April 2013
Boeing Boeing - Dreamliner
Seldom can
you say of a production where design almost overpowers the acting and the
characters and plot are right at the surface - with several acting styles and accents all over the map - that it is a great
one. Yet Boeing Boeing (1962) at the Rep Stage (to 5/5), is just such a show ... (more) The Price - Selling
Low
"Is this a comedy?"
That's a question I heard whispered in the audience during the first half of the Bay Theatre Company's vigorous revival
of The Price by Arthur Miller (1968) now on the boards in Annapolis (to 5/19). The answer is both yes and no
... (more)
BSO Wagner: A Composer Fit for
a King - Dreamweavers
Don't
have 15 hours to invest in a complete, 4-night performance of Richard Wagner's The Ring Cycle? A happy option
is the BSO's "Off the Cuff" series with Marin Alsop, featuring selections from his magnum opus and a dramatization
of the larger-than-life composer and a mad king needed to bring it to life ...
(more) Eleemosynary - Word Power 3.0
Suppose
it was Adam who offered Eve the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge - what would we have had? A wiser though
still somewhat incomplete individual. That's one way of viewing this intergenerational saga of feminine
striving on view at the Compass Rose Theater in Annapolis to May 12 ... (more) Spaces and Places - If These Walls Could Talk
A new building is often the first option for the successful theater. But the art form of the ephemeral, still exists in some memorable places in
times of transition ... (more) 4000 Miles - Biking on Empty
4000 Miles looks to make the old new again with
a twist for our inwardly directed times. This pleasant if not entirely enlightening journey now at the Studio Theatre
(to 4/28) stars Tana Hicken ... (more) Fantasy Theatre - A League of Our Own
In an effort to tap into the enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit
of DC, theatreWashington (The Helen Hayes Awards) today announced their launch of a new campaign: Fantasy Theatre ... (more) March 2013
A Behanding in Spokane - Looking for Lefty
If your taste in humor runs to dark comedy, you'll want to head out to The Keegan Theatre
before too long. Director Colin Smith's expertly paced production of Martin McDonagh's latest - the first to
be set in the US - is due to close April 7 ... (more)
Drama Urge One on One - Interview with Gillian Drake
Freelancer Gillian Drake talks about her approach to directing in general and her
latest production of Lee Blessing's A Walk in the Woods now playing at the Quotidian Theatre Company, until 4/14
... (more)
Saint-Saëns' "Organ"
Symphony - BSO Home & Away
You've
traveled with your local sports team to see them play on the road, but how about your favorite orchestra? (more)
Coming Attractions: CATF 2013
- Summer Fun
The 23rd annual Contemporary American Theater Festival this July will be a very good one: I can
guarantee it. How can I make this claim? ... (more) The Allures of Home
- Life 360
Director Duane Boutté's decision
to present Home in the round feels like the right
one. The 1979 play by Samm-Art Williams at the Rep Stage (to 3/17) needs plenty of room to maneuver ... (more)
February 2013
Steel City Blues - Catastrophe in the Making
As public relations disasters go, the firing of Pittsburgh Irish & Classical
Theatre's Artistic Director Andrew Paul must rank up there with those miscues of Netflix and Toyota ... (more)
A
Christopher Durang Twin Bill - Speech Acts
"Clothes
make the man," the Bard famously noted, though he might have added to that handle "words, phrases, and roles."
That's one way to understand The Actor's Nightmare and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You,
a pair of Durang One-Acts now on the boards at the Bay Theatre Company (to 3/17) ... (more)
DC Area Theater Alert - Embarrassment
of Riches
This being Oscar weekend,
you may be headed to the movies to do some last minute bingeing before the Sunday night extravaganza. Big mistake theater
fans ... (more)
Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition - Every Picture
Tells a Story
A few misconceptions were laid
to rest for me in the year's first blockbuster art exhibit Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design (1848 -1900)
now on display at the National Gallery of Art (to 5/19). One was longevity; another was "avant garde" style. Maybe
it's a lifecycle thing: what starts as innovation ends in convention ... (more)
Black Comedy - You Won't
See Me
You are about to enter another dimension, an
alternate universe where darkness is visible and the land of light is the land of the blind when you step into the world of
Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy now being presented by the No Rules Theatre Company in Shirlington, VA (to 3/2)
... (more)
Critical Thinking for the Theater
- You Make the Call!
Nate Silver, stats geek and political
blogger, brings up a counterintuitive point about picking winners: a few selective criteria are better at predicting outcome
than a slew of them created by one or more experts ... (more) Drama Urge One on One -
Interview with Pomme Koch
DC-area
audiences who have seen Pomme Koch as the fiery "John C. Calhoun" in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
and the demonic "Uday Hussein" in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo will be surprised to find him relatively
subdued as the loyal but zipped-up "Constable of France" and repentant traitor Lord Scroop in Henry V now
playing at The Folger Theatre (to 3/10) ... (more)
Italian American Reconciliation-Commedia
Del Heart
John Patrick Shanley's charming "folktale"
about looking for love in all the wrong places and fighting for it is getting a colorful revival at 1st Stage in Tysons, VA to 2/24 (more)
January 2013
Seminar - Oral Exams
Note to would be writers: find an interesting profession or avocation to survey, populate it with very funny characters,
and send them on a quest journey, with the challenge bar set impossibly high. Theresa Rebeck does just that in City Theatre's handsome production (more). The Show-Off - Silver Linings
Playbook
Love is blind, as the saying goes. Or
is it? The American Century Theater's sparkling rendition of George Kelly's 1924 classic comedy about a fiancé who comes to dinner and stays forever
still charms in Stephen Jarrett's engagingly honest and affirmative production. (more)
Tryst - Imaginary Lover
The Washington Stage Guild offers a psychological thriller to kick off 2013, mining the dark side of the Edwardian era with a
very modern point of view ... (more) 2013 - The Year of the Small Theater
Ticket prices are scaling up everywhere and the government's set to take a
bigger bite out of your paycheck. And you'll probably need to pack opera glasses for the bigger venues. What's
a theater lover to do? Check out the action on the smaller stages ... (more)
December 2012
DRAMAURGE 2012 ON BOOKS -
A PAGE-TURNER
When you are a reader,
like me, every year is a celebration of the book. No need to limit oneself to the year's publications, there's
plenty in the past to mine ... (more)
DRAMAURGE 2012 TOP PLAYS & HIGHLIGHTS
Competition, character, and social critique stood out for me over the past year's
theatrical offerings. And while there was plenty to mull over, there was a lot to appreciate too: the plays were at times
just plain entertaining ... (more)
The School for Lies
- Dishonors Program
Pittsburgh Irish &
Classical Theatre closed out its season strong with a showy offering from the David Ives' adaptation playlist ... (more)
November 2012
Six Characters in Search of an Author-Talking Points
What happens when emotions and technique collide in a supernatural rehearsal?
You'll find out in WSC Avant Bard's staging of the Pirandello classic to 12/9 ... (more)
Cloud Atlas On
Screen - Serial Killer
Cloud
Atlas the movie reminds you a little of the "What's wrong with this picture?" game - one that's easy
to solve ... (more)
Prokofiev 2.0 - Masterworks Reloaded
Soloist Brian Ganz was the headliner for this all Prokofiev
program, featuring the Third Piano Concerto, but it was Conductor Victoria Gau and the versatile National Philharmonic Orchestra
and Chorale that soared before an enthusiastic crowd at Strathmore Saturday... (more)
October 2012
The Conference of the Birds - Altered States
Perhaps the best place to be is on stage at the Folger Theatre with a highly creative
group of artists performing nightly (to 11/28) in a revival of Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière's 1971 production
of The Conference of the Birds. The next best? Without a doubt it's in the audience ... (more)
Reckless - Seven Types of Ambiguity
Your oldest son tells you "you're fired," your husband wants you
dead, and the last trace of your best friend's voice, on Christmas Eve, follows with
a dial tone. What to do? If you're the young woman in Craig Lucas's play Reckless (1983), it's
time to hit the road ... in Spooky Action Theater's season opener, playing until
10/28 (more) Reaching for a Good Play -
Get What You Need
Art sustains
and nourishes us in our constantly changing environment. Readers tend to pick the books that they need at a particular
time, so why should your choice in theater - a form of literature - be any different? (more)
A Woman's Place in the Theater - Attention Is
Paid!
We've heard the complaints from actresses to
playwrights that theaters are shortchanging women by largely creating - perpetuating, more likely, to hear them talk - a theater
that is for and about men. But is this true? ... (more)September 2012
An Enemy of the People - One is the Loneliest Number
Henrik Ibsen's outsider classic receives a provocative makeover at Centerstage
with Kwame Kwei-Armah's 1950s-60s restaging of An Enemy of the People (to 10/21) ... (more) Theater Design - Let There Be Light!
There are plenty of reasons to go to the theater these days, some
right in front of your eyes ... (more) Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
- Persistence of Memory
It's the time of the living
dead in war-torn Iraq circa 2003 at the Roundhouse Theatre, where Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a 2010 Pulitzer
Prize Finalist and recent Broadway hit, stalks the boards (to 9/30) ... (more)
J.B. - Heavy Mettle
Some plays are entertaining, others are thoughtful, and sometimes
they're both as I was happy to discover this week at The American Century Theater, with its mounting (to 10/6) of Pulitzer
Prize and Tony Award-winner, J.B., by Archibald MacLeish ... (more)
Box Office Appeal - A Baker's Dozen
The problem with lists is that no sooner do you put one together,
everyone starts attacking it ... (more)
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity-Crowd
Control
Pro wrestling, the most transparent
of sports, seems to offer a red-carpet path to our psyche. Equal parts entertainment, politics, and economics this hand-to-hand
struggle - enacted at the Woolly Mammoth (to 9/30) - amounts almost to folie à deux before a paid audience,
hungry for catharsis ... (more)
Audience Experience - Good Will Hunting
It's the time of year when the theater
community celebrates the past season and looks forward to the next. And while there's good reason to engage in such
"happy talk," you're likely to see an increasing number of empty seats, more competition than ever, and less
interest in theater as an art form. But there's one big thing that you all can do to stem the tide ... (more)
August 2012
Actors Are the Smartest People-Especially in the Theater!
We've all heard the actor jokes about the profession that seems to favor fluff
over substance and is filled with talking heads and outsized egos. Hell, according to the cynics, these performers wouldn't
even exist without writers to tell them what to say and directors to tell them what to do. But guess what? These are
some really smart cats ...(more)
Chekhov Celebration - Pittsburgh Irish &
Classical Theatre
Innovation was a defining feature
in Anton's Chekhov's career, so it seems fitting that a retrospective offering of his work has several new translations
and adaptations that depart from the traditional and highlight the comic in his plays, including his late masterpiece, Three
Sisters, and two modern works by Brian Friel: Afterplay and The Yalta Game now in repertory at PICT
to 8/26 ... (more)
Mistakes Were Made - Hopefully Not By
Me!
Criticism is a performing art, I think. We
try to entertain you, keep you informed, and make the hard look easy, while delivering something that will be remembered always.
Like artists, we mostly try to get it right, starting with a close look in the mirror. A summer repeat from the
vault ... (more)
Marathon `33 - A Moveable Feast
There's a wonderful slice of Americana playing just north of Williamsburg,
VA where you can experience the curious phenomenon of the dance marathon as living history. Yousa, Yousa, Yousa
it's the Jack Marshall tour de force production of Marathon `33 (as in 1933) by the late June Havoc, now concluding
the season at The American Century Theater (to 8/25) ... (more)David Mamet & The Secret Knowledge-Enter Stage
Right
David Mamet's latest nonfiction work is purportedly
a political tract in which the author announces his conversion to Conservatism. Rachel Shteir writes
in Tablet Magazine that "the book should be viewed not as a polemic but as a yet-to-be-written play about his
usual subjects: scams and hustlers." That may be, but it can also be read as a commentary on everything he has
written ... (more)
July 2012
Gidion's Knot - Lessons Learned
I suppose all true theater fans live for the dramatic experience that leaves them numb. As do the many critics
who dream of writing about one. So I count myself twice blessed to be able to tell you that Johnna Adams' Gidion's
Knot, which just received its world premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, is such a play ... (more)
The Exceptionals - Selfish Genes
Bob Clyman's dystoptic take on fertility clinics of the future gets a bright
staging at the Contemporary American Theater Festival to July 29.
Part science fiction and part reality show, the play tracks the progress of a pair of competitive moms ... (more)
Take a Critic to Lunch - And Pay For It!
Criticism is a curiously thankless task for the independent blogger. On the
one hand, you're held to a higher standard than everyone else with no recompense ... On the other hand, the familiarity
and access you've enjoyed as fan disappear ... (more)
June 2012
Broadway 2012 - Is There a New Play Out There?
As I soldiered through the mildly entertaining, 3 plus hour lovefest that was the Tony Awards last night, I wondered
at the sheer number of reconceived productions and lack of innovation in theater ... (more)
Accessibility and the Arts -
Mixed Signals
There's been talk of late about
the access art museums are providing patrons, usually bemoaning the lack of parking and public transportation. There's
some class grumbling as well ... with the wealthy favored ... The financially strapped Corcoran Gallery is the newest
to be publicly flogged for these alleged shortcomings ... (more)
May 2012
Barnes on the Parkway - Arts Franchise Move
With the official opening of the new and improved Barnes Foundation a battle of attrition has been won by the City
of Philadelphia and a powerful group of vested interests (uh, philanthropists) against Albert C. Barnes, MD., and
the good folks of Lower Merion Township, PA ... Now who pays the bill? (more)
April 2012
The Year of Magical Thinking - Funny Numbers at tW
Attendance was down at just about every show I went to last year. So it was with some
astonishment that I read there were roughly 200 thousand more audience members out and about in theaterWashingtonLand
in 2011 ... (more)
On The Waterfront - Paying Dues
I'm of two minds about Kathleen Akerley's production of On the Waterfront
now playing at The American Century Theater (to 4/28). On the one hand, an expressionistic treatment of a realistic
play doesn't quite work for me. On the other ... this production is always interesting ... (more) Rooms With A View - Overcoming Staging Myopia
American Theatre magazine ran a dust-up on "black-box" spaces
a number of months ago ... Closer to home, I regularly read complaints about those same black boxes and problematic
blocking, sight-lines for thrust stages, and difficulties with performances in the round. While art is about attaining
the ideal and management strives for the best in viewer experiences, let's not forget what audiences really want ... (more)
Drama Urge Certified Fresh - The Sweet Smell of
Success
There will be a "celebration" for the
local theater community at the Helen Hayes Awards Ceremony Monday 4/23 when the prizes will probably go to the usual suspects
... Still, for what is left, I'd like to cut through all the media hype and positioning of this conflict-of-interest laden
awards process and give you my take of the "best of best" from my humble and non-commercial standpoint ...(more)
Into The Woods - Miles to Go
Stephen Sondheim's (music and lyrics) fairy tale mash-up heads into its final
week at Center Stage (to 4/15), where "happily ever after" comes with a phase shift. While James Lapine's book feels more
like Chaucer than the Brothers Grimm at times, the universal message of "be careful what you wish for" plays well
for young and old, especially today ... (more)
Let Us Now Praise Big Casts -
Crowd Pleasers
It seems like every other show I've
seen this season has a smallish cast - one and two actors, occasionally four - or focused goals that are pushed relentlessly
toward an intermission-free conclusion. So I'm looking forward to On The Waterfront at The American Century Theater (to 4/28) and Las Meninas at the Rep Stage (4/18-5/6) which feature a dozen actors and sprawling themes ... (more)
The New Chicago Manual of Style- Exorcising
Bad Prose
In an effort to improve the quality of theater
writing, including criticism, marketing, and promotion of shows, we herewith banish the following words or phrases: vibe,
twee, comfort food, birth as a verb, push-back, struggle, peeling back the onion, the new black, and conversations ... (more) March 2012
Freud's Last Session - The Final Defense
The God question has been box office magic for the Pittsburgh Public Theater where Freud's Last Session,
directed by Mary Robinson (to 4/1), looks to be "one of the top-selling plays in our 37-year history," as reported
on the theater's Facebook page ... (more)
Twelve Angry Men - And
Then There Were None
Justice
is in the balance in DC as The Keegan Theatre offers up a bruising examination of the judicial system, American style, in
Twelve Angry Men (extended to 3/31). To paraphrase from the popular quote: Verdicts are like sausages; it's
better not to see them in the making ... (more)
Backstage Dramas - When Yes Means
Maybe
You've heard of the upbeat stories
resulting from "artistic differences" - a euphemism for director-actor conflict - A Star Is Born! But often
an actor's early departure results from a better offer, leaving a company - cast and creative team - in the lurch. Some
words of advice to actors who walk and directors who cast them: Oral contracts are enforceable - Remember Boxing Helena.
(more)
Too Many Critics Spoil the View: Cleaning Your Inbox
This week DC Metro Theater Arts burst on the scene, adding yet another review website
to an already crowded playing field. Counting all the theater websites ... are there more critics (way
more) than there are theaters. Is that good? (more)
Sucker Punch - Look Back in Anger
Roy Williams' Sucker Punch, now receiving its U.S. premiere at the
Studio Theatre (to 4/8), is a coming of age fight play set in the 1980s London during the Thatcher era. Dealing with
racial prejudice, social unrest, immigration, and xenophobia, it is as much about the imagined past as it is the possible
future, an incendiary time of lost opportunities ... (more)
Really Really - Lost Generation
Like the title, the verbally impoverished characters that inhabit Really Really,
by Paul Downs Colaizzo, now receiving its shakedown cruise at the Signature Theatre (to 3/25), have some vision of happiness
- they just don't know how to articulate it ... Fortunately for us, they know how to act on that impulse ... (more)February 2012
Helen Hayes Awards Nominations - A Black Box Process
When not one but two awards organizations of narrative art forms honor a silent
production in the same week, we're left, well, speechless. But when they also hand out numerous accolades to children's
shows, it leaves us wondering how far they've declined as entertainment institutions ... (more)
Real Men Go to the Theater - Mortal Combat
Yeah, you're tired of chick lit, high-brow allusions, and sophisticated comedies
... you keep longing for something relevant to your psyche. Well, guys, you're in luck. Over the next month,
three area theaters are offering plays featuring plenty of hard-hitting action ... (more)
Contemporary American Theater Festival - On
Deck
The oldest city in West Virginia was the site
for announcing the newest plays as CATF unveiled its 22nd season last night at the venerable Shepherdstown Opera
House. The line-up includes an assortment of psychological thrillers "where smart people make bad choices," topical
themes, and at least one comedy related to "competitive parenting." (more)
Progenitor Narratives - Slippery Roots
As I was watching A Skull in Connemara by Martin McDonagh again at Center
Stage, which you really ought to see before it closes (3/4), I was struck by the way the play and his others trace their Irish
lineage back to J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World ... (more)
Civilization (all you can eat) - A Smorgasbord
Jason Grote's comic allegory on exploitation, now
receiving its world premiere at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (to 3/11) tackles the modern condition at its most dire,
harvesting everything but the squeal ... (more) Yellowman - Close Encounters
Those who believe that we're a product of our environment will have much to
ponder in Dael Orlandersmith's 2002 play Yellowman, now receiving a powerful showing at Rep Stage (to 2/26).
The provocative drama offers a rare and privileged look at one aspect of the human condition: intra-racial prejudice ... (more)
The Ensemble Effect - Priceless
You often read praise about the ensemble acting or the ensemble
cast. Are we talking about the small group of unknown actors in a show or the lack of a star (or a clear lead role) in a big
company? Or is it some cohesiveness that's being manifested on stage that makes the whole greater than the sum of
the parts? (more)
Blame on Maine - Arena Stage Underwater
Not so long ago regional theater companies strode the land like artistic giants,
giving us a varied season of great plays from New York and beyond at a fraction of the cost. They employed locally based
actors, often performing in repertory, and introduced an occasional new play that transferred to The Great White Way. Then
something happened ... (more)A Skull in Connemara - Crimes of the Heart
Murder, torture, dismemberment, exhumation, sacrilege,
cannibalism - everything except incest (to date) - but what we do to those closest to us may be the biggest outrage in Martin
McDonagh's oeuvre ... And yet we're still laughing! ... (more)
January 2012
Body Awareness - Postcard from the Edge
Admirers of Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, which played last season at the Studio Theatre,
where it enjoyed an extended run, and later at Pittsburgh Public Theater, have a chance to see the first in the fictional
"Shirley, VT Trilogy," Body Awareness, now running at the Wilma Theater (to 2/5) ... (more)
Zora Neale Hurston - Dreamcatcher
The nice thing about a theater adaptation is that it gets you to consider or revisit
the original work, often a classic. Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is certainly
that and Center Stage's dramatization entitled Gleam gives the tale of Janie Crawford new life... (more)
Time Stands Still - Uncertainty Principle
With a Donald Margulies play you can count on intelligent dialogue, a consideration
of the artistic process, and unresolvable relationship issues. Time Stands Still (2009), now receiving a stellar
showing at the Studio Theatre (to 2/12), delivers on all these and ... more
Little Murders - Locked
and Loaded
The American Century Theater has dusted off Jules Feiffer's late 1960s cult classic and it's alive and kicking.
Whether you are revisiting Little Murders from the past or know it from the 1971 movie, the cartoonish characters
of Mr. Feiffer's world still have plenty to say ... (more) Missing the Big Picture: False Negative
Can you criticize a movie adaptation because it doesn't conform to your appreciation
of a play, which was itself adapted from a book, a children's novel? That in essence is the logic behind a recent review
on the internet of Stephen Spielberg's War Horse ... (more)
December 2011
Becky's New Car - Trading Up
Ladies who are feeling a bit jaded in their relationships or love lives will warm to the soft growl of Steven Dietz's
gentle allegory on mid-life crisis in Becky's New Car (2008), now moving into the pole position at the Bay Theatre
Company (to 1/8/12) ... (more)
Best (and Worst) Reads of 2011 - Recommended, Somewhat
Recommended (and Not)
The world's an interesting place
made even more so with a book. These helped me to better understand why ... (more) DRAMAURGE AWARDS 2011 - Best in Shows!
