The artist Joseph Cornell (Ethan Slater) is sitting at a café table. A waitress (Kate Villa) enters and asks him what he wants to eat.

“What will I have?” The question seems to startle the young man. “I don’t know!”

“You’re not hungry?” she asks. He says nothing. “Well, then, I’ve got honey-colored seashells…” She rattles off a list of inedible objects.

“What will I do with these?” he asks, now visibly alarmed.

“Make a life,” she replies immediately. “Do you have a life?”

That’s when things begin to get strange. [Read more...]

On August 27, 1928, the United States, along with France, Germany, Italy, Japan and many other countries, entered into the Kellogg-Briand Pact. This treaty outlawed aggressive war and the use of war as an instrument of national policy. Henceforth, the signers agreed, they would fight only defensive wars.

How’d that work out? [Read more...]

Fresh From the Funny Farm presents a collection of twenty-three comedy skits written and performed by current and former DC area high school students who are members of The Comedy Academy, Inc. of Silver Spring, MD,  a DC area after school program that seeks to foster student comedy writers and performers by providing writing workshops and performing opportunities. [Read more...]

Personal ads are a slippery slope. Writers can exaggerate and underplay their physical features and psychological nuances as much as they want, throwing the respondents for a loop when they meet. Prudence and Bruce are in this situation. As Beyond Therapy opens, they are on their first date. [Read more...]

From Don Whiteside of WeLoveDC: Jenn Larsen has been doing our reviews for Capital Fringe 2010 in partnership with DC Theater Scene, but when scheduling and venue confusion prevented her from getting to this production I agreed to pitch in. As it turns out, this was my lucky break. [Read more...]

Little did I know, when I entered The Shop at Fort Fringe,  that I was about to witness a beautiful expression of some of Shakespeare’s most noteworthy relationships. Through sign language, spoken verse, and physical movement, the cast takes the audience through a number of different relationships, from the comic, to the bittersweet, to the sincere. UNcontentED Love is about relationships, both the good and the bad, taken from works of Shakespeare.

As the lights come up, we see Colin Analco, James Caverly, Sandra Mae Frank, Aaron Halleck, Amelia Hensley, Annette McAllister, Michael Sprouse and Carrie Suggs in one of a number of tableaus, spread across the stage simultaneously. They hold each pose just long enough for it to register with the audience. Thus we meet pairings from Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello.

At times, I was absolutely moved by the physicality of the actors. The range of emotion they were able to portray was astonishing. There were moments when I couldn’t stop laughing, and other moments when the beauty of the actors’ movements touched me. The physicality was perfectly timed to the lines of text, making for an organic sensory experience.

However, there were moments in which I felt on the outside of the performance. While I could follow a number of the sections which were performed bodily, without any spoken verse, I found some of the sections without verse to drag on a bit, leaving me wondering what had happened. These moments were few, but there were enough of them that I missed out on whole sections of the performance. I understand that the two actors carrying the brunt of the speech could not carry the entire production, but maybe those long physical moments could be re-worked to speak to a larger audience.

Directors Tim “Popper” Chamberlain and Monique “Momo” Holt used their space creatively. The actors signing and physically embodying the text were always put at the forefront of the audience’s attention.  There were intimate scenes, in which the actor speaking was standing in the shadows upstage, which made for an ominous effect. At another point, the actress was on a platform at the back of the house, speaking as the action unfolded.

As the play draws to a close, we re-visit each of the couples we have witnessed, as an actor center stage recites Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30.  The final couplet leaves the audience with a beautiful sentiment. “But while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.” To think that no matter what the relationship, upon thinking of one’s lover, all sorrow ends, is a very romantic notion to juxtapose some of the troubled relationships that we have just seen.

As the program notes state, “This is not Shakespeare in Love.”

UNcontenED Love
directed by Tim “Popper” Chamberlain and Monique “Momo” Holt
reviewed by Rick Westerlake

Running time: 60 minutes

Read all the reviews and check out the full Capital Fringe schedule here.

Did you see the show?  What did you think?

Thursday night’s audience was stripping off layers before the show had started. Maybe it was the smooth R&B pre-show soundtrack. Maybe it was an effect of the deep hot glow of the red footlights. Seems more likely it was the venue’s A/C unit, which gave us time to warm up while it warmed up, but no matter. Love was in the air… if love is an angry, dingy thing you make together on a cot upstairs. [Read more...]

Every so often a piece of theatre comes along that touches the audience, making them laugh and cry, illuminating  issues that we all experience privately, but seldom address in mixed company. Logic, Luck and Love does all this, and more, shedding light on both the heterosexual and homosexual male and female experiences in love.  [Read more...]

DC theatregoers have a unique opportunity to see a heart-warming, funny, touching, and beautifully written one-man show, with a tour-de-force performance by Queer in the USA’s writer and performer Manuel Simons. [Read more...]

Ever wonder what became of the beloved characters from Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” comic strip? You know, once they grew up and were faced with all of the trials and tribulations of high school? Well, you are in luck because Burt V. Royal has written an update for the beloved gang, with his beautifully moving and uproariously funny play Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. [Read more...]