•  Ambition Facing West
• By Anthony Clarvoe
• Produced by Theater Alliance
• Directed by Jeremy Skidmore
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

There was a time, in the heart of human history, in which men who sought to escape the straightjacket of their society took to westward travel.  It began in the late 16^th and early 17^th  centuries, when Englishmen – second sons and other members of civilization’s backwater – went to America in great sailing ships, and settled in Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.  It continued through the shadow of the first War. In America, the restlessness drove families further west: to the Mississippi, and beyond.  To California, to Alaska, and to points yet further West. [Read more...]

Lazarus Syndrome

By Bruce Ward

Produced by Theater Alliance

Directed by Paul Douglas Michnewicz

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

In 1983, concert pianist Elliott Liteman (Michael Kramer) discovered that he had contracted AIDS.  He watched in horror and helplessness as dozens of his closest friends, and tens of thousands of other people, died.  How did he, among all the sufferers, manage to survive until the discovery of medicines sufficient to control the disease’s worst effects?  Who knows?  Yet here he is, nearly twenty–five years later.  He no longer gives concerts.  Instead, he lives in his apartment with his spouse-in-fact Stephen (Kevin Boggs) on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, receiving disability, morose and loaded with survivor’s guilt.  [Read more...]

3/4 A Mass For St. Vivian – Theatre Alliance 

By Ronnie Ruff

It wasn’t night time when I attended 3/4 A Mass For St. Vivian. It was a wonderful Saturday afternoon, really warm outside, a bit of a breeze blowing. Inside the H Street Playhouse it was that purple haze of dusk, the moon clear and bright, a wonderful story is being told on a gray shingled roof that has been constructed in the black box space

3/4 A Mass For St. Vivian is a story of friendship and eventual truthfulness, growing up fast and getting all the wiser for it. How wise can one be at the young age of seventeen? That, my friends is how old Phoebe Rusch, the playwright responsible for this very exciting piece of theatre is at present — she was fifteen when she wrote it.

Emily (Marybeth Fritzky), an import from the Midwest, arrives in the big city to tell this story of two young women that are nothing alike but have the ability to communicate their feelings and share their fears and eventually secrets. Emily is the bookish one, conservative yet looking to explore her limits and the new world that surrounds her. Vivian (Nora Woolley) is a free spirit, flashing the peace sign with that huge smile — she holds inside her the tangled feelings of her own demise. She is living her young life at a breakneck pace, not wanting to miss out on anything even the least bit worthwhile. Both young women learn there is far more to life than what they previously had thought. Growing up in the mid seventies myself, I can say being a teenager was difficult at best and Miss Rusch captures many of the insecure feelings and much of the out of control culture of those times that are still etched in my memory today.

Paul-Douglas Michnewicz’s direction is refreshing and without fault throughout the eighty minute production. Ms. Fritzky and Ms. Woolley are delightful, entirely enveloped in their roles, they leave us with that nice feeling inside that comes from seeing a play that just feels right. The interaction between the two always seems natural and unforced almost as if they were really close friends. The staging was simple yet imaginative, a perfect match for such an intimate yet accessible story. Soft lighting with colorful shadows wash over the rooftop stage creating a setting that seemed like home.

It is a brave company that starts off its season with a play by a seventeen year old playwright albeit an award winning one, Jeremy Skidmore shows the depth of his artistic vision and his willingness to take risks by staging this production of 3/4 A Mass For St. Vivian. There is little doubt why Arena Stage picked Theater Alliance as the smaller company they wish to support with a newly announced mentoring program that will be a huge help to this small company. Refreshing and simply brilliant writing by an award winning playwright along with quality direction and spirited acting make this a production you should not miss. The show has been extended and it is suggested to buy your tickets right away!

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By: Tim Treanor

Two Rooms, produced by Theater Alliance, at H Street Theater

Two Rooms is one of a pair of mainstage productions which anchors Theater Alliance’s ambitious two-month Pangea Project. In Earth’s early days, all land was contained in a single mass. Scientists call this land mass “Pangea”. In Two Rooms, the American hostage Michael Wells (David Johnson) is kept in an empty Beirut cell; his devastated wife Lainie (Katherine Coons) transforms his home office into what she imagines is the cell’s double, exiling all the furniture to the basement; and both rooms are staged in the same space in the production. Things have not changed all that much, playwright Lee Blessing seems to be suggesting.

[Read more...]