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C2 Thursday, July 16, 2009

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Forum’s Foray Into Web Sex Lures You In

THEATER, From Page C1

few sticks of furniture — reinforc- es the perception of Forum as a small local company with its foot on the gas. This fall, Forum will shift its headquarters from H Street NE to downtown Silver Spring, where it will truly put its big appetite on display, in a revival of both parts of Tony Kushner’s epic-length masterwork, “Angels in America.”

In the meantime, Dove is stag- ing the area premiere of “Dark Play,” a work that illustrates how anonymous sex on the Web can be weaponized. The device has shown theatrical potential before, in such plays as Patrick Marber’s “Closer,” although in this case, the dramatized computer conversa-

It’s a corrosively entertaining piece, a kind of perverse modern riff on all those classical plays about

disguised wooers.

tions pose a much more sinister threat.

The crux of the play is the recol- lection by a California college stu- dent, Flanagan’s Nick, of a cruel Internet hoax he perpetrated as a 14-year-old. “Dark Play” posits that all you need to ruin some- one’s life — especially someone too naive to handle the more pred- atory applications of technology — is a keyboard and a user name. Nick’s mark is a 16-year-old,

McCoy’s Adam, a hopeless roman- tic who haunts a chat room, wait- ing for the girl of his dreams. He has no clue that the girl with whom he connects and falls into cyber love is actually Nick, preco- cious, slightly demonic and more than a little sexually ambiguous:

He persuades Adam to perform autoerotic acts in front of his web- cam. One of the play’s murkier as- pects has to do with Nick telling us the story after an amorous night with his college girlfriend, played by the excellent Casie Platt, though perhaps Murillo is leaving Nick’s sexuality, as with the veracity of Nick’s tale itself, open to interpretation. (The play- wright weaves in other details that might hint at an untrust- worthy narrator.)

Sustaining the elaborate cha- rade at times ties Nick and the playwright in knots: Murillo de- pends on our clinging fast to the belief that Adam’s longing trumps his common sense, to the point of spurring him to violence. Yet the dialogue he’s constructed for Nick and Adam in their furtive chat- room romance rings with truth, with the delicate two-steps-for- ward, one-step-back tentativeness of pursuer and prey. With Dove’s encouragement, the magnetically skeevy Flanagan and the coltish, skittish McCoy find an intimate wavelength on which to carry on. Flanagan — so in his element as a stoner dude in “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” a few seasons back at Stu- dio Theatre — once again seems eerily right for his role, this time as an aggressive kid with socio- pathic tendencies. McCoy’s pen- siveness comes across just as con- vincingly: You can sense in Ad- am’s silences the character’s compulsion to believe what his in- ternal lie detector should tell him could not be real.

Platt, Charlotte Akin and Cliff

Williams III round out an exem- plary cast, which infuses “Dark Play” with all the conviction that a tense cat-and-mouse evening re- quires.

Dark Play or Stories for Boys,

by Carlos Murillo. Directed by Michael Dove. Set, Matt Soule; lighting, Paul Frydrychowski; costumes, Heather Lockard; sound design and music, Christopher Baine. About 1 hour 35 minutes. Through Aug. 2 at H Street Playhouse, 1365 H St. NE. Visit www.forumtheatredc.org.

5 6

Stylefashion&beauty»

The New (Prep)

1 2

something’s . . . different. A strategically placed epaulet here, an acid-bright citrus hue there. These new menswear pieces are preppy, indeed, but over the past several seasons, the look has become less about blending in at boarding school and more about standing out in a sea of collared shirts and cargo shorts.

K

3 4

And the District is primed for a sartorial sea change, according to Kelly Muccio, owner of Georgetown menswear outpost Lost Boys. “The men who come into my store already have the basics, so it’s easy to throw in something like raw selvage denim, something with that element of danger,” she says. Muccio says the key is putting a twist on the traditional. “To me, it’s in the juxtaposition, so if you’re going super-preppy and kind of playing it safe, you’ve got to throw in something completely the opposite, like a bright color or a bold plaid,” Muccio says. Details make these basics anything but standard issue: Take Cassette’s slim-collared shirt with a string of buttons down each side, or Gourmet’s simple sneakers in eye-catching turquoise. Or wide-leg chinos from designer Rogan Gregory — worn cuffed to the ankle with boat shoes, they convey an effortless cool with just a trace of Buster Keaton dandyism.

“The look is clean but it shows that a man has confidence,” Muccio says. “It’s the classics redone — an update to something that’s old and tried-and-true.”

78 PHOTOS BY JULIA EWAN — THE WASHINGTON POST

— Holly E. Thomas

1. Red Wing Shoes leather boots, $220 at For the Greater Good (1781 Florida Ave. NW, 202-265-1830); 2. Cassette button-down, $165, and The Hill-Side selvage denim tie, $76 at For the Greater Good; 3. Rag & Bone striped polo, $150 at Farinelli’s (2839 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington,

703-647-9856, www.shopfarinellis.com); 4. Sperry gingham button-down, $148 at Farinelli’s; 5. Rogan Hans trousers, $270 at Lost Boys

(1033 31st St. NW, 202-333-0093) and www.rogannyc.com; 6. Band of Outsiders overprinted button-down, $265 at Lost Boys; 7. Shipley & Halmos canvas shorts, $150 at Lost Boys; 8. Gourmet canvas sneakers, $65 at Commonwealth (1781 Florida Ave. NW, 202-265-1830,www.

cmonwealth.com).

On washingtonpost.com

VIDEO | Scene In, our new video series, hits the streets of Capitol Hill in search of stylish types.

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hakis. Button-downs. Boat shoes. All the usual suspects are here, only

The Washington Post

MELISSA BLACKALL PHOTOGRAPHY

Nick (James Flanagan) is dating Molly (Casie Platt) as he reflects on a digital masquerade from his early teens in Forum Theatre’s “Dark Play.”

Media Outlets, Desperately Seeking Sanford

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Carolina native, got into the act, starting with a joke about having declared himself governor but ending with an earnest pitch. “I went power mad for about 40 seconds before learning that Gov. Sanford was returning today,” the Comedy Central satirist wrote. “If the Governor is looking for a friendly place to make light of what I think is a small story that got blown out of scale, I would be happy to have him on. In person here, on the phone, or in South Carolina. Stay Strong, Stephen.” Okay, it’s easy to mock those who dismissed the uproar over Sanford supposedly hiking the Ap- palachian Trail as so much media hyperventilation. Even the Repub- lican governor’s own aides didn’t know at the time that he was in Buenos Aires with his gal pal, Ma- ria Belen Chapur.

Journalists, naturally, were checking in. The Washington Post’s Fix columnist, Chris Cilliz- za, wrote to Sanford’s communi- cations director, Joel Sawyer: “Dude, is everything ok?” “Yep. Slow news day,” Sawyer responded.

But not for long.

The messages, obtained by South Carolina’s State newspaper through a Freedom of Information request, shed light on the tech- niques that some journalists use to ingratiate themselves with their sources. Not everyone plays the game this way, and it is hardly un- usual for reporters and bookers to promise a fair hearing or empa- thize with the plight of someone under fire. But the parting of the digital curtain reveals a process that its practitioners would un- doubtedly rather keep from public view.

John Solomon, the Washington

“If he wants something more personal for the blog to push back, I’m happy to help.”

Erick Erickson

of RedState.com

Times executive editor, said yes- terday that the “friendly ground” e-mail from his staffer, Joseph De- oudes, contained “an inappropri- ate choice of words.” But Solomon said Deoudes is “a marketing staff- er,” based outside the newsroom, who maintains that he was trying “to remind Sanford he had just been on the show a week ago.” The syndicated radio program is hosted by Times columnist John McCaslin and conservative com- mentator Melanie Morgan. Solomon added that the Times has “aggressively” covered the Sanford scandal and was the first news organization to report that he had an earlier romantic in- terlude on a congressional trip to Chile. Jake Tapper, ABC’s White House correspondent, sent an e- mail with the headline, “NBC spot was slimy,” enclosing a transcript in which reporter Mike Viqueira said that “the governor with a reputation of a lone wolf, it turns out, he was simply out for a long walk.” “For the record,” Tapper wrote

Sawyer, “I think the TODAY Show spot was pretty insulting.” In a

second e-mail, Tapper described a Twitter post by NBC’s David Gregory that “U should be con- cerned if ‘your wife say(s) that she doesn’t know where you are but that she isn’t concerned.’ ” Tapper’s written response yes-

terday: “Busted. In retrospect, the story I was referring to wasn’t slimy enough — at that moment the only ones who knew of the governor’s affair were Sanford, his wife, his mistress, and the State newspaper.” On Twitter, he said he “was clumsily trying to sow doubts about a competitor.” ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said Tapper “was carrying water for some producers in New York who knew he had a longstanding rela- tionship with the governor’s of- fice.” Tapper phoned Jim Bell, exec-

utive producer of “Today,” to apol- ogize, and tweeted an apology to Gregory, who said he accepted. Bell called Tapper “a standup guy” but said it is unfortunate that some journalists “go to these lengths where the only way they can book a story is to trash the competition instead of trying to extol their own virtues.” Bell said

he could not be certain that no NBC staffer had ever bad- mouthed a rival — “Everyone knows there are sharp elbows in the booking fray” — but that Tap- per’s e-mail was “a little over the top.”

One denigrating message struck closer to home. Brendan Miniter, an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal’s online edito- rial page, ridiculed his own pa- per’s news coverage during San- ford’s disappearance. “Someone at WSJ should be fired for today’s story. Ridiculous,” he e-mailed Sawyer.

The Journal news story began: “After sparking a four-day mys- tery about his whereabouts, South Carolina Gov.

Mark Sanford’s

spokesman said the governor had been hiking along the Appalachian Trail.”

The Journal and Fox News de- clined to comment. In a followup e-mail, Fox’s Jenkins told Sawyer that “I work mostly for our prime- time coverage — Oreilly, Hannity, Greta, Beck — so there would likely be primetime coverage as well for some soundbites of the Gov dispelling this flap.” Partisans also offered their ser- vices. Erick Erickson, editor in chief of the conservative blog Red State, wrote Sawyer after posting that the “pestering media” had ginned up the disappearance tale. “If he wants something more personal for the blog to push back, I’m happy to help . . . Obviously he’s got more than just the usual suspects trying to make hay out of this and we’re big fans,” Erickson wrote.

After Sanford acknowledged the extramarital romance, Erick- son filed an update: “Well, what I wrote yesterday was wrong. San- ford’s lies spread through his of- fice and out to the rest of us.” Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66
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