theaterboy®

Not Is the New Blog

Short and sweet: This is goodbye. At least for a while.

Longer, but still not bitter:

I'm a little burned out.  And so are many of you, I'm guessing, at least if the general reluctance to post in the comments here is any indication.

I'm burned out on blogging in general.  (I don't read most of the blogs I used to; apparently a day job will do that to you.)

I'm burned out on blogging about y'all in particular. (Not that you're not intensely interesting.)

I'm even a tiny bit burned out on theater -- or at least burned out on thinking about it 24/7 -- so I'm going to focus the energy and enthusiasm I do have on the reviews.  As long as the City Paper keeps printing them, anyway.

This may turn out to be only a hiatus -- who knows?  If you're really curious, sign up for the e-mail version. That way you'll get anything I post in the future, without having to remember to check back here.

In the short run, if you're desperately in need of a Theaterboy fix, you can join him for a panel discussion he'll be moderating on May 23rd. It's about Hamlet, god help us, but the Shakespeare Theatre's Michael Kahn and Synetic's Paata Tsikurishvili and Studio's Joy Zinoman are supposed to be participating, so maybe it won't be a complete snooze. I think it's gonna be at the Portrait Gallery, though that may still be in flux.

Meanwhile: Thanks, all of you.  It's been fun. Fun when you got engaged, fun when you got enraged, fun when you confessed in the lobby of the Zinoplex how much you enjoyed Theaterboy and his less-than-reverent approach to Washington theater.

I've been proud of Theaterboy, mischief or no: I was proud when thousands of people from all across the U.S. clicked through from Jim Romenesko's Poynter.org blog to read about L'Affaire Olszewski, and proud when Tboy was the first to confirm first-hand that the Source was in danger of becoming a pool hall. I was proud when I was able to get Wendy Goldberg on the phone on a weekend to talk about the O'Neill scandal that wasn't, quite, and proud when Dramatists Guild president John Weidman called Tboy back in a hurry to parse his evolving reaction to the changing story of Hedy Weiss and that Chicago new-works showcase.

But I was never prouder than when one actor who'd been out of circulation for a while (and who drew a nice notice in the Washington Post when he returned to the D.C. stage recently) wrote that Theaterboy and the fun we've had here was one small part of why he decided to get back in the game. Because behind the snark, behind the teasing, Theaterboy has always been about loving theater -- and I'm guessing that came through for the actor in question.

So again, to all of you, thanks: Thanks for participating, for disagreeing, for ranting and rallying and remembering.

On that note, it seems to me appropriate to sign off by drawing your attention to a message Melinda Whiteman left in the comments this past Friday.  I'm moved, and honored, that she'd come back here to share what she's feeling now, and I wouldn't want those feelings to go unremarked:

Dear Friends and Thespians,

It's been a little over a year since my husband, Bart Whiteman, passed on. Passed on is an ambiguous expression, isn't it? I will say that most days, I feel Bart is so much a part of my life. The days go by, during what has been a most difficult year, and like cream rising to the top, my feelings and memory of Bart are like gold. I loved him very much, for a very long time. I miss him. I miss his humour, his advice, his intelligence...hard to find these days, and his heart.

I miss our mutual love of theatre. In fact, I have many boxes of Source works that one your might be interested in archiving for The Source. Please let me know. You can reach me at: mindiwhiteman@aol.com

I truly hope The Source is well and strong in its continued innovations, reincarnations, and dedication to quality theatre in Washington, D.C. I wish all well. The excitement of theater and it's importance as a tool for understanding and expression should never be underestimated.

Sometimes, driving in my car, I'll be thinking of Bart, and feeling that he is not here with me; he is at the Source, with a notebook & pencil. In my mind, Bart was a beautiful man; he worked harder than most. Arrogant and stubborn, with a heart of gold, a keen intellect, and great giver to anyone in need. Enigmatic, complex, loving. Funny.

Thank you to theatreboy, for letting me check in once in a while with my thoughts...I really miss Bart.

Melinda Whiteman

Surfacing.

So, I've been busy.  Sorry about that. 

Actually, I've been both busy and exhausted.  The freelance life is a thing full of uncertainties, but one thing that was always sure in my version of it was that the alarm clock never went off before 10 o'clock.  Tboy is by no stretch of the imagination a morning person, so you can imagine his joy at the prospect of a 6:30 wake-up call every day.

But it's been two weeks now -- two weeks plus three unbelievable breaking-news days -- and I thought I'd check back in.

I don't know, to be honest, if I'm gonna have the time and energy to keep Theaterboy going.  Without the coffeeshop-camping I'd gotten used to, there's not really much space in my day for thinking about theater.  Even the reviews are proving to be tough; I've gotten used to having time to order my thoughts, and now there's just not any.  But things will get easier, I expect, as I settle into a routine at NPR.

And I'm settling: I've gotten accustomed enough to the basic job parameters that I was able to bang out the Fresh Air pages pretty quickly today. 

Which was good, because first thing this morning, at an editor's request, I spent a half-hour or so reading the two short plays allegedly written by the Virginia Tech gunman and pulling together an eight-paragraph story on what was in them -- only to learn that higher-ups had decided that we didn't want to go there after all. (The WashPo did go there, if you must know, and in some detail. We wound up simply adding a link at the bottom of this story to the AOL blog that first attributed the playlets to Seung-hui Cho.)

Later in the day, I got a last-minute request to add a few extra audio snippets to the Yahoo-gets-sued story, which I managed to do in time for Robert Siegel to make a reference to them on the air, hooray. (That's called a back-announce, by the way. Look how much Tboy is learning!)

But it was a close thing, because right about the time that request came in, so did the AP news alert telling us that Kitty Carlisle Hart had died.  The Arts desk scrambled, and the ever-helpful Jaya Prasad at Olney got me a photo of Miss Carlisle in performance out there, so that page has a lovely shot of her from her D.C.-area gig last year -- in addition to that extraordinary Eisenstaedt portrait of her with Moss Hart in Times Square.

And that was my day.  How was yourn?

Also in the last two weeks, since some of y'all have asked what exactly my new job entails, I've made this lovely page for one of Mr. Mondello's stories (took me half a damn day to track down that Cinerama graphic), this lovely page for an Alfred Molina interview (note the two, count 'em two, video clips), and this lovely page about a multimedia production of Tristan and Isolde. (Look, Ma: audio, video and photo extras!) And many more pages, of course, but those are a few of the fun ones.

Basically what I do is:  I track down photos, edit 'em, pick the video and audio extras, if any, find both internal links to previous NPR stories and external links to related Web content, make sure the story is properly tagged and categorized. Oh, and, let's not forget, I edit the text, starting usually from the radio script and finding ways either to write around or incorporate the quotes and sounds the reporter uses.  Sometimes that's easy -- but if the reporter, in her voice-over, refers to a sound or a quip or something else from an "actuality," as they're called, it can be quite difficult. You have to find a way to make something the reader can't hear a part of the text story. It's a minor art, and I'm still working on it.

p.s. - You may be wondering why NPR is rendering the Virginia Tech gunman's name as Seung-hui Cho when other outlets are calling him Cho Seung-Hui. If I'm correctly remembering the e-mail explaining the choice, it's because we learned that he himself used the Americanized structure, with the family name "Cho" coming last rather than first, on various official documents.

Peter Marks does a drive-by ...

... at the tail end of his Meet John Doe review, which Tboy is reading at a coffeeshop near his folks' cabin in Rutherfordton, N.C. (It's pronounced Ruffton, because we're lazy down here. And yes, Tboy is still on vacation, so don't expect much more this week.)

Still: Tboy couldn't help but giggle at this graf:

Ford's, too, deserves applause for taking a chance on this material. Some other major companies in town seem content these days to feast on well-cooked chestnuts.

Goodness. Wonder which "major company" Peter could have in mind?

More on the young critics' program

So several of you sent me suggestions for the D.C.-Belfast young critics program, for which thanks.  But today's news is that I've had guidance from one of the coordinators about how writers should apply.  So take a minute and read this, willya?

1). If you sent me a résumé, I've already forwarded it. Still, it couldn't hurt for you to apply directly, with a cover note expressing your interest and explaining why you want to take part in the exchange. See below.

2). If you didn't send me a CV, don't.  Send it instead to Sioned Hughes, whose address is Sioned.Hughes (at) visitingarts.org.uk, with a cover note as described above. Deadline is March 23.

3). Eligibility is limited to arts writers based in the D.C. area. See below. Contact Sioned for more information. But here's the basic overview. Enjoy:

"This programme will be run in partnership with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and will occur as part of the Rediscovering Northern Ireland Festival in Washington DC. The Young Critics Programme provides an opportunity for young writers from Northern Ireland to connect with their counterparts in Washington DC.

"Designed on the basis that a community of critical writers makes an essential contribution to democratic societies and a flourishing arts scene, the Young Critics Programme aims to create links between different cultures as well as contributing to the appreciation and development of arts criticism.

"During the programme, time will be spent in both Belfast and Washington DC, with the 6 participants attending a writing workshop, visiting galleries and attending a variety of performances.  They will write reviews, discuss their work together, and explore the role of the art critic.  Established arts critics will tutor the workshop.

[snip]

"The week in Washington DC will build on the work done in Northern Ireland, with a similar programme of reviewing a variety of work, with the benefit of critic mentors from Washington DC. The dates for the programme are May 5 – 19, 2007, with everyone arriving in Washington on May 12th.

"There will be 3 participants from Northern Ireland and 3 from Washington DC.  ...  I would expect the candidates to have a demonstrable interest in the arts and to have already started their journalistic career in some capacity."

About that Hamlet

From Lisa Traiger:

"I don't normally do this but:

"If you can finagle tickets to the Hebrew Hamlet at Signature, it is mind-blowingly good, even with the subtitles. Peter Marks was there on Wednesday so expect a review on Friday, I think. [Ed.: Indeed. It's in today.] The acting, incredible, particularly Itay Tiran as Hamlet. The production, muscular and vivid, impeccably directed by Omri Nitzan. The cast, top notch. The audience sits in swivel chairs turning to follow the actors and subtitles as the action churns around you. The Hebrew, a combination of modern day vernacular and biblical and Talmudic language is well-delivered if there are any Hebrew speakers out there. The Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv shows us how compelling Shakespeare can be in the 21st century in a modern dress production that feels very real and vital, down to the boom box Ophelia carries and the Uzis Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sport."

Death by Theater

And the death-march begins again ...

The Week in Review(s)

Well, now.  What with snowstorms and family crises, two openings got pushed last week -- so there's really just the one show to round up opinions about.

But ooh, lord, what a roundup: It's been a while since I've  heard people disagree quite as pointedly about a production as we've been disagreeing about the Kennedy Center's Carnival!

Why such a fuss? Perhaps because, as one wag remarked: "They're channeling Amélie, and no one does whimsy as irritatingly as the French."

Peter Marks led the (circus) parade in Monday's WashPo: "No musical in recent years has looked or sounded better on a Kennedy Center stage .... [Carnival!] has been buffed to a ravishing sheen by director Robert Longbottom."

Ummm, sure, if you say so. I, on the other hand, say (and in print, too) that "I confess I don’t know what anyone associated with the Kennedy Center’s paralytically inert revival of Carnival! could have been drinking, I mean thinking." Not to put too fine a point on it. (I do put a slightly finer point on it in the review, of course, so please do go read. Wouldn't want anybody to think it was entirely about the cheap shot.)

Judy Rousuck makes the judicious frowny face in the Baltimore Sun: Carnival! offers strains of enchantment and menace, she writes, "but both feel watered down in the Kennedy Center's production."

Potomac Stages says Bob Merrill's "marvelously melodic" score (which Tboy believes, rather crankily, to be "an ill-unified collection of saccharine ballad and midway oom-pah and barroom wink-nudge") is being "splendidly sung and magnificently played."  DC Theatre Reviews says it's "a wan musical" populated by "characters sketched with scarce more depth than the charming puppets."

The Examiner's Scott Fuller says it's "clichés on parade" at this circus. Or at least that's what his headline writers think he said; Tboy isn't sure he can find that bottom-line call in the review. Tboy does detect something of a crush on Marco the Magnificent, however. ("He is color; he is movement. He is throwing knives; he is vanishing roses. He is smoothness; he is confidence; he is passion.") But then Marco the Magnificent is Sebastian La Cause, and who wouldn't have a little warm spot for an actor who includes a dedicated "Beefcake Gallery" on his website? And who posts his workout routine online?

Also: Like Tboy, Fuller thinks Natascia Diaz rocks.

Actually, all the reviews have nice things to say about most, if not all, of the cast. We just differ about how the whole thing hangs together--and whether Carnival! itself is much of a show.

The published critics aren't the only ones arguing, just so's you know. Bob Mondello informed a party of theatergoers in the Kreeger lobby last night that Tboy had clearly been smoking rock.  BMon and his man Carlos (who's a much tougher critic) both liked it -- though only reasonably, not rhapsodically. Wee Jane, who confesses that she imprinted on the show when she was wee-er, reports that Longbottom's production did nothing to harden her soft spot for little lost Lili and her grumpy puppetteer.

Another noted critic who saw the show but didn't write, though, e-mailed Tboy earlier this week: "The truncated reaction? OMG how dreary. Such an eccentric choice -- I wonder who in charge saw that at age 11 and hasn't gotten over it yet?"  (Wait: We know the answer to that question. It's in the 6th paragraph.)

And speaking of the youth market: That last reviewer's 13-year-old seatmate "liked the show, hated Lili, thought "she should go die in a toilet ... I don't know where she gets her critical tone."

Finally, if the youth have spoken, so have the eminences. A certain esteemed D.C.-based director rolled his eyes at Tboy on the way out of the Eisenhower on opening night and summed up the evening thusly: "That's gotta be the most unnecessary revival since the second Bush Administration."

Your own opinions, as always, are most welcome in the comments.

Photo credits: Ereni Sevasti, top; Johnathan Lee Iverson and Natascia Diaz in Carnival! Puppets by Ed Christie. Photos by Joan Marcus, courtesy the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The Equus reviews ...

... are in, and they seem to enjoy frolicking about with words like "equimaniac" and "hippophile."

Guardian eminence Michael Billington puts it bluntly, right at the top of his review: "Forget all the prurient press speculation about Harry Potter's private parts. The revelation of this revival is that Daniel Radcliffe really can act."

(Bonus reading: Billington on the history of stage nudity, a story Tboy likewise enjoyed exploring a few years back in this City Paper piece. Though Tboy wasn't genius enough to slip a "hoo-ha" past his editors. Or to end on "half-cocked.")

The Times' Benedict Nightingale likewise takes the direct route: "OK, it was exactly what all that prurient hype promised."  (Aside: When did critics for The Times of London begin launching their reviews with American colloquialisms?)

The Telegraph drools a bit, saying that "the diminutive (but perfectly formed)" Radcliffe "brilliantly succeeds in throwing off the mantle of Harry Potter, announcing himself as a thrilling stage actor of unexpected range and depth."

The Independent, by contrast, is content with "Radcliffe acquits himself well."

Most everyone likes John Napier's design (though for what it's worth, Tboy thinks the horse mask looks like a fruit bowl, at least from the Reuters photo on the Telegraph site).

As for the play, here's Nightingale:  "Equus is at root dated, pretentious and even a bit pernicious ..."

And Billington: "What disturbs me, 34 years after the play's premiere, is the way ... Shaffer romanticises pain."

Both of the big boys take swipes, sidelong or otherwise, at R.D. Laing, whose notions influenced Shaffer's thinking on the blandness of normality.

So there you have it: The critics, as usual, are all over the map.

The Week in Review(s)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to "places":

Bob Mondello had a pass this week at Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece, by the playwright occasionally known as LuckySpinster, and he rather liked it. "You’d have to be a little nuts to go where Washington Shakespeare Company has traipsed so adventurously," he says right at the top. No fear, though: The story sells, and the Spinster's "skill at matching the Bard’s couplets with her own is impressive, as is her facility for delineating ancient politics -- but it’s her literary wit that sets Rape of Lucrece apart."

Celia Wren weighed in last week in the WashPo, saying much the same. Staging the standards, she writes, is "for wimps": "Kimball and director Sarah Denhardt cannily exploit the discomfort factor" inherent in the topic and the text, and WSC's production "unfurls on an unnervingly intimate scale."  (Tboy, for his part, thought WSC did an amazing job with production values, considering that the show was basically an emergency reboot, and that the Spinster did a bang-up job making a lot of brand-new dialogue sound very much like Shakespeare.)

Our boy Glen Weldon, fearless man, confronted Forum Theatre's multimedia Kid-Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh, and didn't exactly love it-- though he did make it sound cool enough to make Tboy want to catch up with it: "Director Jessica Burgess throws a lot of stuff against the (fourth) wall, but not much ends up sticking: The script’s wordplay gets lost amid the tumult, and once the proceedings become loaded down with portent and allegory, the show never recovers .... With some tightening, Kid-Simple will become faster, funnier, and less self-conscious. The ending, however, still won’t make any damn sense."

Celia says Jordan Harrison's "gleefully loopy, language-drunk script is an esoteric melding of spy caper and modern fantasy", complete with "a  meta-theatrical spin ... an onstage part for a sound-effects maestro, the Foley Artist, who generates the story's audibles ... in view of the audience." (That would be Scott Burgess.) Sez Celia: "It's a coy gimmick but it defamiliarizes a routine element of theater -- sound -- thereby resuscitating its mystique."

Tboy took his own self out to Olney (on a cold and snowy night, too), for The Constant Wife, which he thought mostly charming: It's a "snappy entertainment" that "plays brisk and pretty and witty," even if "the archly modern attitudes and the brittle, Wilde-at-heart banter ultimately aren’t quite dazzling enough to blind audiences to the thinness of Maugham’s characterizations." The sets and costumes rock, though.

Nelson Pressley seems to have been in the same drawing room: He reviewed the set for two paragraphs (which always strikes Tboy as a sign that a critic's treading carefully around the question of whether he liked the show or not), then went on to not quite weigh in on the rest of the production until toward the end: "Elliott ... couldn't be breezier. The supporting cast pitches their performances accordingly... They manage the affair as Constance would: with a muted but impeccable sense of style."

Oh, and Peter Marks braved the streets of New York, reporting back that Journey's End is gripping and that in the last third of The Coast of Utopia, "the lengthy preliminaries finally have given way to a story of historical suppleness and sweep."

Bonus non-review thingy: PeterM also talks to the puppet guy from the Kennedy Center's Carnival!, which Tboy's gonna catch tomorrow.

Belatedly ...

... Tboy notes the death of Sheridan Morley, stage director, critic, and biographer of fun theatrical people.

Tboy will now head to bed with his tattered copy of A Talent to Amuse, which he hasn't read since around the time he bought it from (after failing to return it to) the Augusta College library.