Orson’s Shadow

This imagined reconstruction of the unlikely collaboration of Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier on a 1960 production of Rhinoceros amuses, but fails to excite. To be sure, two egos as large as those of Olivier and Welles have not collided on a Bethesda stage since Shakespeare, Moses, and Joe Papp several seasons ago, and two more colorfully neurotic artists in eclipse (Welles’s truimphant Citizen Kane already nearly two decades in the past, Olivier on the verge of dropping his second wife, the forlorn Vivien Leigh) would be hard to find. But how much spark can a play generate when its first act climax is a hiring decision?

Wilbur Edwin Henry is particularly effective at capturing the bear at bay that was Orson Welles at mid-career.

  • Orson’s Shadow, by Austin Pendleton, conceived by Judith Auberjonois, directed by Jerry Whiddon, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland

Vigils

“Plants grow and die at the same time each year, and that makes them easier to love.” So says one character in Woolly’s current offering by Noah Haidle, a bittersweet fantasy about love, death, and letting go; the play’s theatrical construction has hints of Tony Kushner and Craig Wright.

Widow (all character names are anonymized to role names) has spent the last two years of her life mourning the death of her firefighter husband. Her clinging to the past takes on physical form, as she keeps his Soul (the surprising Michael Russotto) locked in a box at the foot of her bed. Widow (the always-strong Naomi Jacobson) and Soul replay and replay scenes from their less-than-happy life together—their marriage was forced by an unplanned pregnancy, which subsequently ended in a miscarriage— in sort of a Truly, Madly, Deeply meets Groundhog Day mashup. Unable to control their memories, Soul and WIdow replay scenes of pain more often than those of happiness, and although each would like to utter the words that would undo the pain, each scene repeats as in the past. Soul’s replays are carried out in part by Body (hunky Matthew Montelongo) because Soul is now blind, as he waits out the time on earth before Widow can release him to the afterlife. (The significance and theatrical effectiveness of Soul’s blindness is, unfortunately, lost on me.)

The three are almost overmatched by the perfect J. Fred Shiffman as the adenoidal Wooer, a fireman friend of the family. Shiffman’s Wooer is an amiable dork, awkward at small talk, who simply loves Widow and wants her to move on with her life.

Lest it be thought a heavy show, the play is still a comedy, and fantasy elements keep the mood light. A show-stopping set piece at a high school reunion calls for the four principals to line-dance to an old Britney Spears song, just because. Alas, the Foy flying apparatus for Soul and Widow, however effective, is still a bit obtrusive.

It’s an interesting twist that Wooer can interact, to a limited degree, with Soul. Haidle, young but already skilled in the art of putting a play together, says in a playbill interview,

To write the things I am trying to write, you have to establish the rules very quickly and the audience will give you their time. They’ll go with you for about eight minutes. And in those eight minutes you can do anything, but you have to show them that they’re in a world that has rules. You establish those rules, and most importantly I think, and I don’t know how you do this, but I think you have to tell them when they get to go home.

  • Vigils, by Noah Haidle, directed by Colette Searls, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

One-Tooth Ree

Thanks to Language Log (?!), Mandana T. Manzari reports on the Large Number Championship. Two philosophers compete at MIT to produce the largest finite number ever written on an ordinary whiteboard. The winning number:

The smallest number bigger than any number that can be named by an expression in the language of first order set-theory with less than a googol (10100) symbols.

Pedants might clean up that definition to read, “an expression… with fewer than a googol symbols.”

Wireless, not wireless

More Stoppard—why the heck not? Via ArtsJournal, Mark Lawson looks at updating the text of plays set in previous decades when they’re revived.

One major Stoppard play has never been revived: Night and Day (1978). Its plot depends on the need for British journalists in Africa to find a house with a telex machine. Now that reporters have satellite phones, the play is more or less incomprehensible.

¡Noche Latina!

Septime Webre and the Washington Ballet mix it up Latin style with live music—in the lobby, on stage, and in the pit—and Latin works by three choreograpers, including a restaging of Webre’s own Juanita y Alicia. Even though some of the company’s stars are missing, it makes for a fun evening.

After an opening serenade by Mariachi Los Amigos, the dancing opens with Paul Taylor’s Piazzolla Caldera, a suite of tangos set to music by Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Peterburshsky, Sona Kharatian brings a leggy soulfulness to the “Celos” section, nicely balanced by the pair of comic borrachos danced by Jonathan Jordan and Jason Hartley. It’s an easy dance to enjoy, but perhaps not to love, with its unbalanced casting of seven men and five women. Its featured role (created, I believe, by Francie Huber) doesn’t have a clean break after the solo to give us the opportunity to applaud.

Mystic Warriors, performingly traditional Andean music, provides the intermission music. Following the break is Nacho Duato’s Na Floresta. Maki Onuki continues to develop her artistry, dancing two good solos, one slow, one fast. The time following this dance, ordinarily filled by another trip to the lobby, is taken—nay, stolen—by harp virtuoso Celso Duarte and his band, Jarocho Fusion.

Webre’s dance closes the evening, accompanied live by Cuban salsa band Sin Miedo. An extended family and friends assemble for a garden party, dressed in crisp off-whites, the women in pointe shoes, the men in jackets and Bermuda shorts. But an earthier element is also present in the form of Luis Torres, wearning colorful native trousers and not much else. The two factions come together in his duet with the robust Elizabeth Gaither, who doffs the linen and imported European decorum. She snaps off a crackling good run of very fast partnered turns.

  • ¡Noche Latina!, Washington Ballet, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

Seussical update

Well, we’ve been in rehearsals for Seussical for three weeks. The big concern so far has been turnover in the cast: we’ve lost one cast member who was facing a much heavier load at work, and three of the team have had to drop out for medical reasons. So we will miss Laura, Don, Sarah, and Liz, who will still be with us in spirit come opening night in March.

It’s typical for a cast this size (25) to have some churn, but four is a lot. We have filled in with new members Karl and Katie (husband and wife), Amanda, and—well, me. In addition to my responsibilties on the left corner assisting Joan, I will be singing the small character roles of the Grinch and Yertle the Turtle. The music isn’t horribly difficult, but there will be passages when the only sound onstage will be coming from either the orchestra or me, and that’s a little scary. I’ll be wearing a green bodysuit instead of my usual blacks when I’m on headset. I haven’t asked director Haley whether I can keep the headset when I’m onstage.

On a more positive note, one of the fun things about this cast is the number of family connections. Sour Kangaroo (Lisa-Marie) will have a live Baby Kangaroo, her daughter Emily. The Bird Girls will be the ever-harmonizing Marylee and her daughters Amy and Jenny. Two of the Wickersham Brothers will be sisters Lucy and Susanna (yes, women are singing men’s roles: this is community theater, there are no men, can we move on?). And Haley’s assistant directors Jess and Jim are variously related to other staff.

Not a kid anymore

Via Arts & Letters Daily, Joseph Epstein watches himself begin to run down.

Sleep has become erratic. Someone not long ago asked me if I watched Charlie Rose, to which I replied that I am usually getting up for the first time when Charlie Rose goes on the air. I fall off to sleep readily enough, but two or three hours later I usually wake, often to invent impressively labyrinthine anxieties for myself to dwell upon for an hour or two before falling back into aesthetically unsatisfying dreams until six or so in the morning. Very little distinction in this, I have discovered by talking to contemporaries, especially men, who all seem to sleep poorly. But this little Iliad of woes is pretty much par for the course, if such a cliché metaphor may be permitted from a nongolfer. That I have arrived at 70 without ever having golfed is one of the facts of my biography to date of which I am most proud.