Things That Made Me Squee Recently
Including some you might have missed
The faint shrieking (squealing? meeping?) you heard from my direction earlier this week may have had something to do with Thursday’s announcement of this Carnegie Hall celebration of Liza’s 80th, which I assume is sold out already, although who knows? I’ve asked Richard Kornberg and his gang if there’s any chance she’ll actually attend, and haven’t gotten an answer yet. But the casting lineup — everyone from Claybourne Elder to The Chenoweth — is pretty sweet either way. They’ll be handing out copies of Liza’s autobiography to attendees, too.
Ed Gero’s turn as a dying (and decidedly dyspeptic) Shakespearean in South Africa earned him another Helen Hayes Award nomination this past season, when he played opposite the legendary John Kani in Kunene and the King, which had its U.S. premiere here in D.C. at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. The two of them are taking the show to Minneapolis to play the Guthrie Theatre in October.
Speaking of Ed’s nomination: The Helen Hayes ceremony, which I’m writing again this year, is coming up May 18 if you haven’t got a seat yet.
And speaking of the STC, everybody made so much noise about Brian Cox bringing that Bach play to Harman Hall that you may have missed another squealing fit chez moi. That’s because STC, not content with scheduling a co-production of Follies directed by Signature Theatre’s Matthew Gardiner, also announced a holiday-season Midsummer, directed by STC AD Simon Godwin. And I appreciate you, Simon, but the squealing had to do with the news that the production will apparently incorporate massive puppets by Basil Twist, about whom I definitely feel some kinda way.
Specifically: I once stepped into an NPR elevator on a coffee run only to find reporter Elizabeth Blair talking to a slender fellow dressed all in black. When she casually gestured to the stranger and said “Hey Trey, this is Basil Twist,” my face fell open and I said — quite forcefully, and entirely involuntarily — “Shut the fuck up.”
So you know, I feel like that.
I mean, Basil Twist designed the Dementors for the Harry Potter movies, y’all, back before that IP became entirely toxic.
Dedicated D.C. theatergoers will remember an amazing little tour through the Twist-ed universe back in 2012, when STC, the Studio Theatre, the Clarice, and Woolly Mammoth conspired to stage a wildly diverse selection of his stuff.
Just to pick a favorite from back then: Dogugaeshi, a black-box show where Twist built a seemingly endless universe with dozens of sliding Japanese screens, was absolutely mesmerizing. I can’t wait to see what he does with the faerie creatures of The Dream — no mushrooms required.
Thomas Floyd is a perfectly nice fellow, as far as I can tell, and his take on A Good Day to Me Not to You for The Washington Post more or less lined up with my own. I do wonder whether the folks at Washington Stage Guild wouldn’t rather he’d skipped Caesar and Cleopatra, but that’s the risk when you make frustrated noises about when and whether the paper of record will get around to noticing local theater again.
Me, I tend to like Shaw even at his windiest and most pompous. Still, I’m glad that the Style gods have kept Floyd around. As things settle out in the wake of this year’s gruesome Post layoffs, it’s nice to have a familiar voice still looking in on D.C.’s small and midsize companies.
Next time,
— trey
P.S.: There’s extra goodness below for those of you on the paid-subscribers list, including a postcard from the kittens, a fine read about a Madison, Wisc., theater mainstay, and a deeply insidery Sondheim conversation between two of my favorite D.C. theater people. Many thanks to all of you.
