s logbooks. Largely for my own reference, the list(s):

  • April-July
    • Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (Nyctanassa violacea)
    • American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus)
    • Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis)
    • Virginia Rail (Rallus limicola)
    • King Rail (R. elegans)
    • Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)
    • Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps)
    • American Black Duck (Anas rubripes)
    • Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata)
    • Green Treefrog (Hyla cinerea)
  • October-March
    • American Black Duck (Anas rubripes)
    • Green-winged Teal (A. crecca)
    • Blue-winged Teal (A. discors)
    • Gadwall (A. strepera)
    • Northern Pintail (A. acuta)
    • American Wigeon (A. americana)
    • Northern Shoveler (A. clypeata)

Out of joint

Laura Sydell posts about indie filmmaker Ellen Seidler’s fight to protect her And Then Came Lola, a “lesbian romantic comedy,” from pirate sites. The e-mail response that Seidler received from Sven Olaf Kamphius, who’s associated with Pirate Bay, is appallingly childish.

Kamphuis’s e-mail comes out strongly against any kind of copyright protection. He dismissed Seidler’s references to United States copyright law by saying: “ … the laws of that retarded ex-colony cannot be enforced here, thank god;).”

I have my own issues with the current overly protectionist copyright laws of this country, but they don’t extend to ripping off an entrepreneur who’s made a movie on her own dime. Sydell says that Seidler has decided to get out of the movie business. When the arrogance of the Pirate Bay crew means that creative innovation is stifled, something is wrong.

There isn’t a lot that I can do to solve this problem, but at least I can buy a copy of Seidler’s movie.

At the park: 39

Yesterday, Huntley Meadows Park manager Kevin Munroe, along with staffer Elena Ryan, gave a recap of plans for restoration of the park’s central wetland. Much has changed and much has stayed the same since plans were discussed in public meetings in 2007. Since then, the commonwealth has okayed the dam design as meeting “special low hazard” criteria, reflecting projections that the impact downstream of a failed dam during a 100-year storm would be no worse than if the dam weren’t there at all. However, the county’s Department of Public Works and Environmental Services insists on a 600-foot wide spillway to the north of the dam, to mitigate the potential of the earthen structure being overtopped. Such a spillway would stretch most of the way from the observation tower to the hike-bike trail.

So Kevin and his team are (somewhat reluctantly) considering a concrete structure instead, which would provide its own spillway. They’re looking at designs and facings that would temper the aesthetic intrusion of an obviously man-made structure. Kevin showed one slide of a dam at the Patuxent reserve that looks not unattractive, to my eye.

Plans to remove and replant have also been shelved, along with dredging and construction pools. As Kevin put it, the intention is to use water levels to manage the plant life.

Elena Ryan has been looking at the relationship between rainfall and water levels in the wetland. She’s got two years of observations from a water level gauge positioned off the boardwalk on the near side of the tower. Her regression analysis tells her that for every inch of rainfall, water levels in the wetland rise 3.25 inches over the course of three days.

Kevin recapped the purpose of the restoration project with the following elevator speech (paraphrased by me): Beaver marshes move through stages of succession; one of these, the hemi-marsh, shows the highest level of biodiversity; because both biodiversity and marshlands are in decline, the Park Authority and Huntley Meadows community are working to manage the wetland to hemi-marsh conditions.

This summary introduces a term of wetland ecology new to me: the hemi-marsh. A hemi-marsh (also known as low-water marsh) is characterized as a 50-50 mix of open water and emergent vegetation. However, it’s a relatively unstable condition. Since mid-century or so, the park’s wetland has been oscillating between wetter lake marsh/high-water marsh conditions (at the extreme, a eutrophic lake), and drier wet meadow/dry marsh conditions.

Hemi-marsh conditions favor certain bird species of concern in our region, among them Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis), Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus), Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps), and King Rail (Rallus elegans), considered an indicator species for hemi-marsh.

chowing downAfter talks, we took a brief walk with Kevin in the park as late afternoon came on. Ice has begun to skim the water edges. My fingers and toes haven’t developed their winter anti-freeze yet. Northern Shovelers (Anas clypeata) and Green-winged Teal (A. crecca) have moved in for the season; most of the male shovelers are out of their eclipse plumage and are dressed for breeding already. An American Beaver (Castor canadensis) seemed more interested in his crepuscular meal than in our small party.