“It’s in the blood,” says Racine (Devin Nikki Thomas), speaking to the vengeful flow of violence that compels her and her twin sister Anaia (Morgan Danielle Day) to hunt down their malevolent father. It’s a grave observation that plucks at the mythic chords in Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is, now playing at Constellation Theatre Company under the direction of KenYatta Rogers. As in many great myths, the characters at times seemed trapped in their own personal hell—but at least this hell is hella funny.

The sisters’ patricidal odyssey begins when they are summoned to the hospital by their mother (Jasmine Joy), sometimes known as “God.” She informs them that the fire that irreparably scarred them all years ago was set by the girls’ father, who made a new life for himself after ruining theirs. Racine and Anaia journey from the Deep South to California, first to visit Chuck (James J. Johnson), the lawyer who got their father off, then on to the cookie-cutter suburbs. There they meet their father’s disaffected wife Angie (Michelle Proctor Rogers), a woman fleeing privilege they could only imagine, and their twin half-brothers Riley (Ethan Hart) and Scotch (Corbin Ford), who are as prim and entitled as the sisters are rough and tumble. In the shadows is their father (ELI ELl), who accepts their arrival with grim recognition, if not contrition.

Harris has drawn on a wide range of tools to imbue Is God Is with epic credentials. Over its course, the many denizens of this bitterly surreal world set their own scene by describing themselves and their actions in the third person. It’s a clever way to make exposition compelling, but it also speaks to how hard everyone is trying to get a handle on their own narrative. Added to that mix are step sequences, choreographed to hip-hop and Afropunk by Ama Law, that mark the girls’ journey west as well as their core characteristics. Racine’s arms move free as she steps with intensity and purpose, while Amaia tucks hers in, afraid of what might happen if she cuts loose. It’s a graphic, sometimes silly illustration of the twins’ diverging dispositions; it also demonstrates the greater opportunities Day has to highlight shades of regret and anguish in Anaia.

Rogers and the creative team have crafted the world of Is God Is to further accentuate character and facilitate Harris’ storytelling scope. Danielle Preston costumes Anaia and Racine in overalls and fishnets, respectively, marking the former’s stubborn childishness and the latter’s brash sensuality. Framing the action in Shartoya R. Jn.Baptiste’s set is a proscenium with brushstrokes straight out of Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son, which are complemented by John D. Alexander’s color-rich lighting. Translucent walls centerstage act as a shadow screen for much of the play, allowing for the grisliest sequences to transpire in silhouette. It’s in the shadowplay and the fights that unfold in full view that rough edges emerge, first in the inconsistent clarity of shadowcasting and again in Casey Kaleba’s fight sequences, which are executed with compelling shape but are neither tight enough to be brutal nor broad enough to capture the play’s often cartoonish humor.

The play’s heady mix of drama, narrative storytelling, dance, and shadow work is ably executed by the ensemble. The standout supporting player is Joy, who utterly dominates the space from her upright hospital bed with an intensity perfectly measured to be as hilariously overwrought as it is genuinely horrifying. In a punishing monologue, Joy lays out the trauma suffered at the hands of her lover, touching near-biblical heights while setting the darkly comic tone that shapes the play. Nestled in that range are Johnson’s gleefully bananas turn as Chuck, the fussy disillusionment in Roger’s housewife Angie, and the (sometimes overly) obnoxious teen energy in Ford’s Scotch and Hart’s Riley. EL’s father, sporting a literal black hat straight out of an old TV western, is a fittingly aloof counterpoint to his zany friends, lovers, and progeny.

It’s a credit to Rogers and company that the humor in the piece comes through sharply, whether in Racine’s crude meditations—“Poison is a punk ass, bitch ass way to kill somebody,” she proclaims—or the juxtaposition of Jn.Baptiste’s literal slice of suburbia with the twins’ otherwise gritty environs. This is crucial, because Harris’ blending of comedy with tragedy does more than leaven proceedings: it teases out the absurdity of generational trauma and the cosmic injustice. How is it that two girls have to play with a bad hand while their father seemingly gets to redraw at will? Constellation’s hilarious and sobering Is God Is makes it easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, but it still leaves you with some exquisite bruises to nurse.

Running Time: Approximately one hour and 40 minutes, no intermission.

Is God Is plays through July 14, 2024 (Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm), presented by Constellation Theatre Company, performing at Source Theatre, 1835 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. Tickets are $20–$45 and are available for purchase by calling the box office at (202) 204-7741, going online, or in person before each performance. Constellation offers a variety of discount programs and pay-what-you-will performances. Select performances are ASL interpreted.

The cast and creative credits are online here.

COVID Safety: Masks are optional except for Saturday matinees where they are required.

The post ‘Is God Is’ at Constellation laughs in the face of absurdity appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

If the name Kenji Miyazawa means nothing to you, don’t worry, there’s a new play running in Tyson’s designed to change that. Postcards from Ihatov, conceived and directed by Natsu Onoda Power for its world premiere at 1st Stage, is inspired by Miyazawa’s poems and children’s stories, many of which only gained currency in his native Japan after his death in 1933 at just 37. Under Onoda Power’s guidance, Miyazawa’s meditative fantasies have been rendered with an affection that makes this postcard double as a love letter.

The star of the show is Ihatov itself, Miyazawa’s personal literary Wonderland, which he fashioned off his home region of Iwate. For here, Onada Power, doubling as the scenic designer, and her team, but especially lighting designer Minjoo Kim and projections designer Kelly Colburn, have created a marvelous feast for the eyes. Too much detail would tarnish the pleasure of experiencing it for yourself, so let me instead say that everything from painted storyboards to live origami, from choreographed lantern movement to synchronized projections, has been used to craft a realm in which human civilization, enchanted nature, and even celestial passageways intermingle. There’s real technical wizardry on display here, but even the simple touches—the elegant workshop outlined on stage right, for example, or the vertical blinds acting as entry point and projection screen center stage—demonstrate a flair for composition.

Inhabiting this space, and ably executing many of its effects live, is an ensemble comprised of Pauline Lamb, Matthew Marcus, Ethan J. Miller, Deidra LaWan Starnes, Jacob Yeh, and Matthew Vaky. Together, they walk the line between Miyazawa’s characters and appreciators, pitching their performances with the straightforwardness and enthusiasm of a children’s story. This presentational approach suits the play, which, in addition to dramatizing Miyazawa’s stories, functions as an entrée to the author himself. Among Marcus’ characters, for example, is a self-proclaimed “Unnamed Author” who meets Vaky’s anthropomorphic cat professor (and sometime-“meow-socologist”), who himself instructs the ensemble and the audience on Miyazawa’s life and work. Over time, the other tales (many of them involving mischievous animals) assert themselves into the sequence, until Miyazawa’s unfinished story “The Galactic Railroad,” about an outcast boy who finds himself traveling an on an interplanar train, emerges as a sort of secondary framework.

If the dramatic structure sounds confusing, that’s because it can be. This is partly by design: the lessons and admissions about Miyazawa’s unfinished work frame the evening as a gateway into Miyazawa’s often surreal oeuvre rather than a singular adaptation. It’s a winning approach, though there are points at which the plotting could better support the creative team’s stunning mise-en-scène. One of the endings offered for “The Galactic Railroad,” for example, is achingly sad, but its heart is sapped by the degree to which the story has become muddled by the evening’s dueling metatheatrical conceits. The staging of other stories, meanwhile, such as a comically prolonged tale about three deer tentatively observing a man’s discarded spa towel, overstay their welcome. It’s fitting, maybe, that the play itself sometimes feels unfinished.

Still, that’s small potatoes when weighed against the array of scenographic methods Onada Power and company deploy, not to mention the varied talents of the cast, who do everything from scoring the piece under Owen Posnett’s supervision to executing the origami themselves. You could almost call it flexing if not for the way it so evocatively captures the power of imagination, especially that of an enigmatic man whose influence far outlived his natural life. As its name suggests, Postcards from Ihatov is a striking snapshot of a wondrous place you will want to visit for yourself.

Running Time: Approximately 80 minutes, no intermission.

Postcards from Ihatov plays through June 24, 2024 (Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays at 7:30 pm, Saturdays at 2 pm and 7:30 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm), at 1st Stage, located at 1524 Spring Hill Road, Tysons, VA. Tickets are $55 for general admission and are available for purchase by calling the box office at 703-854-1856, going online, or in person before each performance. Limited numbers of seats are offered at $25 and $35 for each performance. Select performances are open-captioned and/or audio-described. Open seating.

The playbill for Postcards from Ihatov is online here.

COVID Safety: 1st Stage is now a mask-optional space with select mask-required performances offered for each show (for Postcards from Ihatov, June 15 at 7:30 pm). See 1st Stage’s complete COVID Safety Information here.

SEE ALSO:
1st Stage to premiere Natsu Onoda Power’s magical ‘Postcards from Ihatov’ (news story, May 7, 2024)

The post In ‘Postcards from Ihatov’ at 1st Stage, a dazzling snapshot of a wondrous world appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Midway through tick, tick…BOOM!, struggling composer Jon stands in Times Square and laments a Broadway landscape rife with retreads and tickets that have risen all the way to $50 (yes, it’s funny now, but this is 1989 we’re talking about). Despite his righteous indignation, Jon can’t help but long to see his name on the marquee. Fast forward to today, well after composer Jonathan Larson’s premature death in 1996 and the global phenomenon that is his masterpiece Rent, and you could say his self-named hero got his wish. The show that gave voice to it, meanwhile, is now receiving a soaring, big-ticket revival as part of the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage season, with Neil Patrick Harris at the helm and (perhaps) one eye on a Broadway that is every bit as bloated as the one Larson saw.

As director, Harris presents himself as a lover of Larson’s work, a fact that literally comes through in a big way. The show was already retooled into a three-person version Off-Broadway in 2001 after beginning life as a monologue performed by Larson in 1990. Now, Harris and company have expanded the show further by adding an ensemble of four to back the three principal players. The core story remains the same: desperate for his big break, scrappy SoHo composer Jon (Brandon Uranowitz) overinvests himself in an upcoming workshop of his show Superbia. His laser focus threatens to cut off his girlfriend Susan (Denée Benton), a dancer longing for a move out of New York City, and his childhood best friend Michael (Grey Henson), who recently sold out for a cushy job in advertising. With the specter of his 30th birthday on the horizon, Jon finds himself caught between committing to his art without compromise and following his loved ones down the middle-class road well-traveled.

Under Harris’ direction, Larson’s stripped-down confessional has reemerged in its lushest stage form yet. Nathan Scheuer’s projections expand Jon’s world with detail and color, balanced by Andrea Hood’s simple (but, in the case of a certain green dress, ill-fitting) costumes. Harris and choreographer Paul McGill use the cast to maneuver an array of setpieces designed and assembled by Paul Tate Depoo III, transporting the company from Jon’s apartment to a hotel lobby to Michael’s advertising firm with clockwork precision. To better showcase Jon’s musings in the vast Eisenhower Theater, cameras project Uranowitz’s face during many of his long asides. It’s a nice touch that echoes Larson’s later hero, Rent videographer Mark (whom Harris played on tour), though it’s a conceit inconsistently applied. Altogether, it’s tick, tick…BOOM! played to the back row, much of it with aplomb.

Despite these rich layers, tick, tick…BOOM! still plays, for better and for worse, as a one-man show with a supporting cast. As neurotic but endearing Jon, Uranowitz nails not only his character’s writerly anxieties but also numbers ranging from the comically overwrought “Sunday” to the agonized “Why.” The other two principals match Uranowitz with affecting, sonorous performances. Henson gracefully sidesteps stereotypes as a gay man hiding a grave diagnosis, while Benton invests a somewhat thinly drawn Susan with easy charisma. Her rendition of “Come to Your Senses,” delivered in her second role as an actress who catches Jon’s eye, is a certified showstopper. Together, the trio excel under Ben Cohn’s musical direction and share a lived-in chemistry, evident in duets like Jon and Michael’s rousing “No More” or Jon and Susan’s hilarious patter number “Therapy.” Even the show’s lesser entries, like the awkwardly-placed paean to “Sugar,” are played with gusto.

The production as a whole creaks when it shifts away from this central trio. Based on the expanded 2001 version, Henson and Benton would also take on the rest of the roles in the show, theoretically showcasing their chameleonic abilities. Now those bit parts are taken up by a capable company made up of Kennedy Caughell, Kelvin Moon Loh, Yael “Yaya” Reich, and Nikhil Saboo. While the quartet comfortably fills out Jon’s wider world—his parents, his chain-smoking agent, the eager underlings at Michael’s advertising firm—they are sometimes shunted into the background of Jon’s monologues, awkwardly lingering in the dark to provide vocal backing and a veneer of gravitas. For all their contributions, they are neither truly additive nor truly extraneous.

Ultimately, what shines in this latest expansion is what has always shone in fully staged versions of the show: gifted performers taking to a score bursting with raw talent. By that measure alone, Harris’ bear hug of a production at the Kennedy Center will prove a booming success wherever it ends up. What it will not prove is whether bigger is necessarily better.

Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.

tick, tick…BOOM! plays through February 4, 2024, in the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F St NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($59–$349, with student rush and discounts available) at the box office, online, or by calling (202) 467-4600 or toll-free at (800) 444-1324.

The tick, tick…BOOM! program is online here.

COVID Safety: Masks are optional in all Kennedy Center spaces for visitors and staff. If you prefer to wear a mask, you are welcome to do so. See Kennedy Center’s complete COVID Safety Plan here.

SEE ALSO:
Star-studded cast announced for ‘tick, tick… BOOM!’ at Kennedy Center (news story, December 19, 2023)
Neil Patrick Harris to direct ‘tick, tick… BOOM!’ at Kennedy Center (news story, August 29, 2023)

The post Kennedy Center’s ‘tick, tick…BOOM!’ goes off bigger than ever appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Love, Love, Love begins and ends with the Beatles — specifically, “All You Need Is Love,” from which playwright Mike Bartlett lifts the title of his decades-spanning trip through progressive disillusionment. Under the direction of David Muse, Studio Theatre’s production expertly meets the psychological and social insight of Bartlett’s play. The only problem, really, is that it plays a tune we’ve heard before.

The first of Love, Love, Love’s three acts opens in a London apartment in 1967. Would-be intellectual and accomplished layabout Kenneth (Max Gordon Moore) awaits the Beatles’ appearance in a massive broadcast event, sure that it heralds the end of tradition as he knows it. He is a sharp contrast to his brother, the conservative and hardworking Henry (Hunter Hoffman), whose taste for classical music seems to cast him as a man rapidly going out of style. Into the mix steps Sandra (Liza J. Bennett), a free-spirited feminist whom Henry is clumsily wooing. Unfortunately for Henry — then again, perhaps fortunately — sparks fly between his brother and his would-be paramour.

Act two picks up some 20 years later, with Britain in the throes of Thatcherism and Kenneth and Sandra in the throes of a crumbling marriage. Their children, Rose (Madeline Seidman) and Jamie (Max Jackson), already feel the wounds of their parents’ self-absorption. By the time the third act rolls around another 20-odd years later, parents and children find themselves on either side of a generational divide exacerbated by a brutal housing market and a suspicion that the children of the ’60s, as Rose proclaims, bought the world rather than changed it.

Any play about frayed family ties depends on a well-balanced ensemble, and Muse has certainly assembled that in Love, Love, Love. As the central lovers, Moore and Bennett transition easily between youthful exuberance, midlife disillusionment, and retired aloofness. What becomes clear over the course of their journey is that any belief in the revolutionary promises of the 1960s was really a stubborn belief in their own entitlement. That the pair reveals that hard truth while still movingly rendering the ups and downs of their relationship is a credit to them. As the neglected Rose, meanwhile, Seidman counters her stage parents’ naked selfishness with open fragility, positioning herself as the true, tender heart of the play. On the periphery are Hoffman’s Henry, workmanlike in the role of a lifetime worker, and Jackson’s Jamie, whose skittery teenage sensibilities give way to a full-blown but vaguely defined syndrome by the end of the play.

The production at large serves to frame these characters’ social ties — literally, in the case of the stark proscenium placed around the action in Studio’s Shargai space. Apart from a curiously flamboyant musical flourish at the top of the second act, Muse directs all with a steady hand, letting his actors find the beats and silences that fill out their relationship. Backing them is Alexander Woodward’s set, elegant in its simplicity, even when the first act’s cheap London flat is meant to be anything but elegant. As the play progresses, so do Kenneth’s living quarters, first into wood panels and prominent stereo equipment circa late-’80s/early-’90s then to the off-white, open-concept luxury of the late 2000s. As Woodward’s sets expand, so do Montana Levi Blanco’s costumes tighten, taking Kenneth all the way from the smoking jacket and undershirt combo of his early adulthood to an all-black, turtleneck number in his retirement.

In short, Love, Love, Love is lovingly put together. Since the play debuted in 2010, it is also familiar to a fault. As the lobby display curated by dramaturg Adrien-Alice Hansel indicates, the British housing market has, much like its American counterpart, ebbed and flowed with radically different policies since the end of the Second World War. The price of a home, particularly in an active hub like London or indeed Washington, DC, has trended upward, making outright homeownership for many Millennials and Generation Z seem like the stuff of a bygone era. While many theatergoers could perhaps stand to be reminded of these changes, Bartlett only drives home the dissonance between generations on this subject through a modest—or immodest, depending on how you look at it — proposal from Rose at the play’s end. It’s a blunt instrument, yes, but it also produces the play’s most pointed observation about the chasm between parents and children, not to mention the callousness that Kenneth and Sandra’s years of self-proclaimed hard work and financial security have produced.

Ultimately, Love, Love, Love makes the same point it did back in 2010 when the global recession was fresh on the mind. In some ways, that makes it old news, but perhaps the takeaway from this latest production, particularly one as accomplished, is that the point bears repeating. The play gives the lie to the idea that “all you need is love”; it could just as easily say “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes with two 10-minute intermissions.

Love, Love, Love plays through February 18, 2024, in the Victor Shargai space at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW, Washington, DC 20005. Purchase tickets ($40–$100, with low-cost options and discounts available) online or by calling the box office at (202) 332-3300.

The Love, Love, Love program is online here.

COVID Safety: Studio Theatre recommends but does not require patrons to wear masks in the building.

The post What’s not to ‘Love, Love, Love’ at Studio? appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s production of The Winter’s Tale, one of William Shakespeare’s most enigmatic works, opens with a lavish birthday party. As artistic director Karen Ann Daniels proclaimed in her opening night speech, a birthday party is a fitting way to welcome audiences back to the Folger’s newly renovated space, part of a massive capital project that will conclude when the famed Folger Shakespeare Library reopens in the spring. Choosing The Winter’s Tale, with all its wonders and warts, is also an indication of the challenges the company is willing to take on with gusto.

The Winter’s Tale occupies an awkward place in Shakespeare’s oeuvre as even a cursory summary would indicate: The birthday party in question is for young prince Mamillius (Richard Bradford/Clarence Payne), son of King Leontes (Hadi Tabbal) and Queen Hermione (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) of Sicilia. Present at the occasion is Polixenes (Drew Kopas), the charming King of Bohemia. When Leontes spies his pregnant wife speaking in furtive whispers to Polixenes, he grows mad with misplaced envy and suspicion. Despite the counsel of noble Camillo (Cody Nickell), Leontes plots Polixenes’ downfall, only for Camillo to secretly direct Polixenes to safety. Hermione, meanwhile, is placed under house arrest, during which she gives birth to a daughter whom Leontes deems to be Polixenes’ issue. Ignoring the judgment of the oracle of the gods and the pleas of Hermione’s lady-in-waiting Paulina (Kate Eastwood Norris), Leontes orders that the girl be disposed of, and Hermione put to death. Tragically, young Mamillius dies soon after; his demise brings Leontes back to his senses, but not in time to save his wife from seemingly dying of a broken heart. Meanwhile, with the aid of another of Hermione’s ladies-in-waiting (Sabrina Lynne Sawyer), steadfast Antigonus (Stephen Patrick Martin) sees to the unwanted daughter’s new life in Bohemia, where she is adopted by a kindly Shepherd (also Martin) and his buffoonish Son (Nicholas Gerwitz). Sixteen years pass, during which the castaway daughter Perdita (Kayleandra White) has grown into the apple of the eye of Prince Florizel (Jonathan Del Palmer) of Bohemia, much to the chagrin of his father, who, not knowing Perdita’s true identity, thinks his son has fallen for a lowly commoner. With the help of the ever-accommodating Camillo, and amid the schemes of a charming vagabond named Autolycus (Reza Salazar), the young couple makes a break for Sicilia, where the promise of a reunion awaits.

The Winter’s Tale is effectively a tragicomedy: grave in its overarching subject matter but leavened by extended comic sequences and a happy ending that is awfully contrived. (As a patron leaving the venue behind me opined, it’s as if Shakespeare was working on a deadline.) It’s a credit to the Folger and to director Tamila Woodard that these disparate elements are tackled head-on. Woodard deploys the Folger’s full stage and center aisle to good effect, embracing the space as she tracks the threads of this tale. Raul Abrego Jr.’s set, dominated by a pair of sliding doors flanked by winding staircases, suits the grandeur of Leontes’ chic palace and makes adequate space for affairs in the more rustic Bohemia. The dexterity of the setting is matched by Sarah Cubbage’s costumes, which seamlessly accommodate everything from Hermione’s regal evening wear to Autolycus’s vagabond attire, glittering with bits and bobs.

By and large the cast, though occasionally rendered short of breath as they scale the Bard’s winding verbal passages, take to the story’s many shifts with ease. The especially steady hands of Nickell, Norris, and Martin suit their roles as the play’s facilitators and expositors. Salazar, meanwhile, enlivens the crowd with a cheeky (if overlong) musical call-and-response routine, and Del Palmer charms and amuses as the lovesick Florizel. Overall, the ensemble deserves credit for imbuing the Sicilian scenes with pathos and the country bumpkin Bohemian scenes with mirth; though the latter overstay their welcome, they are redeemed by the degree to which the group seems to be genuinely having fun.

For all the prolonged detours, the heart of the play lies in the relationship between Leontes and Hermione. In this, Woodard and company show their work in trying to solve Shakespeare’s puzzle, namely, how to convincingly portray true love between a paranoid King and his blameless Queen (not to mention her miraculous return, if you’ll excuse the 400-plus-year-old spoiler). Woodard, who is Black, states in the program that the play meditates on bias, and considering she has cast this Leontes white and this Hermione Black, we might be meant to surmise that their racial differences help animate Leontes’ anxieties. To his credit, Tabbal cuts the King’s dark proclivities with a bit of humor and a fussy disposition that suggests he is less of a tyrant and more of a man gripped by insecurity. Crowe-Legacy’s Hermione, meanwhile, is (appropriately) statuesque in figure and disposition. She hardly moves when pressed on her imagined infidelities, and when she does, it is with purpose. Unfortunately, both performances are constrained by the text. Tabbal’s skittering soliloquies grow tiresome, and Crowe-Legacy’s admirable restraint only further begs the question of what in the world she is doing with this man.

In the end, this production does not so much solve the tale that many place among Shakespeare’s “problem plays” as it shows the invention and compromise required to engage it. It’s fitting, then, that the play not only opens the refreshed Folger Theatre but slots into the District-wide Shakespeare Everywhere Festival, during which artists, scholars, and audiences are querying everything from modes of interpretation to the Bard’s continued relevance. In that context, a compellingly produced problem play can be just as pleasing, and perhaps more instructive, than another run at one of the more established classics.

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.

The Winter’s Tale plays through December 17, 2023, at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, 201 E Capitol Street SE, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets (starting at $20; discount programs available) online or from the Box Office at (202) 544-7077 or folgerboxoffice@folger.edu.

COVID Safety: Masking is optional. Masks will be provided upon request. Folger Theatre has denoted several performances during the 2023/24 season as mask-required by all audience members, staff, and volunteers. The mask-required performances for The Winter’s Tale are on Saturday, December 2, 2023, at 2 pm and 8 pm.

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Tamilla Woodard

FEATURING
Richard Bradford (Mamillius/Time), Antoinette Crowe-Legacy (Hermione), Nicholas Gerwitz (Shepherd’s Son), Drew Kopas (Polixenes), Stephen Patrick Martin (Antigonus/Shepherd), Cody Nickell (Camillo), Kate Eastwood Norris (Paulina), Jonathan Del Palmer (Florizel), Clarence Michael Payne (Mamillius/Time), Reza Salazar (Autolycus), Sabrina Lynne Sawyer (Ensemble), Hadi Tabbal (Leontes), Kayleandra White (Perdita).

CREATIVE TEAM
Tamilla Woodard (director), Raul Abrego, Jr. (scenic design), Sarah Cubbage (costume design), Max Doolittle (lighting design), Matthew M. Nielson (sound design and composer), Joya Powell (choreographer), Kaja Dunn (resident intimacy and cultural consultant), Michele Osherow (resident dramaturg), Leigh Robinette (production stage manager).

Cast and creative team bios are online here.

SEE ALSO:
Chilling with Hadi Tabbal and Antoinette Crowe-Legacy in ‘Winter’s Tale’ at Folger (interview by Chad Kinsman, October 27, 2023)
For Folger’s Karen Ann Daniels, the Bard’s big O stands for opportunity (interview by Ramona Harper, October 12, 2021)

The post Folger Shakespeare Theatre weathers ‘Winter’s Tale’ with gusto appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

The work of an archivist is a rare subject for the stage: long hours, rigorous attention to detail, and the contents of people’s attics typically do not lend themselves to dramatic action. In Here There Are Blueberries, now running at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Moisés Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project have made a real-life archival investigation into the lives of staffers at the infamous concentration camps at Auschwitz into a technically impressive theatrical event that is far less concerned with thrills than it is dissecting inconvenient truths—truths that, as it happens, can still elicit gasps.

Here There Are Blueberries was devised by members of Tectonic from extant photographs, records, and testimonies, and later shaped into a text by Kaufman and co-author Amanda Gronich. It centers on a photo album donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by a retired Lieutenant Colonel (Grant James Varjas), who discovered it while pursuing Nazi war criminals in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The mysterious man sends the album to the Museum, where archivist Rebecca Erbelding (Elizabeth Stahlmann) identifies it as an absolute treasure trove: an exceedingly rare set of photographs depicting life at Auschwitz. The problem is that the album belonged not to the victims, the very people the Museum is designed to honor, but to the perpetrators, namely Karl Höcker (Scott Barrow), the camp’s last adjutant. Backed by a team of fellow real-life archivists and experts—played by Nemuna Ceesay, Kathleen Chalfant, Erika Rose, and Charlie Thurston—Erbelding extracts all the information she can from the photographs while arguing that sharing this discovery, and seeing Höcker and his accomplices as human, is part of coming to terms with Nazi atrocities. Joining her is Tilman Taub (Maboud Ebrahimzadeh), a German man who recognizes his grandfather in the photographs and sets about encouraging other descendants to confront their ancestors’ crimes.

If there is one thing to commend this largely compelling production for, it is the way it visually translates the process of historical detective work to the stage. The performers begin at a series of lit examination tables that become just a few of the many surfaces—along with whiteboards, the back wall, the edges of the proscenium—on which designer David Bengali projects the photographs and other assorted documents. The performers take turns explicating what each item contains, often aided by subtle adjustments that highlight significant findings. The largely stark surroundings of Derek McLane’s set, accentuated by Dede Ayite’s muted costumes, lend the play a clinical quality reminiscent of TV procedurals—fitting for a world-historic crime that is still being prosecuted.

In theatricalizing this process, director Kaufman and his collaborators have privileged the voices of experts. Interviews with German men who, like Taub, are coming to terms with the sins of their fathers and grandfathers lend a refreshingly personal perspective, but the scale remains tipped toward explaining the case rather than dramatizing its aftereffects. At its best, this framing invites the spectator to examine the evidence and critique the ethical failures of the perpetrators first; relating to them comes second, if it comes at all. This is evident in a uniformly strong cast that is very uniform in their approach: direct, articulate, and professional, with only minor variations in speech and movement even as they jump from character to character.

In a program note, Drew Lichtenberg, STC’s resident dramaturg, places Tectonic Theater Project in the lineage of Epic Theatre maestros Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, who specialized in distancing the audience from the action in order to foster this kind of critical engagement. It’s an apt description of Tectonic’s past works, which include documentary dramas such as The Laramie Project and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, yet in this context, Kaufman and company underutilize some of the tools at their disposal. The play opens with a jaunty mini-lecture, underscored by an accordion, on the proliferation of amateur photography in Germany leading up to the War, during which benign images of frolicking Teutonic families are gradually poisoned by swastikas and fascist salutes. Later, the cast briefly embodies some of the young women in Höcker’s photographs, their girlish joy chiming eerily against the grave facts of their complicity. These sudden shifts from innocence to horror unsettle an audience, suggesting that this kind of dissonance, seemingly a subject of fascination to the experts, will be a mainstay of this theatricalized investigation, but that is not the case. Here There Are Blueberries rarely strays from its documentary formula, perhaps missing an opportunity to truly drive home the fact that while millions of Jews and other “undesirables” were murdered, their killers were having a ball.

As it is, Here There Are Blueberries is an artful and considered rendition of the process of historical reconstruction, a worthy subject at a time when everything from Holocaust denial to semantic gymnastics around American slavery threatens to go mainstream. While its coolness sometimes undercuts its message, there are personable moments—like Taub’s meeting with a man who wears his name to spite his father and a late shift to center the victims—that cut deep.

Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Here There Are Blueberries plays May 7 through 28, 2023,  at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall, 610 F Street NW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($35–$125) are available at the box office, online, or by calling (202) 547-1122. Shakespeare Theatre Company offers discounts for military servicepeople, first responders, senior citizens, young people, and neighbors, as well as rush tickets. Contact the Box Office or visit Shakespearetheatre.org/tickets-and-events/special-offers/ for more information. Audio-described and ASL-interpreted performances are also available.

The cast and creative credits for Here There Are Blueberries are here (scroll down). Find the full program here.

The company has curated a series of events with company members, scholars, and others. See the full listing here.

COVID Safety: Masks are recommended for all productions, but not required. Read more about Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Health and Safety policies here.

SEE ALSO:
A talk with a Holocaust historian and the actor who plays her in ‘Here There Are Blueberries’ (interview by Chad Kinsman, May 7, 2023)
Shakespeare Theatre Company adds ‘Here There Are Blueberries’ to season (news story, February 1, 2023)

The post Artfully dark documentary ‘Here There Are Blueberries’ cuts deep at STC appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

There are cycles of history at play in Rep Stage’s production of Falsettos. The Tony-winning musical, featuring music and lyrics by William Finn, who co-wrote the book with James Lapine, takes place between 1979 and 1981 against the backdrop of the burgeoning AIDS crisis. It made its Broadway debut in 1992; two years later, it was part of Rep Stage’s opening season. Now, under the excellent stewardship of Producing Artistic Director Joseph W. Ritsch and Musical Director Tiffany Underwood Holmes, it brings Rep Stage full circle as the company prepares to close its doors.

The story of Falsettos, told in a cascade of musical numbers, centers on Marvin (Jake Loewenthal), who divorces his wife, Trina (Sarah Corey), after coming out of the closet and moving in with his lover, Whizzer (Davon Williams). After an initial period of bliss, Marvin and Whizzer’s romance begins to sour. Trina, meanwhile, is wooed by Marvin’s therapist, Mendel (Michael Perrie Jr.), who makes a more considerate counterpart than her self-centered ex. In the middle of it all is Marvin and Trina’s son, Jason (Grayden Goldman), who finds all these competing parental interests tedious. With the help of lesbian couple Dr. Charlotte (Justine “Icy” Moral) and Cordelia (Amber Wood), the makeshift family struggles to find harmony, a project that appears to bear fruit until a mysterious new epidemic threatens to take out one of their number for good.

As a sung-through musical, Falsettos is relentlessly driven by Finn’s score, and Ritsch’s production snaps with the appropriate energy and assuredness from the sardonic opening number, “Four Jews in a Room Bitching.” Daniel Etttinger’s set, all neon colors and sharp angles, is dominated by a row of five electric-blue doors, through which the characters pop in and pop out, lending the proceedings a farcical rhythm that suits Finn and Lapine’s wry observations on love and neuroses. Ritsch choreographs the numbers—ranging from the sporting (“Raquetball I & II”) to the surreal (“March of the Falsettos”)—with simple clarity, making good use of wheeled furniture to shift the action and, occasionally, letting the actors indulge in a little chair-ography. Backed by a small but superb musical ensemble—Jennifer Campbell (winds), Erika Johnson (percussion), Catina McLagan (keys), and Elisa Rosman (keys)—the cast takes to Finn’s overlapping lyrics and cascading melodies largely with ease, with Loewenthal’s smooth tenor the standout voice. Perrie Jr. and Goldman earn the requisite laughs as easy-going Mendel and precocious Jason, respectively. Corey, meanwhile, is affecting as the exasperated Trina, never more so than in the solo “I’m Breaking Down,” in which she takes out her frustration on a hapless mound of dough.

As dramaturg Khalid Yaya Long notes in the program, a 30-year-old show set ten years earlier certainly qualifies as a period piece, and there are qualities of the time and aspects of the show’s construction that jar a bit today. Marvin seems determined to hold first his wife and then his partner to a domestic standard that was already becoming retrograde in 1979 but is only fitfully tested here. The show, meanwhile, is made up of two one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, stitched together, which is partly why Charlotte and Cordelia, though wonderfully played by Moral and Wood, are somewhat awkward additions to the second act. Their inclusion, however, does yield one of the musical’s most heartfelt numbers, “Unlikely Lovers,” in which the two queer couples reflect on the love they have found. It brings out the best in Williams’s Whizzer, who is in many ways the bruised heart of the show and whose tangle with mortality reminds the audience how far the world has come in the fight against AIDS.

If there is one enduring quality of a musical like Falsettos, it is the way it dissects family in all its messy, diverse forms with just a spoonful of musical comedy sugar. It’s a counterpoint to other hits of the period, among them the sweeping political epic Angels in America and the zeitgeisty rock opera Rent, that brought queer communities and those living with AIDS to the mainstream. In Falsettos, particularly as realized in a production as well-made as this, queer love and family are everyday phenomena (admittedly of the middle-class variety). At a time when political forces are policing the definitions of family and rolling back LGBTQ+ protections, that has a value all its own. For all the marks of its time, staging Falsettos now is a perfectly good way to meditate on what has and has not changed over the ages of Finn and Lapine’s musical—and a perfectly great way to end Rep Stage’s tenure on a high note.

Running Time: Two hours and 15 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.

Falsettos runs through May 14, 2023, presented by Rep Stage performing in the Rouse Company Foundation Studio Theatre at the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center on the Howard Community College campus, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD. Tickets are available online and are $40 for general admission, $35 for seniors and military, $15 for students with a current ID, and $20 on Thursdays. For tickets and additional information, visit repstage.org or call the Horowitz Center Box Office at 443-518-1500 ext. 0. The box office is open Wednesdays through Fridays, 12 noon to 4 p.m. and 90 minutes prior to performance times.

Parking is available in a garage directly across from the Horowitz Center. There’s also non-garage parking in nearby lots.

COVID Safety: Face masks are encouraged in Horowitz Center venues. Patrons are not required to provide proof of vaccination; Howard Community College students must provide proof of vaccination and report positive COVID cases. More information can be found here.

Falsettos
Music & Lyrics by William Finn
Book by William Finn & James Lapine

CAST
Trina: Sarah Corey
Jason: Grayden Goldman
Marvin: Jake Loewenthal
Dr. Charlotte: Justine Icy Moral
Mendel: Michael Perrie Jr.
Whizzer: Davon Williams
Cordelia: Amber Wood

ARTISTIC TEAM
Director: Joseph W. Ritsch
Music Director: Tiffany Underwood Holmes
Scenic Design: Daniel Ettinger
Sound Design: Adam Mendelson
Lighting Design: Conor Mulligan
Costume Design: Julie Potter
Props Design: Amy Kellett
Dramaturg: Khalid Long
Violence/Intimacy: Jenny Male
Assistant Scenic Design: Emily Lotz
Stage Manager: Jenn Schwartz

SEE ALSO:
Howard Community College to shut Rep Stage after final two shows (news story, November 11, 2022)

The post With queer-themed ‘Falsettos,’ Rep Stage ends on a high note appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

At the heart of a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop stands Montrellous, a sandwich sage who stacks his ingredients with the utmost care. In Clyde’s, the latest national hit from Lynn Nottage, the sense of peace Montrellous finds in his artful creations is one of many layers that, like any good sandwich, brings out the qualities in everything around it. Now playing at Studio Theatre under the careful direction of Candis C. Jones, Clyde’s builds on Nottage’s work in the small town of Reading, Pennsylvania—which won her a Pulitzer Prize for her first entry, Sweat—culminating in a signature blend of pathos and insight.

Montrellous (Lamont Thompson) and his coworkers Letitia (Kashayna Johnson) and Rafael (Brandon Ocasio) labor in the kitchen of Clyde’s, a truckdriver favorite ruled over by the imperious Clyde herself (Dee Dee Batteast). The trio are formerly incarcerated and hardly stand a chance of steady employment elsewhere—easy pickings for Clyde, also formerly incarcerated and possessed of a mean streak a mile wide. Enter Jason (Quinn M. Johnson), who was sent to prison for a violent crime (described in Nottage’s Sweat) and emerges with white supremacist gang markings on his face and a desire for nothing more than to keep his head down. Jason immediately rubs the charming, candid Letitia the wrong way; Rafael is equally put off, though he is far more interested in putting on his best moves to win Letitia’s wounded heart. All of them served time for different reasons, yet all are motivated by two things: a desire to stay on the outside and an admiration for Montrellous’ culinary genius. Each tries to win over Montrellous with a creation of their own, all while Clyde, riddled with debt and wounded by her own stint in prison, fights to keep her staff firmly on the ground and firmly under her thumb.

Like any ensemble drama, Clyde’s rests on the strengths of its performers. In that sense, Jones’ production is very well served. Thompson’s sonorous voice accentuates the allure in Montrellous’ wisdom and provides a compelling counterpoint to the imposing Batteast, who cuts Clyde’s intimidation with a cheeky grin and a knack for letting her gaze do the talking. Ocasio initially comes across as all flair but digs deep into Rafael’s heartbreak after a major disappointment threatens to send him backsliding, while Quinn M. Johnson is admirably restrained as the shameful, furious Jason.

Perhaps the juiciest role goes to Kashayna Johnson, who gracefully takes Letitia through cycles of fierce criticism, playful cheer, soulful longing, and crippling anxiety. Each character is also thoughtfully articulated by Danielle Preston, whose costumes mark changes in demeanor (note a small but significant adjustment to Rafael’s wardrobe) and subtly but clearly indicate the ways they move through an unforgiving world (exhibit A: Clyde’s figure-hugging, professional chic outfits).

In a sense, Clyde’s itself can be thought of as a sixth character, a place with its own ramshackle charm thanks to Junghyun Georgia Lee’s sets and Deb Thomas’ suitably eclectic array of props. While they lend verisimilitude to the play’s greasy spoon environs, it’s what gets made in that space that draws the eye. As in Intimate Apparel, recently at Theatre J, Nottage illustrates that objects—sandwiches in this case, all overseen by expert consultants from DC icon Ben’s Chili Bowl—can come to mean so much more than the sum of their parts. That point is accentuated in the dreamy haze, evoked by Colin K. Bills’ lighting design, that descends on Montrellous and his pupils whenever they conceptualize their perfect sandwiches. These cues are a garnish rather than a core ingredient, yet in a play that continually cycles back to the characters’ struggles to manage life on the outside, they do add a flourish to “the most democratic of all foods,” as Montrellous describes, and highlight the sense of purpose these four chefs find in their burgeoning craft.

As dramaturg Adrien-Alice Hansel notes in the program, Clyde’s is the third play to emerge out of Nottage’s research in Reading, a town hammered by the decline of industry, a raft of economic recessions, and a social system that gives the formerly incarcerated little reprieve even when they have paid their debts. While Clyde’s offers no easy solutions to these challenges—and while it leaves certain characters’ roles in perpetuating these conditions maddeningly unclear—it does point to how people caught in such a vice find community in one another. Though Clyde’s might leave you hungry for more, time spent with the staff of this downhome establishment is time well spent.

Running Time: One hour and 40 minutes, no intermission.

EXTENDED: Clyde’s plays through April 16, 2023, in the Victor Shargai Theatre at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. For tickets ($65-$105, with low-cost options and discounts available), go online or call the box office at 202-332-3300.

The program for Clyde’s is online here.

March 25 (2 PM): Sign-interpreted performance
March 26 (2 PM): Audio described performance

COVID Safety: All performances of Clyde’s are masks recommended. Patrons who are feeling unwell are asked to remain at home and call the box office to make new ticketing arrangements. Studio Theatre’s complete Health and Safety protocols are here.

The post ‘Clyde’s’ at Studio Theatre is stacked with fine performances appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

The fact that the nation’s preeminent Founding Father was a slaveholder has been an inconvenient sticking point for works of history and fiction — when it’s not being swept under the rug entirely, that is. Coauthors Ken Jones and Daryl L. Harris deserve credit, then, for placing the subject at the center in their play Billy and George, now playing in its world premiere production by Avant Bard under the direction of producing partner DeMone Seraphin. Unfortunately, while this two-hander about George Washington and his enslaved valet William “Billy” Lee is not without insight, its best features are often frustrated.

Billy and George unfolds in a Pennsylvania bedroom during the small hours of Christmas Day 1776, just before General George Washington (John Stange) will make his fateful trip across the Delaware River. George awakes amidst a fit of nightmares brought on by grim recognition that the odds are stacked against the Continental Army. The ever-attentive Billy (Raquis Da’Juan Petree) is quick to comfort him, attending to everything from his military correspondence to his debilitating toothache. Billy is evidently a true confidant, a rare position that allows him to gee up George’s courage and speak candidly on even the most private subjects. At one point, the pair even exchange gifts: Billy gives Washington a family Bible and receives a finely made pistol in return. The two objects become central to Billy and George’s increasingly complex discourse, which builds into a fervent debate over what kind of freedom this War of Independence is really for. Billy proves to be George’s equal in reason, wisdom, and courage, yet the differences in their station and Washington’s sheepish refusal to free Billy before his own death routinely prohibit a true meeting between equals.

The story is framed by an attempt to place it more firmly in the present day. The actors first emerge in modern dress before changing into their period nightwear; Megan Holden’s set, meanwhile, is surrounded by sheer curtains that are projected on by a series of videos and photographs — everything from a litany of American presidents to clips from Childish Gambino’s provocative music video for “This Is America” — curated by lighting and projections designer Hailey LaRoe. The general message that this story should resonate with us today is clear enough, but because the actors literally shed this modern conceit so quickly, it is not clear what specific chords Seraphin and company aim to strike.

This awkward transition encapsulates both the promises and frustrations in the production and in Jones and Harris’s play. Billy and George’s dialogue is at once lived-in and familiar, yet subjects shift so often as to obscure the characters’ objectives and the particulars of their situation. The playwrights’ vision of George — alternately determined and doubtful, contemplative and arrogant — nuances one of America’s most mythologized figures, yet Stange’s fussy portrayal belies the steel that made the man such a commanding leader. Petree is compelling as Billy, finding shades of true affection and wells of disappointment, yet his infectious energy sometimes verges on the jitters. Even when the two click, their chemistry is liable to be undermined by anachronistic props or extraneous projections and sound cues that either distract from the performances or double-down on the play’s more heavy-handed proclamations.

A tendency for overstatement does not suit this play, because if Billy and George can be praised for one thing, it is hinting at some of the finer sociological shades in the relationship between an enslaved person and his “good” owner. While their companionship is intimate to the point of being strangely erotic, one’s power over the other insinuates itself in even the tender moments. In one of the play’s finer sequences, Billy is comforted by George while recounting a harrowing dream that revolves around the sight of his people toiling in the fields. Instead of genuinely sympathizing, George only shrugs Billy’s dream off as “not as bad” as his own. Therein lies the play’s strength: capturing how two people in a staggeringly brutal institution can dwell in very different worlds even while cleaving so close together. It’s part of why George’s refusal to free Billy until death, like so many conditional promises made to Black Americans, hurts so much. Letting moments like that breathe would have brought true clarity to the proceedings.

Running Time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Billy and George plays through February 11, 2023, presented by Avant Bard Theatre performing at Gunston Arts Center Theatre II—2700 South Lang Street, Arlington, VA. Tickets ($40) can be purchased online or by calling the box office at (703) 418-4808. Avant Bard offers advance-purchase pay-what-you-can (PWYC) performances and 50% discounts for students and veterans, service members, or families of servicemembers.

COVID Safety: Either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test is requested for entry. In accordance with Arlington County guidelines, masks are optional but strongly encouraged including when watching the performance and moving about the facility.

Billy and George
By Ken Jones and Daryl L. Harris

CAST
William “Billy” Lee: Raquis Da’Juan Petree
George Washington: John Stange

PRODUCTION TEAM
Director: DeMone Seraphin
Production Manager: Alyssa Sanders
Stage Manager: Sarah McCarthy
Stage Manager (sub): Laura Schlactmeyer
Lighting & Projections Designer: Hailey LaRoe
Set Designer: Megan Holden
Sound Designer: David Lament Wilson
Props Designer: Liz Long
Costume Designer: Amanda Jackson

TECHNICAL TEAM
Technical Director: Jarrod DiGiorgi
Master Electrician: Joe Miller
Electrician: Trey Wise
Paint Charge: Sarah Phillips

Avant Bard Producing Partners: Sara Barker, Sean McCarthy, Alyssa Sanders, DeMone Seraphin
Tom Prewitt Arts Management Intern: Liz Colandene (GMU)
Avant Bard Staff: Brian Ash, Natalie Valentine
Photography: Dan Corey, DJ Corey Photography
Avant Bard Producing Partners Emeriti: Megan Behm, Dina Soltan
Special Thanks: Candice Tiffany Gordon

SEE ALSO:
Avant Bard Theatre announces world premiere of ‘Billy and George’ (news story, January 2, 2023)

The post ‘Billy and George’ goes inside a bedroom with Washington and his enslaved valet appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

The great cult musicals are often powered by a kind of cheery weirdness. Take Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell’s fantasy-infused Ride the Cyclone, now playing at Arena Stage and presented in partnership with the McCarter Theatre under director Sarah Rasmussen. It comes with an eye-catching pitch: six Canadian teenagers from a Catholic school show choir are killed while riding the titular rollercoaster and must sing for their second chance at life. At its best, the premise sets up a dazzling pastiche of styles, tongue-in-cheek humor, and occasional fits of heart.

The competition at the core of Ride the Cyclone takes place in a broken-down netherworld presided over by The Amazing Karnak (Marc Geller), an animatronic fortune teller straight out of an old-school carnival. Karnak specializes in predicting the time and place of a person’s death and has even clocked his own: in just over an hour’s time thanks to Virgil, a rat with a taste for electrical cords. That sets the clock for a song-and-dance showdown featuring five newly dead show choir geeks from the small Saskatchewan town of Uranium City.

There’s Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg (Shinah Hey), the peppy, self-absorbed go-getter; Constance Blackwood (Gabrielle Dominique), Ocean’s sweet but insecure sidekick; Noel Gruber (Nick Martinez), a gay wannabe-existentialist straining against the restraints of his conservative small town; Mischa Bachinski (Eli Mayer), the gruff but secretly sensitive Ukrainian bad boy; and Ricky Potts (Matthew Boyd Snyder), the weirdo who, up until this point, had never even said a word to his colleagues.

The quintet is joined by the creepy, doll-like Jane Doe (Ashlyn Maddox through January 29, Katie Mariko Murray thereafter), whose unidentified headless body was discovered at the scene. The teens must outdo each other for the right to return to the world of the living, but there’s a catch: the winner must be chosen by unanimous vote.

Ride the Cyclone’s show choir cast and supernatural locale suit a catchy score that dips into everything from rap to glam rock. The numbers, originally choreographed by Jim Lichtscheidl with additions by associate director Tiger Brown, flesh out arrangements that cycle from pop ensembles to soaring solos. The uniformly strong cast, ably guided by Rasmussen, music supervisor Mark Christine, and music director Nick Wilders, shines equally in cheeky openers like “Uranium” and optimistic closers like “It’s Just a Ride,” each member proving equally adept in the spotlight or singing backup.

Many of the songs double as exposition for the characters and claims for the life they want to return to. Hey earns laughs aplenty as Ocean, whose ode to her own do-gooder selflessness in “What the World Needs” fails to mask her ambition, while Mischa’s rap number “This Song Is Awesome,” delivered with bravado by Mayer, transitions into an aching ballad for his beloved girlfriend.

In addition to belting in a signature style, each character dwells on their teenage anxiety and yearnings in a monologue that often provides genuine pathos but sometimes disrupts the otherwise smooth musical machinery. Martinez’s saucy rendition of “That F#@&ed Up Girl” jars with his genuinely touching confessions of insecurity and adolescent malaise, while sweet Constance, nicely played by Dominique, has her big secret undercut by an awkward revelation earlier in the story.

On the whole, Ride the Cyclone is finely produced, though certain of its strengths come hand in hand with limitations in the material. Geller is winning and uncanny as the snarky, deadpan, animatronic Karnak, yet the fortune teller’s constant changing of the rules and inexplicable powers sometimes undercut the premise of his game. “The Ballad of Jane Doe,” a certified showstopper, is superbly sung by Maddox and delivered with the help of some stage magic, yet the very nature of Jane Doe’s “backstory” makes the musical’s conclusion a bit of a headscratcher (no pun intended).

The design is broadly excellent: Scott Davis’s set frames the stage with carnival standards without drawing undue attention, Trevor Bowen’s costumes are functional when necessary but stylish when the need arises, and the projections by Katherine Freer, with help from associate Zavier Taylor, expand the world of the play nicely. It’s all honed thanks to a previous run under Rasmussen at the McCarter, but even that polish sometimes glosses over the glorious messiness that gives cult musicals their real luster.

Ultimately, Ride the Cyclone delivers on its promise: campy, tongue-in-cheek fun that cuts just a little even as it goes over the top. No other subgenre reliably delivers numbers like Ricky’s bizarre “Space Age Bachelor Man,” performed with gusto by Snyder and styled to fit certain feline fantasies (you’ll understand when you see it). For all the occasional creaks in its conceit, Ride the Cyclone at Arena Stage is still a trip.

Running Time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

EXTENDED: Ride the Cyclone plays through March 5, 2023, in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth Street SW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($66–$125) may be purchased online, by phone at 202-488-3300 (Tuesday–Sunday, 12:00-8:00 p.m.), or in person at the Sales Office at 1101 Sixth Street SW, Washington, DC (Tuesday–Sunday, 12:00-8:00 p.m.). Arena Stage offers savings programs including “pay your age” tickets for those aged 30 and under, student discounts, and “Southwest Nights” for those living and working in the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To learn more, visit arenastage.org/savings-programs.

The program for Ride the Cyclone is online here.

Closed captions are available via the GalaPro app.

COVID Safety: Arena Stage requires that patrons wear facial masks while in its theaters. Arena additionally recommends, but no longer requires, that patrons wear masks in the Mead Center’s large open spaces, such as the Lower Lobby, Grand Lobby, Molly Smith Study, and café area. For up-to-date information, visit arenastage.org/safety.

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All circus spectacles depend on balance. When it comes to daring acrobatic feats, A Magical Cirque Christmas, produced by MagicSpace Entertainment and now running through the weekend at The National Theatre, has it in spades, never more so than in a showstopping act near the finale that will leave audiences shaking their heads in wonder. Unfortunately, the show as a whole never quite keeps its disparate parts on an even keel, which cuts some of their distinct charm.

At its core, A Magical Cirque Christmas is a collection of circus routines, comical magic acts, and seasonal tunes, all wrapped up in a holiday pastiche. By and large, each element has enough quality to stand on its own. Host Lucy Darling (Carisa Hendrix’s stage persona) performs a series of cheeky illusions, some of them projected on a screen to show off her impressive sleight of hand. Audri Bartholomew, the company’s resident chanteuse, starts subdued but grows in confidence as she works through the holiday pop standards and mainstay hymns, topping it off with a rousing rendition of “Silent Night.” Apart from a few minor foibles, the acrobats work through their repertoire with ease. Christopher Stoinev’s juggling suffers when overcome with balls and hoops but is redeemed with a silky routine featuring flashy LED bowling pins. Aerialists Itzel Salvatierra, Nicky Faubert, and Olivier Belzile take to the sky with ease while winch operator and supporting cast member Vlada Romanova provides the appropriate counterbalance. Scott Cooper ably supports the contortionist and archer Aryn Shelander. David Locke on the Cyr wheel and Kevin de Marco on the hula hoops show admirable dexterity and poise, if a bit of discomfort at holding the stage alone (more on that later). The standout is Jonathan Rinny, who wows first on a series of bicycles and perilously tall unicycles, and then on an even more perilous stack of tubes, balls, platforms, and skateboards that truly sets the heart racing.

Strange as it might seem, the whole evening would likely work better if that were all there was to it: a hodgepodge of bits, stunts, and musical numbers united by a digital holiday backdrop and candy cane–striped outfits. Instead, director and creator Louanne Madorma and co-creators Jim Millan and Carisa Hendrix attempt to stitch it altogether with a flimsy story about a mysterious figure called the Guardian of Time (Stoinev), who fails to kick the season into gear because he is not feeling that special holiday spirit. It’s up to Lucy Darling, apparently some sort of time-traveling sprite, to fix the problem, which she does through a series of stilted interactions with the largely voiceless “characters” and the occasional bout of repartee with the audience. It all leads to a trip back and forth through time, hence the revue of Christmas standards performed by acrobats dressed in a blend of holiday kitsch and period pastiche.

While the desire to unite these disparate routines under a single narrative is understandable, the effort produces more problems than solutions. Darling’s glamorous, Old Hollywood affectation works best when she has a partner to play off—far and away the funniest bits of the evening came when she ragged on members of the audience—so to cast her alongside a largely mute group robs of her of the chance to banter and keep the story clipping along. The time-traveling motif, there to justify a trip back through holiday music, only makes each period pitstop, some of which are only as far back as 2013, more surreal and peculiar. It implies there’s a reason to have a hula hoop routine set to a country Christmas tune, a holly hop juggling homage, and a Dickensian sojourn that gives way to Darling reading a specialized adaptation of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas while the rest of the cast sit doe-eyed at her feet. Perhaps that’s why many of the performers seem stuck awkwardly lip-synching the words of each song and half-heartedly playing up their “character” to charm the audience. In the end, the story is both not enough to lend the revue consistency and too much to let this eclectic mix of treats just be what it is.

Audiences invariably have a feast of predictable Christmas entertainment to choose from this time of year: warm holiday concerts, movies running on a loop on TV, endless renditions of A Christmas Carol. A Magical Cirque Christmas deserves praise for bringing something different to the table, much of which is very good. How it sets that table leaves something to be desired.

Running Time: Two hours, including one 15-minute intermission.

A Magical Cirque Christmas runs through December 18, 2022, at The National Theatre—1321 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC. For tickets ($35–$130), call Ticketmaster at 1-800-982-2787 or purchase them online.

COVID Safety: Masks are strongly recommended but not required. Broadway at The National no longer requires vaccine verification to attend performances except when expressly stated. Broadway at The National’s full health and safety policy is here.

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“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on…” So says Prospero, the vengeful mage at the heart of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He might very well be speaking of the Tempest now raging at Round House Theatre in collaboration with Folger Theatre. In the hands of co-directors and adapters Aaron Posner and Teller (he of the stage magic duo Penn and Teller), this rendition of one of the Bard’s most enigmatic tales delivers on its promise of spectacle—and much, much more besides.

The Tempest follows Prospero (Eric Hissom), the onetime Duke of Milan who was overthrown by his conniving brother Antonio (Cody Nickell) and banished to a mysterious island with his young daughter, Miranda (Megan Graves). Twelve years later, Prospero concocts a tempest to toss the passing Antonio and a coterie of other dignitaries, including the King of Naples (KenYatta Rogers) and his son Ferdinand (Ro Boddie), into the sea. When the castaways wash up on shore, Prospero summons his indentured servants, the spirit Ariel (Nate Dendy) and barbarian Calaban (Hassiem Muhammad and Ryan Sellers), to help him exact his revenge. While Ariel makes mischief with the King and his companion Gonzala (Naomi Jacobson), Antonio and the King’s brother Sebastian (Kevin Mambo) hatch a devious plan of their own. Calaban, meanwhile, strikes up a partnership with the bumbling cook Trinculo (Richard R. Henry) and drunken baker Stephano (Kate Eastwood Norris) and makes his own play for his freedom. As his trap comes together, Prospero seizes upon his daughter’s newfound infatuation with the rescued Ferdinand, seeing their potential marriage as another pathway toward reclaiming his legitimacy. However, the couple’s budding love moves him more than he could imagine, testing his quest for vengeance even as his prey draws closer to their comeuppance.

Posner and Teller’s production, finely tuned after previous mountings around the country, will get plenty of praise for its consummate magical craft, and for good reason. Magicians Teller, Johnny Thompson, and Nate Dendy have given the show a full bag of tricks: close-up card magic, disappearing acts, nefarious contraptions, optical illusions, trapdoors. Spearheaded by the superb Dendy and choreographed by the renowned Pilobolus, the cast and crew take to each challenge with skill and flair (one classic switcheroo in particular is a bona fide showstopper). Yet while the tricks surprise and delight, none are performed purely for their own merits. Each serves the greater whole, whether by illustrating Ariel’s impish abilities, accentuating Prospero’s command over the island, or furthering the story through visual metaphor and old-school stagecraft. Even the classics of the genre—a levitating body with a hoop passed over it, for example—are endowed with deeper meaning by Posner and Teller’s considered direction.

Even without its deft sleight of hand, this Tempest would still be a feast for the eyes and ears. Dan Conway’s glitzy set, Sarah Cubbage’s polished costumes, and Thom Weaver’s brilliant lights evoke the stage magic heyday of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, painting Prospero as a traveling showman of yesteryear. A live band featuring Manny Arciniega (percussion), Lizzie Hagstedt (vocals and accordion), Kanyasha Williams (vocals and percussion), and Ian M. Riggs (bass and vocals) accompanies the tale with jazzy renditions of Tom Waits standards and underscores the magic with instrumental flourishes. At its best, The Tempest finds genuine harmony between Shakespeare’s inimitable language, the band’s jaunty and soulful tunes, and Teller’s finely honed illusions. It’s big, brassy, and bold, but miraculously never overstuffed.

Apart from its technical marvels, this Tempest also benefits from a solid cast. Graves and Boddie make a charming pair of lovers, Henry and Norris earn laughs as the cook and baker, and Rogers, Nickell, Mambo, and Jacobson have the gravitas befitting their characters’ station. Indeed, despite a minor tendency on some parts to shout the Bard’s speeches, the only “problem” in the casting department is that so many have the thankless task of sharing the stage with Dendy’s Ariel and Muhammad and Sellers’s doubled-up Calaban. Not only does Dendy dazzle with his sleight of hand as do Muhammad and Sellers with their feats of athleticism, but all three also find shades of ambition, longing, and hurt as Prospero’s beleaguered slaves desperately in search of their release.

If there is a true beating heart to this Tempest, however, it is Hissom. The role of Prospero is riddled with potential pitfalls: a temptation to be overly grand and declamatory; the difficult pivot between vengeful and gentle; a tendency to shy away from his dominion over Ariel and Calaban, a problematic aspect for the modern audience. Thankfully, Hissom sidesteps these challenges with ease. His Prospero is alternately showy and fussy, posturing and self-effacing, given to genuine rage, real gentleness, and pathetic self-pity. Indeed, some of the finest moments in this production are the ones where Hissom is left alone to make magic with nothing more than his own body and the Bard’s time-honored text.

What is truly special about a production like this is that it is even more than the sum of its exceptional parts. Shakespeare and stage magic can pull a crowd on their own, but together they make a Tempest that gives life to illusions and power to an old magician’s quest for justice. Audiences can take heart from the show’s extension through January 29: plenty of time to experience the wonders for themselves.

Running Time: Two hours 30 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission.

The Tempest plays through January 29, 2023, at Round House Theatre – 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD. For tickets ($46–$117 plus fees), call the box office at 240-644-1100 or go online. (Learn about Round House’s special discounts here.)

The program for The Tempest is available online here.

COVID Safety: Masks are required for all guests, except while eating or drinking in the lobby café area. Round House Theatre’s full health and safety policy is here.

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