Something Past in Front of the Light is “The Exorcist” for grownups. Playwright Kathleen Akerley’s genius script recognizes, as “The Exorcist” did not, that Satan (Alexander Strain), or “Stan” as he is familiarly called here, does not torment the innocent. To win Satan’s special attention you must invite him, as you must invite Dracula, into your house. [Read more...]

For two decades during the twentieth century, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote some of the most important fiction coming out of America. The six novels which comprise his earliest and best work – Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-5 – were a riot of strange concepts and provocative ideas, [Read more...]

I’ll get to the Stoppard play in a minute, but right now let’s focus on what’s really important for Washington theater: Kathleen Akerley’s The Oogatz Man. Washington deserves to develop its own authentic theatrical voice, as Chicago and other great theater towns have done. [Read more...]

• Theories of the Sun
• By Kathleen Akerley
• Produced by Longacre Lea
• Directed by Kathleen Akerley and Jonathon Church
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Having already established herself as a premium Washington-area actor and director, Kathleen Akerley has now written a startlingly good play – not about playwriting and literature, as you may have been led to believe, but about the sweetness of life itself, and the need for its closing in order to give it meaning. [Read more...]

The Hothouse

By Harold Pinter

Produced by Longacre Lea

Directed by Kathleen Akerley

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

The Hothouse belongs to that class of absurd, Kafkaesque plays of which Forum’s excellent production of The Memorandum by Vaclav Havel is the most recent local example. That the ultra-serious and occasionally self-righteous Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter could turn out such a piece should come as no surprise.  The House of Absurdity has never been too far from the House of Tragedy. [Read more...]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

by Tom Stoppard

Produced by Longacre Lea at Catholic University.

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

“Give us this day our daily cue,” prays Guildenstern (Jonathan Church), cueless and clueless, late in the second act of Longacre Lea’s remarkably satisfying production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Alas, Guildenstern’s problem is not too little instruction but too much, and too little context. Without reliable memories, reliable information or reliable assumptions – even the law of averages seems problematical! – Rosencrantz (the excellent Jason Stiles) and Guildenstern are cat’s-paws for everyone brighter or luckier than they. Which is, as it turns out, everyone.

[Read more...]