Roundheads and Peakheads

Roundheads and Peakheads
By Bertolt Brecht
Directed by Christopher Gallu
Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Oh, what an unpleasant task it is to review a play one didn’t enjoy! And how much worse it is when the production is done by an excellent and admirable company, and with such obvious care and effort!  But it is time to face the music. Read more

1984

1984
Adapted from a novel by George Orwell by Christopher Gallu
Directed by Jim Petosa
Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
Reviewed by Tim Treanor

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. And Catalyst is in the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, rather than its old digs at the Capital Hill Arts Center. I know this last one is true because I saw them there, with my own eyes, producing a visually arresting, technically flawless, intellectually faithful adaptation Read more

Crumble (lay me down Justin Timberlake)

• Crumble (lay me down Justin Timberlake)
• by Sheila Callaghan
• Directed by Shirley Serotsky
• Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
• Reviewed by Leslie Weisman

This may be the shortest, sharpest - and the most seemingly effortlessly poetic - play you’ll see outside of the Capital Fringe Festival.  Like some of those memorable mini- quasi- master sketches, “Crumble,” in a little more than an hour, draws an astute and affecting portrait of two sisters; the preteen daughter /niece whose mercurial moods and needs whet their differences; and the ways in which inanimate objects can serve as a silent sounding board for their, and by extension, our unarticulated fears and desires, and as a springboard to help us identify and at last, deal with them.  Read more

Swimming in the Shallows

• Swimming in the Shallows
• By Adam Bock
• Directed by Scott Fortier
• Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
• Reviewed by Steven McKnight

Describing Swimming in the Shallows as a quirky little comedy with surreal touches would be accurate, but that description alone would fail to convey what a smart and entertaining production awaits you at Catalyst Theater Company.  Read more

The Trial

• The Trial
• Adapted by Christopher Gallu from a novel by Franz Kafka
• Directed by Christopher Gallu
• Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

There are some great novels which simply cannot be happily adapted to the stage.  I regret to report that The Trial is one of them, notwithstanding some extraordinary inventiveness by adapter-director Christopher Gallu.  Imagine an account of the apocalypse given by an insurance clerk, and you have some idea of the style and voice Kafka uses to create The Trial.  This voice and style, which constitute the guts of Kafka’s technique, here and elsewhere, is just not suitable for the stage. Read more

The Flu Season

 

By Will Eno

Produced by Catalyst Theater Company

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

The reviewer plops heavily into his chair and fires up his Dell.  He types in the basics.  Playwright’s name.  Producing company.  His own name.  He takes a pull from the glass of tawny port he had just poured and sits back.  He wishes he had one of those orange jellies with the chocolate on it.

“Will 2007 be remembered as the year that Washington theaters decided to add value to their productions by giving their audiences two plays in one?” he writes.  “With She Stoops to Comedy, In on It, and now The Flu Season, it seems to have become standard to have plays about playwrights writing a play.” Read more

We Are Not These Hands

Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
Reviewed by Tim Treanor

                                                       Cassie Platt (Moth) and Scott Fortier (Leather) (Photo credit:  Joe Shymanski)

The first thing to understand about this quirky and provocative play is what it is not. It is not a play about the internet. It is not a play about underdeveloped or third-world countries, with or without the internet. It is not about the People’s Republic of China, and, notwithstanding its setting in a socialist country, it is not about the political implications when the economy of some socialist backwater suddenly goes international.

It is about love. Don’t take my word for it; read Catalyst’s interview with the playwright here. Read more

Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

• The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,
• by Bertold Brecht
• Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

For Bertold Brecht, theater was always a sort of sermonette disguised as a circus act.  When he was at his most speculative and general - Threepenny Opera comes to mind - his plays were like the planet Jupiter, huge and cold and gaseous.  But when he was specific, as he was in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, he was ingenuity personified, and his work approached high art.  This is a gorgeous play, and Catalyst’s production does it full justice. Read more

Words That Fly

By: Ronnie Ruff

Eleemosynary                                         Catalyst Theater

Spelling Bees, flying children and the joy of articulate vernacular are all part of the simple diversion that is Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary. This is a story of three bright women;  a mother, daughter and grandmother and the ties that bind them together.

There is nothing traditional about these women or their relationships but that is the sheer bliss of Christopher Janson’s production. Echo (Lindsay Haynes), who’s opening monologue is simply wonderful, longs for the love of her mother but she is not able to find the maternal instincts needed to provide that love. Raised by her grandmother, she is a spelling bee champion and the only one with her head on straight. Artie (Kathleen Coons) is Echo’s mother, emotionally dysfunctional due to being raised by the overbearing, flighty Dorothea (Ellen Young) who is convinced that with wings Artie could and should fly. Dorothea suffers a stroke and Echo and Artie arrive to provide the extra care and support. Through a series of flashbacks we learn how these fragile relationships developed and why eleemosynary is ultimately the most important word used in this production where words are played as orchestral instruments.

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