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It is a brilliant sunny day in DC, a Saturday at that. Most folks would be outside enjoying the fine weather. But not Deborah Kirby, not for that matter yours truly. Deborah had a meeting to attend at the Warehouse Theatre bar/Coffee shop on Seventh St. behind the DC Convention Center and I have an interview scheduled with her so at about 2 pm we sit down in the very noisy cafe with a few cups of coffee and my digital voice recorder and we came up with the following interview where she talks of her love for community and her theatre company and most importantly why they belong together.

Journeymen Theater Ensemble’s latest show Manicures and Monuments runs thru 5-6 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, there will be a Talk Back with the playwright Vicki Caroline Cheatwood after the performance on 5-4 that is open to all that have seen the show.

The Journeymen WEBSITE 

 

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DC Theatre Beat recently visited Rorschach Theatre to see their production of A Bright Room Called Day. After being mesmerized by tremendous acting and a near perfect marriage of live theatre and video effects we had the chance to sit down with Helen Hayes nominated actress Lindsay Allen and discuss her character in the show, her respect for Rorschach and her future in DC.  We at DC Theatre Reviews hope that future in DC is a long one.

A little background on Lindsay at the Rorschach Theatre Blog.      

Listen here.

 

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By Fiona Zublin

The Play’s The Thing

Farces are renowned as complicated, temperamental creatures, often long and filled with chase scenes and slapstick. They generally follow a formula: setting up an unsolvable problem, inventing a viable solution, and watching the solution fail but the happy ending miraculously happen anyway. The Play’s the Thing, a P.G. Wodehouse adaptation of Ferenc Molnar’s A Play at the Castle now playing at Washington Stage Guild, is at once refined and primitive, hailing from a seemingly simpler time when farces needed three acts and no plot twists.

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By Juliet Moser

The Game of Love and Chance  –  Folger Shakespeare Theatre 

Peppered with verbal bon-bons, Steven Wadsworth’s new translations of Pierre de Marivaux’s The Game of Love and Chance at the Folger Theatre leaves audiences with a slight stomachache from ingesting too may linguistic sweets. Game begins with the same culprits as every other love farce from the 18th century: a witty and eloquent Silvia (Tymberlee Chanel) deigns to accept her father’s spousal choice for her only if she is allowed to swap places with her maid Lisette (Tonya Beckman Ross) in order to better observe her potential mate during his initial visit to the household. However, little to the women’s knowledge, Silvia’s suitor (Matthew Montelongo) enacts the same plan, trading outfits and titles with his valet. Silvia’s father Orgon (Timmy Ray James) reveals these simultaneous plots only to his son (James O. Dunn) - and the audience - and giggles his way through the young couples’ follies.

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By Fiona Zublin

A Bright Room Called Day  –  Rorschach Theatre

Many plays are too long. It’s a common trait; actors like to act slowly, playwrights like to cram as much as possible into the script, since they’ve already got you in your seat. A lot of the plays that are too long can be forgiven, because their quality deserves such length. The rest make an audience more and more restless, knowing that someday they will be allowed to go home and that it’s easier not to struggle. A Bright Room Called Day, at Rorschach Theater, teeters on the edge of being worth the two and a half hours.

Sometime during the 1980s, Tony Kushner decided to write a play about times when the radical right is taking over society, and the tiny windows of opportunity during which the left has a chance to stop it. It was relevant when he wrote it and it is relevant now; it’s no wonder Rorschach chose to revive A Bright Room Called Day this season. Kushner makes his point through an examination of a group of intellectual Communist activists in 1930s Berlin. His protagonist is Agnes (Lindsay Allen), a gentile actress who begins as part of this group, but ultimately distances herself from anything that puts her in danger from the ever-more-powerful Nazi government. She lives with her lover, Vealtninc Husz (Grady Weatherford), in a cozy Berlin apartment, where she receives her friends: Baz (a memorable Alexander Strain), a homosexual who believes that fascism is a result of sexual frustration, Annabella (Cam Magee), a painter who designs posters for the Party, and Paulinka (Lauren Judith Krizner), a minor movie star whose demeanor can only be described as Weimar Samantha Jones.

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By Ronnie Ruff

Richard II  –  Washington Shakespeare Company

This is not your father’s Richard II or your mom’s — this is a Richard II for those that think many of those that rule are thugs and hooligans albeit with an education and a pedigree. Let it never be said that Washington Shakespeare Company does not take chances or stretch the artistic form of theatre. Robert McNamara whose Scena Theatre currently has mounted Silent Partners at Warehouse Theatre directs Richard II with chilling effect giving the production a Goth like feel while retaining the lavish, essence of dialog that Shakespeare demands.

For those not familiar with the Bard’s Richard II it is a play about power and how absolute power corrupts and changes all that try to harness it. McNamara’s vision of “a brave new world” is a twisted treatment full of tragedy and self destruction. With each political blunder by Richard the intensity grows, when Richard commandeers Henry’s inheritance to fund his unpopular Irish war the people revolt and Henry removes Richard from power, banishes him to prison and takes the throne. The War Of The Roses has begun.

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Silent Partners is a play which examines the relationship between radical playwright Bertolt Brecht and his English-language translator, Eric Bentley. In a profound and compelling way, it measures the moral price people are willing to pay for greatness, or for closeness to it. DCtheatrereviews.com, in its first podcast ever, interviews Charles Marowitz, the playwright and director of Silent Partners. In a far-ranging, incisive and quite candid interview, Mr. Marowitz describes the origin of his play; his working relationship with Professor Bentley, and what it’s like to work with a small theater in Washington to DCTheatrereviews interviewer Tim Treanor.

Scena Theatre’s world premiere of Silent Partners runs until May 21st on the main stage of Warehouse Theater 1021 7th St NW in downtown Washington, DC Tickets are $25 to $30. To purchase online go to www.scenatheatre.org.

Listen here.

 

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By Ronnie Ruff

Silent Partners  –  Scena Theatre

Barry Dennen (center) and James Raby in Silent Partners.
Photo: Ray Gniewek

Verfremdungseffekt translated from the German is estrangement effect and it is one of the defining principles of Epic Theatre, the stage theory Bertolt Brecht wanted audiences to realize. He wanted them to distance themselves from the production. Brecht used historical themes without being strictly historical, actors speaking directly to the audience or transposition of text to the third person and unnatural stage lighting all to keep the audience ever mindful that the theatre was not real, since it was not real the issues addressed in the play could be acted upon by the audience. He used the term historification — Brecht felt that if one were to tell a story from a time that is contemporary to an audience, they may not be able to find the critical perspective that he felt was needed. Instead, he used historical material with themes that paralleled the social problems of his day. He hoped that, in viewing these semi-historical themes from a critical view point, the issues of his day would be transparent to the world. That is Brecht’s theory of Epic Theatre and it is that theatrical theory that Charles Marowitz describes and pulls from in Silent Partners, the saga of Brecht and Bentley currently at the the Warehouse main stage.

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All Snaps By: Lorraine Treanor

Ray Ficca (Anything Goes)

DCTR Favorite Tracy Lynn Olivera (Shenandoah)

More Snaps Click to Read The Article Below

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Meg Gillentine, Brad Oscar and Diego Prieto (Damn Yankees)

Watch this evening for our coverage of the party with full photo coverage by our own Lorraine Treanor.

Helen Haze report from Rorschach!

Tboy’s gossip from the HH’s party is posted here 

Mr. Marks’ thoughts on HH are here

Notes from Playbill.Com are here

DC Theatre Reviews is your complete Helen Hayes source.