monday, september 20, 2010


THEATER ‘Glimpses of


the Moon’ MetroStage’s


production, based on a 1922 Edith Wharton novel, is less than stellar. C4


Style ABCDE C S BOOK WORLD


Hard living Scott Spencer’s new thriller, “Man in the Woods”: A happy life colored by a brutal encounter. C2


MOVIES


Going to ‘Town’ Ben Affleck’s heist thriller takes the top spot. C10


3@washingtonpost.com/discussions TV critic Hank Stuever chats about the new fall TV season. Noon. THE RELIABLE SOURCE “ THEATER REVIEW ‘Great Game’ takes an exhaustive look at a much-fought-over land


HOWARD KURTZ Media Notes


Steve Capus learns to love NBC News’s 2-headed beast


office, smiling as he spots Andrea Mitchell in a head scarf, doing a morning live shot for MSNBC. The 46-year-old NBC News president


S PHOTOS BY ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE: A dress rehearsal of “The Great Game: Afghanistan,” a three-part, seven-hour production at Sidney Harman Hall. Quagmire chronicles by Peter Marks


this proud, fractious and ultimately uncon- querable land, the proceedings in Sidney Harman Hall are an admirably balanced at- tempt to distill geopolitical complexities into a marathon theater event. A dozen dramatists have contributed


L by Hank Stuever


With all the bloat on the prime-time schedule — the singing and dancing com- petitions, the limitless crime-scene foren- sics, the snarked-out absurdist comedies without laugh tracks — there’s exactly one hour left for a fall TV show that tells its tale in a deliberate, well-written and subtly act- ed way. That one hour belongs Fox’s “Lone Star.”


playlets to the production from London’s Tricycle Theatre, which is presented in three installments, a separate one each night (and all presented on weekend days) with each part focusing on a different his-


ENDLESS WAR? Daniel Rabin in the show from London’s Tricycle Theatre.


ike Pilates, fiber and medita- tion, “The Great Game: Af- ghanistan” is indisputably good for you. A 7-hour 15-min- ute cataloguing of the mostly self-serving attentions that the superpowers have lavished on


torical period — and foreign invader. Part 1 surveys the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century; Part 2 concerns the Soviet in- cursion of the 1980s; and Part 3 takes us up to the minute, with the U.S.-led war sparked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. As with any smorgasbord, this one offers


spicy delicacies as well as blander plates. So if you approach the experience with the knowledge that some of it — maybe even most of it — will be less than a revelation, you’ll be prepared to look for the subtler strands of storytelling and the finer points of argument that do make it worthwhile. Most of us know going in, for example, that foreign military powers seeking to impose their idea of order on Afghanistan have had their expectations painfully, even cata- strophically, dashed time and again.


theater review continued on C7


ticks off Mitchell’s contributions while covering the Iranian regime’s release of an American hiker: She was on “Today,” she will be on “Nightly News” that evening, and she will host her MSNBC afternoon show from Tehran. And those multiple platforms — plus the ability to share costs with a cable channel — are what he believes separate his network from CBS and ABC. MSNBC was once an afterthought; Capus himself repeatedly turned down a request to move there until his NBC boss ordered him to do so soon after its 1996 launch. But the channel’s improving fortunes have buoyed the mothership. “Nobody had any idea how important it would be to this news division,” he says. “It gives us a running start. There are no nap times around here.”


Steve Capus


With its lineup of liberal firebrands, MSNBC can also be a headache that blurs the straight-news reputation of the broadcast network, especially as such stalwarts as Mitchell, Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie spend more time on the cable airwaves. But the channel brings in revenue, in the form of cable subscription fees, and it puts NBC in the 24/7 game. Despite recurring rumors that ABC is flirting with Bloomberg or that CBS might join forces with CNN, those deals, with their inevitable complications about editorial control, never seem to get done. The recent resignation of ABC News


President David Westin, who had to cut 25 percent of his staff this year, underscores the tough sledding facing the broadcast networks in an era of declining audiences. But Capus, a genial


media notes continued on C7 on washingtonpost.com


Howard Kurtz writes a real-time Media Notes blog with television clips, items, links and a Twitter feed at washingtonpost.com/medianotes.


new york


teve Capus glances at the eight video feeds on the flat-screen monitors in his Rockefeller Plaza


“I submitted a proposal, just like


every other person does, to


several different publishers.” — Katherine Schwarzenegger, on her new book. C2


TV PREVIEWS: THE NEW SEASON


On Fox, a tale of one man’s shuttle duplicity


Iworry a bit about this promising Mon-


‘Lone Star’s’ chronicle of a swindler is one program that will not short-change viewers


day night drama that follows a handsome young Texas swindler as he tries to sustain his elaborate con. It’s better than almost anything new this season— which isn’t saying much; this season goes wanting for standouts. Yet I fret because “Lone Star” seems to be made by sane people who be- lieve in the art of good television. In a par- allel world, “Lone Star” could fit on HBO or Showtime, but here it is, duking it out with “The Event” and “Hawaii Five-0.” Sigh — it looks doomed. Or, like television dramas of 1990s yore


(“Party of Five” comes to mind, since “Lone Star” shares some its producer pedigree),


tv preview continued on C4


 Also previewed: “Mike & Molly,” a roly-poly rom-com; and “The Event,” which mixes elements of “Lost” and “24.” C5


Opera in the Outfield: WNO has a ‘Ballo’ at Nats Park. C10


by Anne Midgette


JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST


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