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By: Ronnie Ruff

Howie the Rookie

Seeing a Solas Nua production is a lot like getting to ride the biggest baddest rollercoaster without having to go to a big, impersonal amusement park.  This is theatre that is so up front and personal that you find yourself totally emmersed in the characters and their out of control ride through Dublin nightlife.  Dan Brick and Eric Messner take this play in their bloody grasp and before you know it, have you holding on to your seat as The Howie Lee and The Rookie Lee tell you a bruising story of scabies and dead beta fighting fish that will have you laughing one minute and hiding under your seat the next.

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By Ronnie Ruff

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A touch of Americana based on the original collection of poems by Edgar Lee Masters, strummed folk guitar and well presented poetic dialog all make for an interesting piece of theatre in Arlington at Gunston II. The American Century Theater identifies rarely produced American plays and produces them for the enjoyment of DC theatre audiences.  I was pleased with quite a few aspects of TACT’s mounting of this collection of American poetry and song — TACT is to be congratulated for tackling a difficult piece of material and making it work most of the time.  

In Edgar Lee Masters work of poetry the dead in an Illinois graveyard relay, in matter-of-fact and haunting tones, detailed bits from their lives. The Anthology, when it was published,  was original, provoking and meaningful. Masters wove a thread of fractional authenticity throughout the work. Many of the characters and their experiences can be associated with former residents of Lewistown and Petersburg, Illinois. Masters’ used his childhood memories of these two towns, as a basis for the poems.

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By Tim Treanor

Experiment with an Air Pump

In the Joseph Wright painting, “Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump,” a Saint of Knowledge, his face rigid with scientific rapture, displays the results of his experiment. Around him, his apostles, family and friends gaze on in various expressions of certainty and satisfaction. To his left, a middle-aged man smugly explains the results to a young woman. To his right, a young couple smile knowingly at each other. In the middle, three girls on the cusp of womanhood look on in horror and dismay. Only we are clueless as to what happened. We see only a side-view of a thick-feathered wing. Is this all that is left of the bird? Did the bird survive the experiment? What was the experiment? A single candle illuminates the scene, casting a perfect circle of incandescent light; everything outside the circle is as dark as a black hole. 

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Damn Yankees

It would be easy to say Damn Yankees is a timeless musical — it would be easy to say it is “pulled from the headlines” and lastly it would be easy to call it an old fashioned, feel good, crowd pleaser. To be honest it is all of those things and more. This show reminds us of a time when things were a lot simpler, as the song goes.. “All you really need is heart” and this show has plenty of it. You can count on this musical to be a perfect family outing and there were many families in the audience on the evening I attended. Artistic Director Molly Smith has hit a home run with a musical filled with great songs, colorful 1950s retro staging and wonderfully designed costumes.

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By: Walter Ruff

LikeThe Goat or Who is Sylvia by Edward Albee, Beautiful Child by Nicky Silver is a play that scares critics and audiences alike with hard to handle subject material that evokes our most deeply held feelings of disgust. Didactic Theatre’s mission includes promoting the reality of disparity based on a variety of circumstances. They encourage audiences to look outside their circle and experience different standpoints. Beautiful Child is perfect choice for such a mission and Didactic handles the subject matter (pedophilia) with thoughtful direction and performance. This play is not simply about pedophilia, it asks larger questions such as what we as a society do with sexual predators. Do we as parents love our children any less when they turn out far different than we expected, even to include being abusers of children? This play does not offer answers for such incredibly hard questions but as it should lets the audience struggle to come to their own conclusions.

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By: Walter Ruff

Seasonal Disorder tickets might just be what Santa should bring to all those “bah humbug” sorts that have forgotten how to laugh. We all have holiday stories tucked away in our cerebral archives that may not seem so funny to us, but in the hands of the creative folks at Washington Improv Theatre they are molded into hilarious little gems of holiday buffoonery that serve to remind us of just how funny the holidays can be.

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By: Ronnie Ruff  

The Keegan Theatre has mounted not one, but two, Tennessee Williams one act plays at the Gunston Arts Center in Arlington.  I will discuss them in tandem here because they share much of same cast.

The first play performed is Portrait of a Madonna. Lucretia Collins (Sheri Herren) is the character that ultimately becomes Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire. Miss Collins was a minister’s daughter that falls in love with a young man in her town … but, the marriage fails and he remarries. Lucretia never recovers from the sadness that follows the divorce.  Every night, she believes that this man she once loved sneaks into her room. Everyone in the apartment building suspects that she is insane and she has worn out her welcome. As the play begins Lucretia has called down to Mr. Abrams (Chuck Whalen) the building manager to report that she has an intruder. The porter (Timothy Hayes Lynch) and the elevator operator (Scott Graham) come up to investigate but actually it has already been arranged for a doctor to come take her away to a mental hospital.  The play looks at the time leading up to her departure, her interactions with the porter, elevator operator and building manager.  The doctor and his nurse arrive and the play ends with Lucretia being lead away.

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By: Ronnie Ruff

Sometimes a smaller theatre company can mount a production that has so much enthusiasm and heart that one looks past technical issues and the company’s shoestring budget and just says “Who Cares! The show just rocks”.  Venus Theatre has mounted A Little Rebellion Now at The Warehouse Theatre and it has that feel of true theatre excitement that is hard to beat. The young actors in this production clearly love the show they are involved in and it carries over to the audience.  I was moved just by the faces at curtain call, smiles and grins abound both on stage and off.

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By: Walter Ruff

If We Were Women currently at the former Living Stage space is an overly wordy story of three generations of women spending a leisurely day at a Connecticut beach house — we suffer through moaning, groaning and discussions of who had the more primitive method of dealing with menstruation. Jess (Lynn Steinmetz) is mourning her just passed lover and is comforted by her mother (Jewell Robinson) and her former mother in law (June Hansen) while she frets about her teenage daughter (Sarah Fischer) who failed to come home from a dance the night before. More than anything this is Canadian playwright Joanna McClelland Glass’ vision of the age old story “You always become your mother”.

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By: Walter Ruff

Kingdom, currently mounted at the Atlas Center For The Arts is without doubt the most interesting production I have seen this year.  Now keep in mind I did not say the best but it is close and it is fantastic.   Take a large cup of Richard III, throw in some BBQ chicken and red Kool-Aid, add a golden bowling ball and a Popeye mask, toss in some hallucinogenic drugs and some Houdini magic, then consult the stars and you will have a small taste of Kingdom.  Part of the Fresh Flavas Program to bring new works by playwrights of color to the stage Kingdom is written by David Emerson Toney and directed by Jennifer Nelson.

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