theaterboy®

Death by Theater

And the death-march begins again ...

These things may not get reviewed ...

... but they sound interesting:

• Anita Maynard-Losh's Tlingit Macbeth (opens tonight at the National Museum of the American Indian) ...


• Didactic Theater's reading of Deep Belly Beautiful on Monday. It's a love triangle involving cannibalism. 'Nuff said.


• Don't forget the Hebrew Hamlet, which runs through this weekend at Signature. CP's not reviewing, and Tboy hasn't seen a review in the WashPo yet.  And technically it's sold out. (Though Tboy always has luck with last-minute cancellations ... )

An encouraging Uma update

So Uma Nithipalan, for whom you're supposed to have been vandalizing, is out of the ICU.

You remember: The 27-year-old L.A.-based actress (pictured at right, before her hospitalization) collapsed suddenly on Feb. 1 after a brain aneurysm -- far from home, with no health insurance, not long after she said "yes" to a marriage proposal.

Playwright Erik Patterson, who's been chronicling Uma's struggle since that day, emphasizes that moving out of the ICU is a huge thing. Doctors initially expected her to die -- or at best to remain in a vegetative state for life.

Meanwhile theaterbloggers and theaterfolk and just plain people have raised a pile of money to help pay for Uma's medical expenses. (They'll need more, so if the spirit moves you, the link is at the top right on that page.)

I have to say I've found the story of Uma's fight immensely moving -- and the extraordinary response of people who don't even know her even more so.

You can read up on it at Metroblogging LA -- it's an end-of-February post, but it's a lively overview.

Dispatch from Humana: 3 bars, 2 apartments, 1 quesadilla binge

In which our correspondent attends an opening-"night" party that takes in half of Looahville and goes on for half a day.

Tuesday, March 6, 2:23 a.m.

We had a kick-ass opening on Sunday at 2:30pm. The show had been tightening up during previews, and Michael G kept tweaking the tech elements and the moment-to-moment stuff, and on Sunday the whole thing caught fire. It was very exciting.

I don't know what it's like to watch, only what it's like to do, but I've been talking to some of the people who've come to see it, and they seem not only to have really enjoyed the production, but to be genuinely interested in what the play has to say. It is sparking a lot of conversations about the Internet, boys growing up, virtual reality, cybersex, dangerous theatre, and the meaning of truth, for starters.

And, since we opened with a matinee, the opening night party was 12 hours long....and travelled to five different locations. Three bars and two apartments, plus a trip to the Kroger's for supplies for quesadillas: I cooked about a dozen in a hazy, assembly-line fashion. Jen's Kentucky Kesadillas.  Ended up playing darts at Freddie's.

It was such a celebration of the month we've spent together, working on this piece. Everyone here seems so excited about this play and our production, as they are about all the plays in the festival: the actors in the other shows  are coming to see ours even as they get ready to tech or open their own. It's crazy supportive, and so much about the whole festival and the joy of bringing these new plays to the stage.
I like Humana.

-- Jen

P.S. - There's an apprentice whose dream job is to work with Fugazi (she's a sound engineer type person) and do theatre like dark play (not the mainstream stuff). Anyone have any contacts?

If it's Wednesday ...

... it's Wee Jane. This week she's got Michael Arnold, who stepped into the Kennedy Center's much-discussed Carnival! at more or less the last minute -- and has gotten some of the most consistently glowing notices. Among other things, La Horwitz gets at the answer to one question that everyone Tboy's talked to has been asking: What's up with that accent?

Also, David Muse on the similarities between classical and (some) contemporary plays, and on why Terrence McNally's Frankie & Johnny ... makes a nice change.

Plus three bits of actual biz-of-theater news:

• word on "sluggish ticket sales" and two canceled performances for Arena Stage's Gem of the Ocean (complete with Arena's spin)
• a comparison of those numbers to Ford's Jitney, which bagged three matinees before opening night due to slow sales (complete with Ford's spin)
• a "scenery malfunction" and a star's illness at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Tboy likes this: It suggests the WashPo believes in an actual audience interest in the theater, beyond the mere momentary entertainment of the show ...

Today on YouTube ...

"Everyone's a Little Bit Jewish," featuring the combined casts of Avenue Q and Fiddler, from a Broadway Cares benefit.  Courtesy of Tboy's friend Matt, who certifies it as both kosher and "the funniest thing ever."

The Shakespeare Theatre Company season ...

... looks like it'll include a Norman Allen play and something starring René Auberjonois.  At least that's what Tboy's guessing, 'cause they're milling about the Lansburgh lobby.  The announce happens shortly.

Also on hand: Ethan McSweeny, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, the Rorschach troops, Rebecca Bayla Taichman (sitting next to Avery Brooks), Keith Baxter, Gale Edwards, Patrick Page, and some dance folk. (They're announcing the first season in the Harman, remember? Mixed bill and all.)

More as it happens ... including, Tboy has heard rumors,* something to do with a Marlowe fest.

MK is up, prepping the crowd for what he says will be "maybe the most momentous day in 20 years of milestones." There's a new house to open Oct. 1 (tour to come in an hour or so), the 775-seat Sidney Harman Hall ... "a national destination theater and a classical theater serving Washington and ... the nation as a whole."

8 mainstage plays -- 2 series in rotating rep ... 20,000 $10 tickets

Harman, up to say a few words, talks not about next season but about the Titus that's forthcoming shortly from Gale Edwards, his seatmate at last night's Will Awards gala: "You will, I have every confidence, experience an expression of Titus that is stunningly relevant ... made possible by a director who understands the sociology of the theater... and the language."

And now the season, as they announce it:

Taichman will do the Shrew to open the season. Said she re-read the play last night, and now she remembers why people look at her suspiciously when she says she wants to direct "this incredibly cranky, incredibly funny play." Her strategy: to let it be "as erotic ... as eerie ... as it wants to be." And more along those lines. She says she's got an untamed beast inside her, too, which makes people chuckle, just the slightest bit uneasily.

To open the Harman Center, MK announces, two plays by Christopher Marlowe. Extraordinary writer, he says, "unjustly unproduced," and besides what better way to get a little attention for the opening of an expensive Shakespeare repertory house than to produce a couple of plays by the man's greatest contemporary rival. MK will direct Tamburlaine the Great, the two parts in one evening. No evidence, MK indicates, that Tamburlaine has ever been done in D.C.  This of course is the Avery Brooks play -- the character never leaves the stage, and at one point he drives a chariot pulled by three kings of Asia, so who else? "Daunting," says Brooks. "Everything I've ever done with Michael is daunting." He's wearing the flashiest snakeskin cowboy boots. Python? Rattlesnake? Must ask. "The task is always challenging; the task is always filled with discovery and joy and ... questions. And so I'm thrilled to be back here again."

Fran Dorn cries a bit when MK introduces her; she'll be coming back to do the Tamburlaine. (What part? Tboy doesn't know the play...)

Gale Edwards will do Edward II, the other play in the Marlowe rep. (Dorn just cracked a minute ago that she played Mortimer in a grad-school production, and she'd be available if anybody wants.) Edwards goes on a bit about how much she likes working here, says she committed to do one of the Harman openers before MK told her which play. Then a little about Marlowe, including the queer bit, the spy bit, the maybe-he-faked-his-death-and-wrote-Shakespeare bit, all of which she sounds distinctly dubious about. Now a little about Edward, and it sounds like she'll be working hard to harmonize the play's politics and its homoerotics -- both of which she seems intensely interested in.

MK back-announces one bit Edwards left out: Wally Acton will be back to play Edward. (He was Edwards' Richard III, remember ... )

The Rorschach twosome -- Jenny McConnell Frederick and Randy Baker -- are up now to announce what they're doing here: The School of Night, which sounds like a kind of Beard of Avon-style backstage story with Marlowe instead of Shakespeare; also possibly Marlowe's Eye, a Naomi Iizuka play that somehow juliennes the Waco apocalypse, the death of an Italian filmmaker, and Marlowe's death together, "all in one language bonanza," Randy says.

Plus Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Jew of Malta in readings, and a Spy Museum whosiwhat on the spy legend.  (Shades of a mini-"Shakespeare in Washington" festival: MK is clearly wanting to keep some buzz going.)

Oh, goody -- Mary Zimmerman is coming to town again. Argonautica, her Jason-and-the-Argonauts adaptation, in a four-city tour. (STC is signaling, remember, that it wants Harman Hall to be a booking house and a destination theater.) Zimmerman on video, talking about her attraction to the "latent theatricality" in epic tales, and noodling a bit about the Jason story as a prelude to Medea. Also: sea monsters and harpies and battles, oh my, which she likes the challenge of staging ... Talk talk talk... Loved being in Washington, walking her dog on the Mall and on Capitol Hill, encouraging it "to do its business on the lawn of the Senate." She's sweet, if a bit dithery, and genuinely seems to like the city.

Ethan McSweeny will do Major Barbara, the first proscenium show in the Harman space. (The Marlowes will be done in thrust or open-stage.) McS is a native, you'll remember, and got his start here. His moms is on hand, as usual, with the Honorable Dad. He riffs on Zimmerman's recently developed affection for Washington, and cracks on the way the neighborhood's changed: "She shoulda been here in the 80s -- you wouldn't have wanted to ride your bike on 7th Street. And you would've needed a really big dog." He goes on to be silly about how nice it is to live in a world where Major Barbara's polemics aren't necessary -- now that there's no worries about military-industrial complex, wealth of the many/poverty of the few, etc. -- and how much fun it's going to be "to dust off this old chestnut and see if it has anything left to say to us."  Also:  A Norman Allen commission for the STC's first-ever series of family programming, based on a Persian folk tale. Free Wednesday-lunchtime performance events in the Harman Hall lobby...

A David Muse Julius Caesar (his first project on the STC mainstage) ... paired with Kahn's Antony and Cleopatra, with Patrick Page as the Antony in both. (Antony's young in one, aging in the other, remember?)

Page, at the lectern, on the stage, is talking about how MK works, and he just said the name of the Scottish Play. Much jitteriness onstage. Tboy now feels less bad about having done it. As with McS and the Shaw, more talk about "present, tangible" expressions of urgent, contemporary political impulses.

More from Muse on Shakespeare's fascination with Rome (he wrote four Roman plays, of which Muse has directed two already) ... Julius Caesar "a play about the disillusionment of ideals, and about how malleable public opinion is in skilled hands ... and it's just full of opportunities for directorial fun. I get triumphal processions, a rioting mob, a night when fire is dropping from the sky..."

MK confessing, re Antony, that his Folger production, lo these many years ago, "I don't think I got it very right." (He's always saying this lately, which Tboy finds endearing. Said it about Hedda and Othello and the Scottish Play, too, if Tboy remembers correctly.) Anyway, re the Folger Antony, you remember: Wading pool, battle of Acteon, A & C kicking about in the water, interns with towels frantically mopping up the mess. "Most of the critics, after they got through talking about Fran Dorn's performance, talked about the towels."

The season wraps with The Imaginary Invalid, directed by Keith Baxter, who's confessing that 15 years ago he dodged MK's phone calls for weeks when MK was trying to rope him in for Measure for Measure. Now he's confessing (rather proudly) that he introduced Gale Edwards to MK.

Now he's going on about the first time he met the delightful young woman who starred in his Country Wife a couple of years back: "She looked like a hooker. She was wearing a skirt that went where no one should really go." She was Tessa Auberjonois, you'll recall, and Baxter says he finds her ravishing, which is how René Auberjonois got hooked up with Malade Imaginaire. As the Argan, of course.

Crankiness from Baxter now, about wretched translations/adaptations. "Cow poop. ... You bimbo of Beelzebub." He'll do the Molière in a serious translation and in the closest thing he can manage to la gloire, the dazzling excess of early 18th-century court theater. (There goes the STC budget.)

Auberjonois now, also in cowboy boots, hamming it up with a big sneeze and "I don't know if I can go on." But only for a minute, and now very serious and respectful.  Tboy didn't know this: His first job out of college was at Arena Stage, and he was in the company for 3 years before going to San Francisco and ACT.

Reminiscing about being in on the founding of the Juilliard drama program with MK, about his work in various regional ensembles over the decades, the point of all of which turns out to be:  He was envious, he said, to see Tessa working in D.C., "because what Michael has created here and what the audience has embraced is really the dream for any serious actor. And I thought it was gone."

And we're done now, off to do the hard-hat. (Amusing photos of which in a minute.)

* OK, possibly shoulda read the Post this morning, but who has time when you're trying to get to a 9:30 breakfast announcement?

Now that's a backstage blog.

Composer Andrew Gerle has been blogging the rewrites-and-rehearsal process for Meet John Doe, which gets a full-scale production this month at Ford's Theatre.

It's short on drama, but it's got a reasonable amount of blow-by-blow -- and it's  refreshingly honest about the anxieties attendant on any creative process. Check it out.

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.

Dispatch from Humana: Now that's more like it.

In which our correspondent becomes a girl gone wild.

Friday, March 2, 4:04 a.m.

No wry, no drinking, no Southern Gothic?? You are so f*cking demanding!

OK, so as I was finding my seat with my posse, I realised that [Michael John] Garces was sitting in it. When I pointed this out, he asked to see my ticket, and promptly ripped it up. That's a gantlet I can't resist, so my intelligent, cultured response was to start unbuttoning my pants. In the back row of the Bingham. He immediately said "Do it! Do it!" Which merely added more fuel to the fire. Consequently, I mooned him at close quarters in a sold-out theatre on opening night. Amazingly, very few people seem to have noticed.

No wry here, just ribald. But that's me.

We just finished our ten out of twelve, and then repaired to a cast member's apartment to decompress. I love being able to talk about life with people I'm working hard with on something that we all believe in -- people I've never met before, might not ordinarily seek out or come across, who are so different from me, who I have so much to learn from, and to whom I may have something to offer.

And this is an obscure reference, but my belt buckle in the show has a funky kind of rectangular boxlike shape which has inspired many "box" jokes and merits a mention of the "I put my box in a box" video on You Tube.

Later,

-- Jen

By the way, I stand corrected by a resident: it's Looahvul, not Luhvul. Either way, sounds like you just came from the dentist.