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By: Fiona Zublin

A Body Of Water –  RoundHouse Theatre Silver Spring

 As humans, we fear losing control of ourselves. It is the worst nightmare of many to be infirm in some way, to lose one’s memories and to become entirely a burden on the ones we love. In A Body of Water, Lee Blessing’s latest work, he takes this concept—the terrifying uncertainty of forgetfulness—and makes it warm and funny, without losing the poignance and relevance that are innate to this subject.

A man (Jerry Whiddon) and a woman (Nancy Robinette) wake up next to each other, naked, in a house filled with white couches and surrounded by a lake. Neither has any idea why they are there or of their own identities. Their only source is Wren (Kate Eastwood Norris), a brusque young woman who knows who they are but never gives straight answers. Despite the myriad scenarios Wren gives to explain their situation, the horrifying implications of their plight never alter. To lose one’s memory day after day, waking up each morning with no idea who one is—that is to be completely at the mercy of another to define one’s reality, and it is the most terrible fate imaginable.

Nancy Robinette’s performance is a tour de force, powerful, witty, and compelling. It is a tribute to both the other actors and the play itself that her presence does not overpower the actors with whom she shares the stage. Robinette and Whiddon manage to bring out the comedy is the script as they attempt to determine which (if any) of Wren’s stories about their memory loss is true. Director Rebecca Bayla Taichman has taken this occasionally confusing story and made it compelling enough to be worth puzzling over.

James Kronzer’s set is composed of platforms floating over a dark space, topped with boring if expensive-looking furniture. Martin Desjardins and Matthew M. Nielson co-designed the sound, which includes eerie and vaguely melancholy music that weaves between scenes, barely noticeable, but ultimately putting the audience in the mood for the sad, scary, and ultimately human story that they are witnessing.

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By: Tim Treanor

On the Verge or The Geography of Yearning - Arena Stage

I was really looking forward to Arena Stage’s production of On the Verge. Who wasn’t? Playwright Eric Overmyer has written for some of network television’s most intelligent television dramas, including St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life in the Streets and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. The immensely gifted Tazewell Thompson - now Artistic Director at the excellent Westport County Playhouse - was coming back to Arena to direct. And Westport would co-produce the show! Not to mention the fact that Arena was on a terrific hot streak: several artistic and commercial successes in a row, most recently the superb Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, still playing at the Kreeger. How could this go wrong?

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By: Joel Markowitz
Theatre Schmooze

WAITING FOR STUDIO THEATRE’S PRODUCTION,
OR
Fond frozen memories of Caroline, or Change - from the Public Theatre to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, and how a musical about a smoking, fuming, bitter maid changed me and taught me the lesson of “common cents.”

Photos from Joel’s site

There will be beaucoup “joy” at Studio Theatre starting May 17th when Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical, Caroline, or Change opens. It’s a show close to my heart and proves once and for all that you can lose your “sense” (”cents”) and gain “common sense,” and if you work hard enough, you can “change.”

I was in New York City on Sunday, December 6 and 7, 2003 doing one of my three shows in 1 ½ days trips to the Big Apple. It was a strange weekend. My bus was stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel for three hours, and the bright sky turned very black as we approached the Port Authority bus terminal. Huge snow flakes started falling and visibility didn’t exist. It snowed like hell and 10 inches added up quickly. It reminded me of Buffalo, NY in the summer (where I grew up).

I saw The Exonerated on Saturday afternoon. Actors were forgetting their cues and lines, even though they had the script in front of them! If it were punishable by prison time, those actors would have gotten the chair and no exoneration. Later that night, I enjoyed David Friedman’s revue, Listen To My Heart, but there were only 15 of us in the theatre. The next day, the show closed, even though the critics liked it. (It did much better here in DC, when it was performed by members of The Gay Men’s Chorus two years ago.) David Friedman has written the music for Saving Aimee which will premiere at Signature Theatre, this spring).

The next day, Sunday, December 7th, a day that will live in infamy, started off with more heavy snow fall and ended with Broadway musical bliss.

I sloshed through the snow with my friend Dinah Reitman until we arrived at The Public Theatre. While Dinah was walking around outside, I walked in to sit in my seat, and immediately bumped into Tony Kushner. The man was smiling because his TV adaptation of Angels In America (soon to win 11 Emmys) was premiering that evening on HBO, and Frank Rich had just written a rave about Caroline, or Change in the NY Times. Not a bad day in the City for a very busy and suddenly over-extended popular playwright.

We chatted about the upcoming production of Homebody/Kabul that was opening at DC’s own Theater J. I gave him my business card and wished him well. He told me if I could get a large crowd from The Ushers to come to the show when he was in DC, he’d conduct a post-performance discussion. What a nice guy!

When Tonya Pinkins began Caroline, or Change with “Nothin’ ever happens underground in Louisiana / There ain’t no underground in Louisiana / There is only under water,” a slow moving chill crept up my spine. (How ironic that Katrina was not far away.) Two hours later, the crowd was on its feet cheering loudly because what we had seen on that frigid afternoon “changed me,” and I expect, changed others who were there.

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By: Ronnie Ruff

Alice In Wonderland –  Spooky Action Theater 

Photo credit to: Micah Hutz.  Cast: (bottom l to r) Joseph Perna, Yasmin Tuazon; (top l to r) Francisco Reinoso, Joel Reuben Ganz, Marissa Molnar, Jessica Hansen.

Talented upstart Spooky Action Theater has taken a fall in the rabbit hole that is Manhattan Project’s Alice In Wonderland and have done an admirable job not only with the fluid dialog but an even better job with the extremely fluid movement that twirls and twists before your eyes.  A visual feast, there are superior examples of actors pushing themselves to get that extra ounce of performance, a flash of brilliance. Without doubt you will not see more energetic and artistic movement per square foot anywhere in DC this spring.

Director Richard Heinrich put his trust in his actors and they have not betrayed that trust. Mr. Henrich describes the direction as ten percent him and ninety percent the actors. These are actors who tumble, somersault, flip and catapult across the small space at FlashPoint as if they were fresh from Cirque Du Soleil. There are quite a few strong performances including Alice (Yasmin Tuazon), Humpty Dumpty (Francisco Reinoso)  and The White Knight  (Joel Reuben).  Ms Tuazon (a Rorschach company member) is adorable yet feisty and simply infectious.

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We attended The African Continuum Theatre’s first ever cabaret this past Saturday the 12th of May.  The stage consisted of a single upright piano and a few tables surrounding the stage. A mural depicting a colorful nightclub was hung behind the stage.  There was an full house for our 7:30 show  which was followed at 10PM by a late show.

The lineup consisted  of (in order of performance)

Erika Rose

Maurice Clemons

Bev Cosham

Stephawn Stephens

Bina Malhotra

Clif Walker

and the incredible Eleasha Gamble.

All of the performers performed admirably, Ms Cosham was quite special and provided some amusing between song banter,  The evening closed with Clif Walker, who has a soaring voice and great stage presence and, last but not least, Ms Gamble. I can only say that if you have not had the pleasure of hearing this young lady’s voice you have yet to know what singing is truly about. Eleasha is a star waiting to explode. American Idol?  She was alive and singing at Atlas Saturday night.

I sat down with Tazewell Thompson in Molly Smith’s office during the intermission of On The Verge or The Geography Of Yearning last week before the public opening at Arena Stage. Mr. Thompson has very interesting things to say about directing “in the round”, the differences between theatre in the US and Europe and the women who shaped his life and career.

Interviewer: Ronnie Ruff

Tazewell Thompson became Artistic Director of Westport Country Playhouse on January 1, 2006. At the Playhouse, he appeared as an actor in Checking Out in 1976 and directed The Old Settler in 2003 and The Immigrant in 2005. At Arena he has directed M. Butterfly, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Yellowman, The Glass Menagerie, Playboy of the West Indies, Yerma, plus his own play Constant Star and many others. His international opera career has taken him to L’Opera de Paris, la Scala, Houston Grand Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Tokyo Opera, L’Opera Bastille, Glimmerglass Opera, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Portland, Michigan, Osaka and New York City Opera. His production of Porgy and Bess was broadcast on PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center” and received Emmy nominations for Best Director and Best Production. His national theater credits include Arena Stage, Goodman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Guthrie, Old Globe, Hartford Stage, Seattle Rep, Oregon Shakespeare, PlayMakers Rep, Peoples Light and Theatre Company, Huntington Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Public Theatre, Second Stage, Roundabout, Goodspeed, Indiana Rep, Cleveland Play House, San Jose Rep and Virginia Stage, among many others. An award-winning playwright, Mr. Thompson’s play Constant Star has had more than a dozen productions and recently received five NAACP awards. He is commissioned to write plays for Arena Stage, Lincoln Center Theatre, South Coast Rep and Peoples Light and Theatre Company.

 

 Tazewell Interview [10:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (274)

By Ronnie Ruff

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me –  Catalyst Theater Company

It is not an easy thing to produce live theatre in Washington, DC – in fact it is a pretty dicey proposition. One of the hardest parts is finding the needed funds to pay the bills. Catalyst Theater Company has reduced prices at their Capitol Hill space to a ten dollar ticket for every performance. Why am I starting out a review talking about ticket prices?  Catalyst and many other smaller companies put on quality productions on the tightest budgets. In the case of Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, Catalyst has outdone themselves. I was amazed at the attention to detail in all aspects of the staging from the sounds of noisy pipes to the feel of the dark basement the hostages of this story are held in. The technical aspects of this play are so good that one completely forgets that it is a play - the story becomes a powerfully real example of strength of heart and mind.

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Check out our review of Arena’s On The Verge Or The Geography Of Yearning and a podcast interview with director Tazewell Thompson on Mother’s Day. We sat down with Tazewell at Arena Stage and chatted about Arena’s new play and on this Mother’s Day the wonderful women he admires and who shaped his love for theatre. 

By Joel Markowitz                                      Vol1-Issue1

LOTS TO SING ABOUT-PART ONE -SONDHEIMITES REJOICE!!

Can we schmooze about the many musicals that will grace our area stages this summer and next season?

How can Signature Theatre top Urinetown, which recently flushed out the competition at The Helen Hayes Awards?

For us Sondheimites, relief comes in the form of their eagerly awaited productions of Assassins and Into The Woods.

Joe Calarco                                              Eric Schaeffer

Because Signature Theatre announced this week that there are more delays completing their new space in Shirlington, we will have to make our treck into the woods a little later - in January 2007. Will this new production generate the excitement that Signature’s 1995 award winning production did?
I can’t wait to see if “the end justifies the beans.”

It would be great to see Megan Lawrence, who won the Helen Hayes Award in 1995, come back and recreate her Little Red Riding Hood. I saw her in April as Gladys in The Pajama Game, and I predict she will win the Tony for her role on June 11th.

With their multi-talented and Helen Hayes Award Winning troupe, which includes Will Gartshore, Erin Driscoll, Stephen Gregory Smith and Donna Migliaccio, Signature will entertain us with Assassins from May 30th through July 16th. It’s a hot ticket.

It will be a blast.

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By Tim Treanor

Faust, produced by Synetic Theatre, at the Rosslyn Spectrum

Faust is a feast on a roller-coaster ride, dizzying, exhilarating, and satisfying. Images fly out of nowhere and disappear in an instant. Synetic’s fabled coordination of movement is in full flower; actors move together with such speed and precision that telepathy is the only obvious explanation. The slick costuming (Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili) seems like skin, and sin; and the rich and luscious music - designed by Irakli Kavsadze and director Paata Tsikurishvili and composed by Konstantin Lordkipany and Bondo Gugely — is like an extra character.

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