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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

The national touring company production at the Kennedy Center

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a sacred text of pain, a holy howl of misery from people who have ritualized both their failures and their depravities, and made them institutionalized.  In this incandescent production, Kathleen Turner and the astonishing Bill Irwin - seemingly as at home with Albee as Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards were with O’Neill - turn his signature characters of Martha and George into drunken angels of despair.  It is church as much as theater, and it will give you a scrubbing.  Halfway through the play you will feel as though you need a shower, and at the end you will feel as though you had one. (more…)

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Produced by The American Century Theater

Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

Parker Dixon (left) Susan Marie Rhea (center), Kevin Adams (right)  (Photo: Jeffrey Bell)

   The American Century Theater (TACT) can be commended for producing revivals of rarely performed, American masterpieces like Desire Under the Elms from Nobel Laureate playwright Eugene O’Neill in a compelling and beautiful way. Judging from the staging at the Gunston Theatre II in Arlington, TACT’s mission is not impossible. (more…)

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Produced by Washington Stage Guild

Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

  Jason Stiles and Sunshine Cappelitti  (photo: C. Stanley Photography)

   As the Washington Stage Guild director Bill Largess observes in The Countess  program, the scandal of the 19^th Century would make news in our supermarket tabloids today.In 1853, John Ruskin, a great writer who clarified and defined the Victorian Age, publicly defended the avant-garde, pre-Raphaelite artists for freeing the art world from the Royal Academy’s rigid rules. Appearances were deceiving. At home as a husband, he was prim and arid, a neurotic mess. But he blamed his "mentally unbalanced" wife, Euphemia, a.k.a. Effie, for the strife. "You’re not what I think a woman should be." He wanted a marble Venus or a painting of a Renaissance saint, an ideal. No twenty-first century woman would put up with such a pompous, suffocating prig. Neither did Effie. She ran off with Ruskin’s protégé, the pre-Raphaelite painter, John Millais. Queen Victoria banned Effie, who was not exactly a Princess Di, from existence over their divorce.

   As a play, The Countess is a dazzling, wonderfully ironic little gem. The cast in this well-paced production is superb. Debuting at the Washington Stage Guild, Sunshine Cappelletti (Effie),   nicknamed "the countess", positively glows with incandescent rebellion. Effie is really a gorgeous and rebellious Ophelia. Physically, it’s as if Cappelletti stepped out of a John Millais painting of that title, hanging on the Ruskin parlor wall. (more…)

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Produced by Studio Theatre

Reviewed by Tim Treanor, Esq.

Eric Feldman, Benton Greene and Anne Bowles (Photo by Scott Suchman)

   I was astonished to discover that Studio Theatre’s latest Neil LaBute play, This Is How It Goes, is actually a musical.  Cody and Belinda are gloriously intoxicated by fresh young love.  As they sing their opening number, "Even Though We’re An Interracial Couple, We Can Still Be Happy," fluffy pink bunny rabbits float out onto the stage, and  join the chorus in tiny voices reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks.  And then…

   Oh, sorry, joking.  I was just being an unreliable narrator, as Eric Feldman’s unnamed protagonist (the program lists him as "Man") proclaims himself to be.  LaBute’s latest is actually much like his previous plays, a witty, discomforting confrontation with our own worst demons, a sermonette for sinners delivered by a character so sleazy we cannot help but recognize ourselves in him. (more…)

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Mojo Mickybo by Owen McCafferty

Produced by the new island project of Keegan Theatre at Theatre on the Run

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Podcast with the cast and director follows the review.

Who are those guys?

Hey, if you like good theater, delivered explosively by excellent actors, do yourself a favor and go to the Theatre on the Run in Arlington.  Buy yourself a ticket to Owen McCafferty’s Mojo Mickybo, plunk yourself down in one of the comfortable seats, and just watch.

Mojo Mickybo, set in 1970 Belfast, is the story of the friendship between two boys, the diffident Mojo (Christopher Dinolfo) and querulous, aggrieved Mickybo (Michael Innocenti).  The lads are just at the cusp of pubescence, where they glory in the ecstatic violation of parental authority and of minor ordinances. They steal cigarettes, piss on walls and shout out profanity with the purposefulness of monks singing a hymn.  They are full of grand plans, but they are still kids.  When Mickybo’s stewbum father (Dinolfo again) offers to take the kids to Australia, Mojo enthusiastically signs on - as soon as he gets his mother’s permission. ( “Just be back in time for tea,” his distracted ma (Innocenti again) says.}

Like kids of this age all over the globe, they live in a world which is half fantasy and half real.  The fantasy part is informed by the great William Goldman movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Mojo and Mickybo imagine themselves to be the immortal cowboys, hard-riding gun-toting friends to the end.  (”All men are cowboys,” a Greek chorus of neighborhood women, all played by Innocenti, tells Mojo, and they carry that truth with them throughout the play.)  They talk a friendly local bus driver (Dinolfo) into giving them a ride to the next county, which will serve for Bolivia in the absence of the real thing. (more…)

 

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On December 14^th, they came to a farewell cabaret to say goodbye to Signature’s garage space and we were in the lobby recording before and after the show. Stopping by (in order of appearance): Joel Markowitz, Vicki Winter, Amy Winter, Eric Schaeffer, Alex Matthews, Harry Winter, Emily Beard, Bob and Phyllis Hecht, Laurie Kahn, Kitty Ray, Rick Burch, an anonymous commentator, Kathleen Ott, Bill Lipsed and, with a classic cell phone story,  Helen Hayes Award winner Will Gartshore.  Click here to hear their memories which stretch w-a-a-y back, and their hopes for the new space.

And boy - will they love tomorrow!  We just toured the new Signature - an astonishing, glamorous complex of two theaters, the 99 seat ARK and the 299 seat MAX, linked by a gorgeous lobby looking out to the shops of Shirlington Village.  None of the love is lost in the new space, and everything is gained.  Signature is still committed to the flexible black box presentation and to not miking performers - having spent over a $1 Million in creating the perfect acoustical performance spaces.  Everyone’s dreams are coming true: for rehearsals, dancers have sprung floors, singers and musicians have perfect acoustics, directors can tape off the complete performing space, the tech areas are state of the art, spacious dressing rooms accommodate 41 performers, and the offices are visually exciting. And for the audience:  a grand staircase with chandelier, a sweeping bar and lounge in the lobby which will showcase a pianist, and free parking in one - and soon two - adjacent parking lots.

Even this week, with the whine of saws and drills in the background, and cables and scaffolding everywhere, the special Signature energy is already bubbling up. See for yourself at Signature’s Open House: January 13-14 featuring tours, cabarets, workshops and culminating with a special preview of Into the Woods. Doors open each day at 11:30 am. Click here for the complete schedule. 

 

 Saying goodbye to the garage: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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          Washington’s CityPaper, which provides the area’s most comprehensive print coverage of the arts, recognized the contributions of DCTheatreReviews.com to theater journalism in its year-end theatre round-up.

          In a December 29 column entitled "Arch History", CityPaper theater critics Trey Graham and Bob Mondello hailed "the maturation of DCTheatreReviews.com as a valuable clearinghouse for critical opinion, podcasts, photos, and bloggage."  (more…)

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