– Local playwright John Morogiello (most famous in DC for Irish Authors Held Hostage) is one of three American playwrights being produced this month in Vienna, Austria. The other two are Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill. Here’s his account of the European premiere of Engaging Shaw. –
Archives for April 2012
The 39 Steps
I am going to give you a summary of this astounding tour de farce, now playing at the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab of the Olney Center for the Arts, and then recommend that you forget it immediately.
Las Meninas
How many faces have historians and powers-that-be overlooked in favor of a cleaner ending, or a more convenient moral? History has captives and casualties, buried in basements and the minds of those that witnessed these crimes for themselves. Lynn Nottage’s Las Meninas, directed by Eve Muson at Rep Stage, pauses to examine these crimes, peering […]
Hamlecchino: Clown Prince of Denmark
Don’t take this the wrong way, but Hamlet has always been difficult for me. Yeah, there are more than a few who say it’s Shakespeare’s greatest play (though the older you get, the more you appreciate King Lear). But, to me, the Danish Play is too ponderous for its own good. George Bernard Shaw — […]
Mary Poppins
True story: My mother took my sister and my seven year-old self to see “Mary Poppins” in 1964 at a downtown Baltimore movie palace—who knows, it could have been the Hippodrome. The gilded theater was filled with mothers in suits and white gloves toting their daughters in crinolined party dresses.
End of the Rainbow
We owe the Brits a great debt for gifting us with the bombshell called Tracie Bennett. The slim actress/singer, who would appear from her photo to be a contemporarily coiffed blonde, has immersed herself into the psyche and spirit of Judy Garland in the play called End of the Rainbow which exposes us, in grim […]
The Nautical Yards
Space is both an inspiration and one that provides parameters to force/collision, a collective of multi-disciplinary artists. The found space of The Yards Park Canal creates a fitting backdrop and also character, one which “speaks” about war and the sea, separation and loss in the company’s newest dance-movement-theatre work, The Nautical Yards.
Begotten: O’Neill and the Harbor of Masks
Fog rises and permeates the stage. From the dark, an ensemble of five actors emerge carrying lanterns. An atonal, drifting melody from an on-stage clarinet player, sounds of lapping water and fog horns lure us into an eerie, supernatural landscape. (Sound design by Roc Lee.)
Joe Brack talks with director and the ‘clowns’ of 39 Steps
How can Patrick Barlow’s play, originally produced in 2005, based on a Hitchcock film from 1935, adapted from a novel published in 1915 written by John Buchan, be a love letter to the theatre? I had the wonderful pleasure of speaking with Olney Theatre Center’s Associate Artistic Director and Director of The 39 Steps, Clay […]
Kaddish, based on a Nobel winning novel, makes its world premiere in a tiny Baltimore space
Director Barbara Lanciers was ready to premiere Kaddish, her version of Imre Kertesz’s novel “Kaddish for an Unborn Child” at the Baltimore Theatre Project. It’s a production she’s been waiting almost a decade to bring to the stage. And for herself and actor Jacob Goodman, it’s been a labor of love. There was only one thing missing: […]
Pinky Swear’s Killing Women
Producer/ stars Allyson Harkey and Karen Lange, in their newest production for Pinky Swear—Marisa Wegryzn’s Killing Women— present a play about the big women’s issues of our day. In particular, the work/ family struggle, and the pitfalls of women in a male-dominated profession. Only here, that profession happens to be professional killing.
One Man, Two Guvnors
Richard Bean, prolific British playwright, has landed with a bang with this, his first export to American shores. A great success for two seasons at the National Theatre in London, a transfer to the West End, where it is now booked through the summer with a second cast, which means we get the first cast […]