THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, MAY 28, 2010
48
Mini
A star (B) denotes a show recommended by our critics.
Reviews
NEWLY REVIEWED
THE BEST OF FRIENDS
At Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church through Saturday
“Plot is the curse of serious drama,” blusters George Bernard Shawin Hugh Whitemore’s three-character play. Indeed, Whitemore’s script doesn’t need to bother much with story. Instead, it chronicles the unexpected real-life friendship of the great playwright, a museum curator and a cloistered nun. Although the play is based on letters passed among these three figures of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the Washington Stage Guild’s production lets the actors confront one another as if they were in direct dialogue. The moral standoffs between Shaw and the nun turn out to be particularly riveting. The second act switches focus from religion to mortality, and the curator, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, takes on a greater role. David Bryan Jackson is fine as this largely contented, inquisitive culture hound, but Cockerell simply isn’t as interesting as the nun and the playwright. Still, it’s a quick-witted evening, with Whitemore and the actors coasting on the perpetual surge of three generous and often sparkling minds.
Friday at 8 and Saturday at 2:30 and 8. 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. 240-582-0050.
www.stageguild.org. $40-$50.
BGRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES
At Woolly Mammoth Theatre through June 13
Rajiv Joseph’s romantic dramedy, offered up with an appealing vivacity by Woolly Mammoth Theatre, wrestles with the problem of a young man and woman who struggle vainly over the decades to wrap each other in a blanket of love and protection. Recounted as a series of vignettes that hopscotch back and forth across time, the story of Doug (Tim Getman) and Kayleen (Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey) unfolds around their respective affinities for mishap. It’s the jaunty, quirkily amusing tone Joseph takes with their encounters, from the time Doug and Kayleen are 8 until they’re 38, that makes this play more than the sum of its metaphors. Director John Vreeke effectively embraces the story’s crosscurrents, drawing out the play’s youthful exuberance as well as its sadder dimension — the sense that even when two people can be each other’s salvation, there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever reach the kind of emotional synchronicity that allows them to carry out the rescue.
— Peter Marks
Friday-Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2 and 7, Tuesday-Thursday at 8. 641 D St. NW.
202-393-3939.
www.woollymammoth.net.
$40-$62.
NAKED BOYS SINGING!
At 1409 Playbill Cafe through June 13
The Ganymede Arts production “Naked Boys Singing” gets a blue ribbon for truth in advertising. Caution to the wind, pants backstage, the point isn’t greatness but sweetness. The six performers sing their hearts out and dare you not to love them. The cheerful nudity keeps things light, right from the opening song, which is aptly titled “Gratuitous Nudity.” The bare bods are the only subject, really, and you have to grin or the encounter would be too awkward for words. The lads can sing (as if you care), and if the lyrics strain for jokes, the cast’s joie de vivre invites you to overlook shortcomings and just have fun.
before the end of “The Dancing Princesses,” fluidly directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer, King Horace’s domain will once again look favorably on the fox trot, bunny hop and Charleston. Especially the Charleston: Composer-lyricist Christopher Youstra and book writer Allyson Currin — local artists commissioned by Imagination Stage — have set their tale in a version of the Roaring Twenties. Unspooling in front of designer James Kronzer’s art deco palace-bedroom set, this reworking of a Brothers Grimm story particularly benefits from the presence of the wonderful Bobby Smith as Horace. His perpetually flustered sovereign is endearingly goofy, but his befuddled grief, after the queen’s death, gives the show emotional grounding.
WASHINGTON STAGE GUILD
The Washington Stage Guild’s “The Best of Friends,” starring, from left, David Bryan Jackson, Catherine Flye and Bill Largess, closes Saturday.
COMINGS AND GOINGS
Last chance
Closing Saturday: The Washington Stage Guild’s “The Best of
Friends” at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church (240-582-0050). . . . Closing Sunday: “Around the World in 80 Days” at Round House Theatre (240-644-1100); “Reasons to Be Pretty” at Studio Theatre (202-332-3300); “The Dancing Princesses” at Imagination Stage (301-280-1660); “The Liar” at the Lansburgh Theatre (202-547-1122).
— Nelson Pressley
On sale now
Olney Theatre Center stages “Trumpery,” a play about Charles
Darwin, June 9 through July 4. $26-$54. 301-924-3400. www.
olneytheatre.org. . . . The Shakespeare Theatre Company presents the closing play of its season, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” June 8 through July 11. $20-$87. 202-547-1122.
www.shakespearetheatre.
org.
her hybrid ethnicity (her heritage is African American, Chinese and Cuban) seems to provoke in a society that likes to pigeonhole. Instead of plodding through a linear autobiography, she arranges many memories thematically. Hernandez also channels memories and reflections into choreography. Such pointed moments will prompt theatergoers to ruminate a little about identity politics and the molding of the self in a multicultural world. Chiefly, though, “Paige in Full,” presented by the Hegira company, will leave audiences hoping more work by Hernandez — and Nick tha 1da, too — comes along soon.
— C.W.
Friday at 8 and 10 and Saturday at 3 and 8. 916 G St. NW. 866-811-4111. www.
flashpointdc.org.
www.thehegira.org. $20.
RIFAR EL CORAZÓN (HEARTSTRINGS)
At the Gunston Arts Center Theater II through Saturday
— N.P
Friday at 8, Saturday at 6 and 8, Sunday at 5 and 7, Thursday at 8. 1409 14th St. NW. 202-290-1502.
www.ganymedearts.org. $35.
PAIGE IN FULL
At Flashpoint through Saturday
As performer/choreographer Paige Hernandez chats to the audience and executes urban-cool hoofin’ routines, and her brother, hip-hop artist Nick tha 1da, generates beats and sampling at a table behind her, their mutual respect reverberates in sync with their enthusiasm for hip-hop. She tells of her childhood passion for dance and music and muses wryly on the confusion that
.
Contemporary Uruguayan playwright Dino Armas’s wry, rueful drama depicts three women coping with hemmed-in lives and the burden of a scandalous secret or two. The cluttered living room is the domain of Marta (Nucky Walder), who spends her days watching TV talk shows and caring for her near-comatose daughter, Alicia (Yovinca Arredondo Justiniano). When Marta’s finicky sister, Silvana (Marycarmen Wila), visits, resentments and accusations flare up amid the reminiscences and sisterly bonding. In an effective bit of stylization, the play’s four scenes are bookended by romantic ballads sung by Alex Alburqueque. Though Armas has built a twist into his cleverly constructed tale, it is predominantly a quiet play, and some of Marta and Silvana’s nostalgia sessions go on a little long. For the most part, though, the production is an intriguing taste of Armas’s work, and it’s one of the most polished pieces Teatro de la Luna has mounted in recent years.
Friday at 8 and Saturday at 3 and 8. 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington. 703-548-3092. www.
teatrodelaluna.org. $25-$30.
CONTINUING
B AMERICAN BUFFALO
At Studio Theatre through June 20
How fitting that Joy Zinoman’s parting
directorial act for Studio Theatre should be David Mamet’s cunning portrait of small-time thievery. Like the company she founded, the piece dates from the mid-1970s. And it takes place in Zinoman’s home town of Chicago, where, as a child actress, she first indulged her passion for the stage. You do wonder as you sit down to the 35-year-old play, set in the cluttered junk shop of Edward Gero’s Donny— a guy who’s sort of a mole on the rear end of capitalism — how well “American Buffalo” is going to hold up. Thanks, though, to some perceptive casting and, as it turns out, the durability of these hard-luck characters, it remains a gleefully flinty slice of burnt-out life: taut, funny and, in the end, surprisingly touching.
— P
Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, Sunday at 2 and 7, and Tuesday-Thursday at 8. 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-3300. www.
studiotheatre.org. $35-$63.
B AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
At Round House Theatre through Sunday
You could make a zany night of Mark Brown’s action-packed reduction of the Jules Verne novel, and the Round House Theatre production certainly indulges in its share of pratfalls and spit-takes. Yet director Nick Olcott’s approach seems relatively restrained. It’s plainly vaudevillian, but the show is (usually) less a jab in the ribs than a wink and a smile. The plot is a pure race against time: Londoner Phileas Fogg (Mitchell Hebert) bets the members of his stuffy gentlemen’s club that he can circle the globe in 80 days, and we watch as he methodically hops trains and commandeers everything from ships to elephants trying to make his deadline. Brown’s just out for a theatrical goof in this near-campy adaptation, and Olcott makes sure this toy train runs on time.
— Celia Wren
Friday at 8, Saturday at 3 and 8, and Sunday at 3. 4545 East West Hwy., Bethesda. 240-644-1100. www.
roundhousetheatre.org. $25-$60.
B THE DANCING PRINCESSES
At Imagination Stage through Sunday
In this pleasant new children’s musical, a monarch reeling from the death of his wife, a former dancer, prohibits hoofin’ throughout his kingdom. But fear not,
Friday at 10:30 and Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 and 4. 4908 Auburn Ave., Bethesda.
301-280-1660.
www.imaginationstage.org.
$10-$21.
HAMLET
At Folger Theatre through June 6
Don’t look for a princely Dane with a mind disheveled — or a single hair out of place — in Folger’s chilly new “Hamlet,” a production so primly orchestrated that even the passions feel tucked in. The idea of Elsinore as a domain disinfected of any emotion comes through in James Kronzer’s sterile set, a modern white interior, all sharp angles and twisting stairways. Absolutely nothing is rotten in this Denmark: It seems positively germ-free. And no one embodies director Joseph Haj’s concept more completely than Graham Michael Hamilton, whose generically contemporary Hamlet is redolent less of the character’s days at Wittenberg University than of nights at the gym and the mall. In fact, everyone in this placidly uninvolving version — in which all of the myriad roles are played by a mere 12 actors — is decked out as if being styled for a J. Crew photo shoot. The verse is delivered competently by the ensemble, but little evidence is offered of the attributes that set this peerless royal tragedy apart: the sneaks-up-on-you humor, the love of pretending, the intensity of the hero’s quest to come to terms with life’s intractable ambiguities.
— P
Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, Sunday at 2 and 7, and Tuesday-Thursday at 7:30. 201 East Capitol St. SE. 202-544-7077. www.
folger.edu. $30-$60.
B THE LIAR
At the Lansburgh Theatre through Sunday
.M.
If anything, “The Liar” and its mischievous adapter, David Ives, want you to savor every meticulously groomed conceit, every stylishly turned-out couplet, every assiduously manicured joke. You’ll giggle, you’ll groan. Mostly, though, you’ll be as tickled with director Michael Kahn’s steadily guided production as a comparative-lit major might be when a professor tosses out a text and decides to replace it with his own comic oeuvre. “The Liar” is about a dashing teller of tall tales, played with the requisite linguistic panache by the aptly named Christian Conn, who fools everyone on the Place Royale and, in the end, trips up no one more than himself. The high jinks rope in a pair of lovely lasses (Erin Partin and Miriam Silverman), a gullible father (David Sabin), an earnest servant (Adam Green), a jealous courtier (Tony Roach) and, just to rev up the farce, identical twin maids, both played to piquant effect by Colleen Delany.
— P
Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, and Sunday at 2 and 7. 450 Seventh St. NW. 202-547-1122. 877-487-8849. www.
shakespearetheatre.org. $46-$92.
MIKVEH
At Theater J through June 5
— N.P .
Although the locale is exotic — a haven of ritual purification whose doors are closed to men and outsiders — the results are pretty much what you might imagine. Hadar Galron’s play, a hit in Israel, conforms to the recipe for this theatrical staple, turning the bath, or mikveh, into a forum for the airing of perspectives in a tradition-bound community. In this insular environment, the women reveal their attitudes about men, duty and sex. At one extreme are the imperious Hindi (Kim Schraf) and hidebound Shoshana (Sarah Marshall), the latter the mikveh’s senior attendant. At the other end of the spectrum is the libertine Miki (Tonya Beckman Ross) — a participant only because her husband won’t sleep with her unless she partakes of the ritual bath—
theater from 47
June 8 through July 11. Sidney
Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW. 202- 547-1122. www.
shakespearetheatre.org. $20-$87.
— C.W.
Claire Danes will introduce
“Diagnosis of a Faun” as part of
the VSA Festival spotlighting art- ists with disabilities. The play was inspired by its star Gregg Mozgala, who has cerebral palsy. While working with choreogra- pher Tamar Rogoff for the show, Mozgala had a breakthrough: He developed the ability to control parts of his body he had never been able to fully command.
June 10 at 7:30 p.m. Kennedy
Center, 2700 F St. NW. 202-467- 4600.
www.kennedy-center.org. $25.
June marks the beginning of
Source Festival, an annual cel- ebration of the offbeat that might best be described as an appetizer before the buffet that is the Fringe Festival. The three-week event offers a mix of perform- ances, including 10-minute plays and the output of diverse artists who were paired up to collabo- rate on a piece over five months.
June 12 through July 3. Source,
1835 14th St. NW. 202-204-7800.
www.sourcedc.org. $18.
.M.
Local favorite John Epperson once again takes the Studio Thea- tre stage to channel divas of yore as Lypsinka. This time, Epperson is joined by James Lecesne. The pair will reprise Mary Martin’s and Carol Channing’s roles in the 1986 play “Legends!” about two rival has-beens duking it out in the name of fame.
June 16 through July 4. Studio
Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. 202- 332-3300.
www.studiotheatre. org. $42-$63.
stephanie.merry@
wpost.com
and the show’s heroine, Shira (Lise Bruneau), the new attendant from outside the community who senses the dangerous byproducts of unchecked male oppression.
— P
Saturday at 8, Sunday at 3 and 7:30, Tuesday at 7:30, Wednesday at noon and 7:30, and Thursday at 7:30. 1529 16th St. NW. 800-494-8497.
www.theaterj.org. $30-$55.
.M.
B THE RAMAYANA
At the Source through June 6
Discussions of the nature of God. Jokes about monkeys’ rear ends. There aren’t many plays that feature both while throwing in, for good measure, a plot about royal exiles, prophetic eagles, miraculous stones, a golden deer, a woman who proves her virtue on a burning pyre, and a whole tribe of torture-happy demons. But the ever-intrepid Constellation Theatre Company is presenting just such a play: Peter Oswald’s dramatized distillation of this ancient Hindu epic. The production proves to be an entertaining, pocket-sized extravaganza: mysterious, energetic, funny and bedecked with enough eye-catching pageantry to stretch up and down a minor Himalayan peak (or so it seems). Philosophically minded audience members will relish the implicit musings on the themes of divinity, faith, deception and self-control. Fans of low comedy get a little of that, too. This “Ramayana,” you might say, runs from the sublime to the ridiculous - in a good way.
.M.
— C.W.
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