MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010


Invaders come, invaders go


theater review from C1 We know very well, too, that the coun-


try’s a quagmire. “Does it not feel you are fighting the wind?” an Afghan character asks a British soldier of the 1840s in Part 1’s first play, Stephen Jeffreys’s “Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad.” Futility is a theme echoing constantly in the plays: The unspoken questions seem to be, why the endlessly intense competition for this rugged, feudal landscape, and why the same mistakes over and over? They reverberate to the last moments of the last play in Part 3, Simon Stephens’s “Canopy of Stars,” in which a British housewife in 2010 sputters her fury at her husband, a soldier just back from Af- ghanistan who angrily if inarticulately rejects her view that the war is a tragic waste. The whole chronicle ends with an un-


movable man and a seething woman re- fusing to yield any ground at all. A brutal stalemate. The bitter condition of Af- ghanistan itself, trapped in an eternal vice, under excruciating pressure from intractable forces. That Tricycle devoted so much energy to the contradictions of Afghanistan, and Shakespeare Theatre Company agreed to host “The Great Game” as it embarks on a multi-city American tour, may be sym- bolically as important as anything we glean intellectually or emotionally from the plays. You emerge after seven-plus hours almost feeling, as after voting, that you’ve satisfied a civic responsibility. The half-hour allotted to each play militates against developing characters of much depth, so there’s no finely textured meld- ing of East and West, as there was in parts of Tony Kushner’s 2001 Afghan play, “Homebody/Kabul.” So our interest here is carried along by the sheer mul- tiplicity of voices, and how each piece might fit into the larger historical puzzle. The diplomatic air of a broadly con- ceived symposium does hover at times in Harman Hall. We could do without, for example, some of the brief interludes be- tween playlets, in which verbatim re- marks are recited by actors impersonat- ing government functionaries and mili- tary leaders and figures like Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Other unifying aspects of the production are more successful, such as Pamela How- ard’s mural “500 Years of Afghanistan,” which frames the open stage for much of the show. The Taliban’s hostility to art plays a role here, in a running series of short scenes by Siba Shakib cleverly wo- ven into the production. The plays, elicited chiefly from the


ranks of British writers, lean more than anything toward journalistic naturalism. One could have wished that more of them absorbed the acidic theatricality of David Edgar’s “Black Tulips,” the cycle’s most skillfully composed piece and the one that leads off Part 2. It unfolds as a series of briefings of new Soviet army re- cruits in Afghanistan by their superior officers. The twist is we are going back- ward in time in the Soviets’ disastrous in- vasion, so that the morale-building talks sound ever sillier, ever more emblematic of the Russians’ hubris. As directed by NicolasKent, “Black Tu- lips” also features some of the best act- ing, in particular Rick Warden as an average bloke giving his fellow con- scripts the skinny on surviving in a na- tion of minefields, and Shereen Marti- neau, playing a Russian-Afghan inter- preter who’s not above tailoring meaning to her listeners’ biases. Most of the pieces treat their subjects more reverently. In works like Ben Ock- rent’s “Honey,” an account of the 2001 as-


KLMNO


S


C7 MEDIA NOTES


For Steve Capus, NBC and MSNBC combine to deliver a one-two punch


media notes from C1


former producer who took over the news division five years ago, says the gloom-and-doom reports don’t apply to his network. In fact, senior executives say NBC, MSNBC and CNBC are on track to have their most profitable years ever, generating about three-quarters of a billion dollars in combined profits. Roughly a third of that comes from MSNBC. But getting there hasn’t been a


cakewalk. Capus, who came to the president’s job with limited management experience, had to slice 18 percent from the leanest of the Big Three network staffs. “It’s gut-wrenching,” he says. “I grew up inside this organization.” Each dismissal, says the 18-year NBC veteran, “is more than a name on a sheet from human resources. You know these people, you know their families.” But, he says, “I do not ever apologize for running this organization as a business.” Capus has added back 5 percent of the positions through hiring this year. NBC chief executive Jeff


Zucker, who tapped Capus as a supervising producer when he was running “Today” in the early 1990s, says that “Steve is tough and demanding but also has a very soft, human side to him. There’s always a concern that you can’t be objective about people because you grew up there. But he’s made a lot of tough calls along the way.”


PHOTOS BY ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


WAR-TORN AND WOUNDED: Daniel Rabin and Shereen Martineau, above, rehearse “The Great Game.” Below, another scene from the multi-part play.


Blurred identities


Capus concedes that MSNBC’s lefty lineup at night — Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and, as of next week, Lawrence O’Donnell — raises questions about NBC. But cable is “narrowcasting,” he says, and “I think the audience gets it, pure and simple.” Fox News, he adds, is


“trying to brand us” as a liberal broadcast network because of MSNBC. “It’s a classic political tactic — they don’t like Keith Olbermann, they’re going to come after us. It’s annoying.” Fox Executive Vice


notably moving Jay Leno to prime time and giving “The Tonight Show” to Conan O’Brien, which became an embarrassing fiasco. But as a career newsman, he has also devoted special attention to the care and feeding of NBC News. The network also benefits from its


financial channel, CNBC, with appearances by such stars as Erin Burnett and Maria Bartiromo, and from its minority stake in the Weather Channel, where Al Roker has a show. And MSNBC.com has become one of the most popular news Web sites. Andrew Heyward, a former CBS


News president who has consulted for NBC in the past, says having a cable outlet “is very important for brand extension, but also as a recruitment tool.” NBC, for instance, lured Martin Bashir from ABC’s “Nightline” in part by giving him an afternoon show, announced last week, on MSNBC. Heyward says CBS and ABC need to


find new partnerships, perhaps with local stations or newspapers. “Just relying on their existing programming poses really dire challenges.”


Couric and Comcast A Temple University


Jeff Zucker is in Capus’s corner.


Katie Couric: Coming back?


graduate, Capus got his start as a producer at Philadelphia’s WCAU-TV, where he was paired with the new South Jersey reporter, Brian Williams. He wound up as executive producer of Williams’s MSNBC newscast and then of “Nightly News,” which didn’t hurt his bid for a top management spot. Capus threw a pizza party last week to celebrate Williams winning 52 straight weeks in the ratings. “Nightly” has averaged 8.55 million viewers, to 7.55 million for Diane Sawyer’s broadcast and 5.71 million for Katie Couric’s program. NBC’s other signature


MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.


sassination of the Afghan Defense Min- ister Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Joy Wil- kinson’s “Now Is the Time,” which details a moment in the flight by car of a de- posed Afghan king in 1929, there are straightforward evocations of the na- tion’s turbulent history. They’re edifying and staged with an apt sobriety by Kent (Indhu Rubasingham and Rachel Grun- wald are the other able directors). But they’re essentially embellished report- age. More piquant is Amit Gupta’s “Cam-


paign,” wherein a Pakistani academic (Raad Rawi) is invited to the Foreign Of- fice in London to reflect on a ludicrous effort to win Central Asian hearts and minds. And in a more unsettling vein, Colin Teevan’s “The Lion of Kabul” proves a highly watchable slice of blood- soaked life under the Taliban. Set at Ka- bul’s zoo, the play concerns a macabre administration of justice, abetted by the king of the jungle. Impatient CIA agents, imperious Brit- ish civil servants, beleaguered Afghan tribeswomen, altruistic Western aid


workers and cunning Pakistani bureau- crats all wander across the teeming and volatile canvas Tricycle creates. It’s ex- haustive and at times overly tilted toward instruction. But “The Great Game” remains a desirable exercise for anyone who thinks about the world’s have-nots, and what the haves are doing to them.


marksp@washpost.com


The Great Game: Afghanistan, by the playwrights of Tricycle Theatre. Directed by Nicolas Kent, Indhu Rubasingham. Assistant director, Rachel Grunwald; sets and costumes, Pamela Howard and Miriam Nabarro; lighting, David I. Taylor and James Farncombe; sound, Tom Lishman. With Jemma Redgrave, Danny Rahim, Vincent Ebrahim, Daniel Rabin, Cloudia Swann, Daniel Betts, Michael Cochrane. In three parts; Part 1 runs about 2 hours 15 minutes, Parts 2 and 3 each run about 21⁄2


Sept. 25 at Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW. Call 202-547-1122 or visit www.shakespearetheatre.org.


You emerge after seven-plus hours almost feeling, as after voting, that you’ve satisfied a civic responsibility.


MISS MANNERS Judith Martin


Mom-to-be’s baby bump shouldn’t do the talking Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I just recently moved back


to my home town, where my parents and family are well known. At first we were hesitant to announce


the news of my wife’s pregnancy due to a previous miscarriage. Now we have been telling close friends and family, since my wife is 17 weeks along. We are not bringing it up in unprompted conversation, as we don’t want to brag, and we are not circulating the news in extremely public forums like Facebook, since it lacks the personal touch of telling someone in person. We are excited and proud but afraid that some friends and friends of my parents’ might be offended if they hear of this via the grapevine and not by us in person. How should we circulate this news in a


tactful way? Should we simply let my wife’s increasing size tell the story? Please don’t do that. You would be doing a disfavor to every lady who has a stomach. It is exceedingly rude for anyone to guess from a lady’s size that she is pregnant. Should your wife go into labor in front of Miss Manners, she would merely say, “My dear, whatever is the matter? Can I help you?” (Eventually, of course, she would have to say, “Oh, look who’s here.”) The news is not delivered as a formal announcement but is told to friends by the prospective parents and grandparents, however they usually keep in touch — telephone, e-mail, visits, with a “Guess what?” tone allowed.


Dear Miss Manners: I am unsure how to respond to people when they compliment me and then pry as to how I do what they compliment me on. I am of slight build on a tall frame and


gave birth less than two months ago. I am already back into my pre-pregnancy clothing and have been for about a month. I don’t work out and I don’t adhere to some crazy diet to lose weight. I just can’t gain and keep it on. I am a stay-at-home mom, so I am


always bringing our three children out with me to go shopping or to the playground. I live in a small community, so everyone knows everyone, somehow, and so they know me at least enough to feel it is okay to say hi and make small chitchat.


The compliment I don’t know how to respond to is always about how I look so good after giving birth so recently. I always say “Thank you” and then get hit with “How did you lose the weight?” or something like it. The truth is that I didn’t do anything, and it is all genetic, but I don’t want to seem like I am bragging. Should I lie and say that I didn’t gain all that much due to morning sickness throughout the pregnancy (I only felt ill this time and never once actually was sick this pregnancy) or chalk it up to a hormone problem (I don’t have one)?


Should I be adding something to the


thank you to prevent this question? What do I do? Certainly do not make up stories about symptoms you did not have.


Expectant and new mothers are hassled enough about their weight — there is no need to encourage this by cooperating. And Miss Manners finds it especially ludicrous to be apologetic for not having had problems. You need only say “No special way” and move on or, out of comradeliness if another new mother is asking, “it’s genetic.” Or perhaps “I didn’t lose that weight — it’s right there, in the baby carriage.”


Feeling incorrect? E-mail questions to Miss Manners at MissManners@unitedmedia.com; enter them at www.missmanners.com or mail to United Media, 200 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. © 2010, Judith Martin


President Brian Lewis responds that “NBC, and especially MSNBC, is not even a blip on our radar screen. We don’t care what they do. Capus must be confusing us with CNN” as a close competitor. (Fox host Bill O’Reilly, for his part, regularly describes NBC as a left-wing network, at one point slamming “Capus and his character assassins.”) No one is suggesting that Brian Williams’s newscast has suddenly become biased. But with MSNBC stars such as Matthews appearing on NBC programs — and with the cable channel having left New Jersey and settled in at 30 Rock — a blurred identity is certainly a possibility. Fox still dominates the cable news


hours. Through


race, but MSNBC now regularly beats CNN in prime time, and Joe Scarborough’s “Morning Joe” has become the most talked-about breakfast show. Capus attributes the turnaround to the channel branding itself “the place for politics,” giving it a long-sought focus after so many short-lived programs with the likes of Alan Keyes, Phil Donahue, Dan Abrams and John Hockenberry. For its first 11 years, “MSNBC didn’t


have its act together,” Zucker says. “Only in the last three years has MSNBC emerged as a serious network. ...


“It’s too easy for people to say, ‘Oh, the reason they’re better than CBS and ABC is because they have MSNBC.’ Is it one of the reasons? Of course. Is it the only reason? Not even close.” Zucker has made his share of mistakes with the network, most


newscasts, “Today” and “Meet the Press,” were in first place when Capus took over and remain atop the ratings, despite the death of Tim Russert and Couric’s defection to CBS. There has been some industry chatter about whether Couric might be lured to her old network when her CBS contract expires next year. “How can you not at least think about it?” Capus says of the prospect of Couric’s


return. While he calls the “CBS Evening News” a “good broadcast,” Capus adds that every television journalist needs the right platform — and in Couric’s case, “you have to think long and hard, what would that be?” NBC, like every network, is trying to peddle more of its wares online (CBS’s “60 Minutes” will launch a Web show with original content next week called “Overtime”). Capus notes that NBC’s Ann Curry has more than 1 million followers on Twitter. Williams, who has dissed Twitter as a waste of time, finally joined the site last week (he has 4,000 followers but has yet to tweet). But a long shadow hangs over the


news division. Comcast’s acquisition of the network from General Electric, which is expected to be completed by year’s end, could bring major changes in leadership and resources. In his limited conversations with Comcast executives, Capus says, “they are very much in that mode of ‘what can we do to help?’ You want to hear that.” One plus for the Philadelphia area


native: The cable giant owns the Flyers and the 76ers. Capus, who keeps Flyers photos on his office wall, bumped into Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive, at a game during the hockey playoffs. Did they huddle about NBC’s future? “We talked about whether the Flyers could score on the power play,” Capus says.


kurtzh@washpost.com


Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, “Reliable Sources.”


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