Hiya. Long time no chat.
It’s not like I don’t do stuff; it’s that I don’t leave enough time to write stuff. Just the last week or so, in fact, my calendar documents appointments at Signature, Woolly Mammoth, Teatro GALA, Round House, Wolf Trap, a couple of AMC theaters, and a hibachi joint. Honestly, I should just start posting video snippets.
Not really my style. At least not yet.
I do wanna share a few thoughts, though, before these shows recede entirely into the rear-view. To wit:
The GALA show is a world-premiere comedy about an “actor who saved the world,” and it’s pretty much a riot. Gustavo Ott’s script leans into the story’s stranger-than-fiction facts, mining chortles from material crusty enough to make Mel Brooks blush — war-of-the-sexes stuff, theater-people-are-crazy stuff, Spanish-speakers-are-hot-tempered stuff — in service of a wartime tale twisty enough to keep you diving down Wikipedia rabbit-holes for days in search of the actual facts. Carlos Celdrán’s confident cast includes the winningly goofy Kevin Jorges, agreeably spiky Clara Navarro, and impossibly suave Carlos Castillo. Closing Sun., Sept. 27.
Merrily We Roll Along moved me deeply enough even with an understudy (the utterly winsome Sarah Anne Sillers) standing in for one of the three leads that I don’t especially feel the need to revisit it — except that I’ve been watching Melanie Field with interest for a while now and have been dying to see her in the part, so back I’ll certainly be going. Never saw the Maria Friedman revival and don’t particularly care to watch the film of it, but people who’ve seen both insist that Matthew Gardiner’s production is every bit that Broadway staging’s equal — and makes more sense on a number of fronts. I can believe that, if only because the Signature folks are deep-steeped in Sondheim, plus it’s not A Bunch Of Distractingly Huge Names doing the terrific work in the relatively intimate MAX theater space. Jon Kalbfleisch’s orchestra is if anything better than many Broadway pit bands, and I can’t wait to talk to Gardiner about aging and compromising and pushing back on expectations — coming up on the podcast, if I have my way. Closing Nov. 1.
It’s been way too long since I spent time with any of August Wilson’s characters, and I’d damn near forgotten how much the clatter and swing (and rumble and shout) of their dialogue can carry me away, so Lili-Anne Brown’s staging of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom hit me like a bad case of homesickness even before the crushing events of Act 2 turned the story’s rowdy recording-studio afternoon into a full-on 1920s tragedy. A co-production with Olney Theatre Center at the Round House space in Bethesda, it’s packed with crazy-talented actors from D.C. and beyond: Craig Wallace, Ro Boddie, Chris Genebach, Yao Dogbe, Derrick Truby, Jaylen Henderson, Michael Glenn, Kanysha Williams, Zach Brewster-Geisz, and Nicole Michelle Haskins, the latter absolutely taking the top off the space as the legendary blueswoman of the title. Hell of a story; hell of a writer; hell of a cast. Closing Oct. 18.
The highlight of the week (even considering that Erykah Badu concert at Wolf Trap) was my weekend outing to Woolly Mammoth, where Steve Yockey’s world-premiere black comedy Venus reinforced my conviction that there’s really nothing like a nice wallow among other folks’ neuroses to remind a fellow that he can probably manage his own. Two women unpack a date that went very, very wrong; the plot twists and thickens and accelerates madly enough to satisfy even fans of Yockey’s outrageously swervy HBO project The Flight Attendant), and stars Regina Aquino and Kimberly Gilbert could not be digging any more voraciously into the material. If you’ve been wondering whether new-minted artistic director Reggie D. White could (or would even want to) relocate what used to be Woolly’s singularly weird and mildly wild-eyed sweet spot, Venus is the resounding Yes! you may have been hoping for. Closing Oct. 4.
Next up: a relatively easy three-show weekend, with Studio, the Folger and Olney on my radar for a Washington Post roundup. Stand by.
Other things I’ve noticed recently:
This suspiciously Euro-smelling nonsense. (Or is it? Theater comes in all shapes and sizes. Just never, in my experience, in an actual box.)
This jawdropper of a long read about the warring Murdochs, which made me want to ring up Frank Rich and apologize for thinking Succession went over the top
And this essay — satisfyingly reported and researched, full of writerly insights, stingingly personal — out recently from American Theatre courtesy of playwright Francisco Mendoza, who’d previously written for the magazine about the absurdities of proving the “extraordinary ability” required for an artist’s visa.
The conversation about how often the industry fails living writers has been going on as long as I’ve been paying attention — and honestly I have to assume there’s a lost scroll somewhere bearing a piquant lament on the topic in Aeschylus’ hand — but the subject keeps surfacing not least because theater is an industry, not just a pastime or a passion.
Pastimes and passions attract acolytes; industries spawn institutions. And institutions conserve, calcify, preach caution.
And I don’t know, maybe I’m more than usually dyspeptic, but this just made me want to hit a headline writer.
Next time,
— trey
I love Lili-Anne Brown's work! Her 2023 production of Pearl Cleage's "The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years" here at the Goodman is the best-directed comedy I've seen in years. (I got to talk to her about it on the podcast, too.) Jealous that she's doing so much there in DC where I can't see it!