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The Week in Review(s)

Peter Marks said ho-hum in the WashPo, more or less, about Gem of the Ocean at Arena Stage: "a fitting prologue" for the cycle, he says, but ultimately "a lesser achievement" in the context of August Wilson's best.

Me, much the same. The play does have an opening-chapter feel, but I think the production lets Wilson down: "Handsomely staged but unfortunately flat, Arena’s production suffers most where the play’s richest: in its language." As with Shakespeare, you've really got to know how to shape the speeches in a Wilson play, and too many of 'em are getting thrown out full throttle in the Fichandler.

(An aside: Arena's got a podcast with director Paulette Randall. iTunes users can get it here, others here.)

(Another aside: Said podcast seems to be produced by ex-Round Housers Mark Blackmon and Kathy Feininger, who seem to have set up a company. Hmmmm. Tboy has a podcast he's too lazy to produce on a regular basis. He wonders what their rates are.)

The Mondello has decamped to New York this weekend to see Spring Awakening and whatnot. But he managed to file a review of Noah Haidle's Vigils before he skipped town, and it's largely a happy one: "Haidle’s antic romp is as exuberant, and far funnier, than any play about letting go of a dead spouse has any right to be."  PeterM agreed, calling Vigils a "sweetly addled tale, acted with comic relish in the appealing incarnation at Woolly Mammoth Theatre."

(That breeze you felt was the huge sigh of relief from the folks at Woolly, whose stuff has mostly been getting the crap kicked out of it in the Post for the last two seasons. And while Tboy doesn't know whether to attribute it to good reviews or J. Fred Shiffman's abs, sales are apparently brisk enough that Woolly's  extended the show through March 4.)

Mondello also turned in a few words (second item) about Teatro GALA's Las Paredes, which he thought "serviceable if not always subtle ... doesn’t pack the emotional wallop it should." Celia Wren basically agrees in the WashPo: "[D]irector Gabriel García and set designer Guillermo de la Torre capably dole out menacing atmospherics while preserving the emphasis on the banality of evil"--but something's not right, she indicates, when "it's the set, not the dialogue, that yields the greatest sense of movement."

Tboy's other excursions last weekend took him to see Crave and The Small Things, both monumentally cheerful plays. (That's a total lie, but go see 'em anyway: They're tough going, but honestly worth the effort.)

PeterM didn't like Crave as much as Tboy did: The play's "an emotionally sterile venture" and "a wildly anticlimactic choice" as the opening event in Signature's very nice new black-box, he argues. And he didn't much like Jeremy Skidmore's decision to have the actors "engage one another whenever possible."

As for The Small Things at Solas Nua, well -- it took until yesterday for the WashPo to wedge the review in (it was a helluva busy week), but Nelson Pressley, hoorah, seems to understand what's so stirring about it: Enda Walsh's play "feels elegiac, yet oddly hopeful," never mind the horrors it chronicles. Kathleen Akerley's "finely calibrated ... unerringly tasteful ... visually beautiful"  production makes the story feel "queerly lyrical"; Kate Debelack is quietly heartbreaking, and as Nelson and I both indicate, Chris Davenport's performance is absolutely not to be missed.

(Tboy would like to request, however, that in future you people consult each other and try not to schedule two giant downers in one weekend.  It's like mixing the booze and the pills (he imagines); each has its worthwhile qualities, taken individually and in judicious quantities, but consumed together they're not so hot.)

The City Paper sent Glen Weldon to Catalyst Theater, where he admired Scott Fortier's "squirrelly, tic-ridden" characterization (no really, it's a compliment) in Sheila Callaghan's We Are Not These Hands. The play, a little less: Callaghan "wrestles with some big and potentially disturbing ideas ... [but ultimately]  keeps the more unsettling stuff at arm’s length." The playwright's in town to check out the production, according to her blog, so you might want to watch for her reaction there.

In the not-so-much-a-review department:

• The City Paper's Nick Green profiles Jessica Burgess and Mary Resing's new Maryland-based company, Active Cultures, and their opening offering, Hansel & Gretel Eat Crabs. ("These girls are lured into a strip club, as opposed to a gingerbread house.")

• Wee Jane gets Andre de Shields to talk about his G-string. More or less.

• The WashPo's Bill Triplett separates fact from fiction as regards Kenneth Tynan, Orson Welles, and Laurence Olivier.

Speaking of which: PeterM likes Orson's Shadow (it was a Monday night open, so Tboy's review will be in next week's paper) and seems enchanted by Lypsinka: The Passion of the Crawford (a Wednesday open, so ditto) -- though I sense a bit of apologia in the latter. Or maybe that's just me: I do understand how technically perilous John Epperson's chosen art is, and I do admire both the astonishing timing andd the way Lypsinka's nonverbals create a characterization--a very different one, a comment on The Crawford--between the lines.  But the dazzle wears off after about half an hour.

And that, germs and ladies, was the week that was ...

Today on YouTube ...

Around Town does Into the Woods.

If there's a slight tinge of jealousy in the air, it's because Signature has moved up to the fancy new space, but WETA's TV studio is still on the wrong side of the creek over thar in Shirlington.

So Tboy still has to drive by (and risk the temptations of) the Weenie Beanie every time we go to tape these things ...

Another take on "gay actor"

From another gay actor -- one who's intimately connected with a question Tboy took up last week.

Greg Marzullo, founding company member at Synetic Theater (and now features editor at the Washington Blade), has weighed in over on the Blade blog about this little post.

So read that little post first, if'n you haven't, and then trickle on over and see what Greg has to say about it.

UPDATE, Monday 6 p.m.: Yet further thoughts, from Metro Weekly editor Sean Bugg, are over here. Heavens.  Tboy had no idea this was gonna turn into such a to-do ...

The Week in Review(s)

Well, let's see now: The Rorschach folks got a sweet little spread in the WashPo, where Nelson Pressley argued that Rough Magic "works best when it makes knowing fun of [the premise's] goofiness." 

Me, I had a good enough time -- yes, that was me guffawing at the Tennessee Williams joke -- but I thought exactly the opposite: The troubles with the evening (and there were many) had to do with too much wink-nudge.  The comedy was snappy enough to come across without extra help, so for me the production worked best when it me believe in the play's darknesses.

The best shiver all night, in fact, was when it became clear how Prospero intended to get around the curse that said his feet could never leave the island -- everything worked in that moment, and it creeeeeeped me the hell out.

(Note that while the Post went with the drag photo -- shiny things! -- the City Paper picked this hot-for-teacher shot of Gwen Grastorf, who has now been referred to, in print, as both "kittenish" and "luscious." She has Tboy's sympathies.)

Other takes: Washingtonian (mixed, with bonus plot summary); DC Theatre Reviews ("a silly pop culture confection for literature lovers"). Also, this endorsement (list of superlatives, with SuperSized plot summary) from a blog called DragoLife, which the Rorschachnoids apparently want you to see.

The African Continuum/Ford's Theatre collaboration turns out nicely: In the City Paper, Bob Mondello says Jitney is "a play of such modest ambitions that it’s a little startling to find it achieving so much." (Me, I thought it worked better, surprisingly enough, than Arena's Gem of the Ocean, which I caught last night. Review next week, natch.)

Pressley and the Post say that as a play, Jitney "idles noisily" and "meanders even by Wilson's own profoundly unhurried standard," but the "exuberantly acted production ... proves that the play still gives audiences a pretty good ride". He especially likes KenYatta Rogers' performance as Youngblood.

And believe it or not, that was it.  Pardon Tboy while he goes to rest up for the remainder of the 7-show weekend.

Leftovers: Since I posted last week's roundup, Celia Wren has weighed in on Keegan's The Tempest. ("Mostly overcast," say, or "drizzle." That's gotta smart.)

The Week in Review(s)

So, better late than never:

PeterM liked the seats at Signature's Into the Woods, but liked the acoustics a bit less. Tboy had the same reservations about the way the new house sounds, but he imagines they'll fix it.

He can't imagine, however, what Marks was smoking when he suggested that Eleasha Gamble would've been better suited for Little Red than for the Witch.  It's true that Tboy liked Gamble's performance better than Marks did, but even if he hadn't, a less likely Little Red he can hardly imagine; the voice is all wrong.

Speaking of Gamble, and apropos of that photo over there on the right: This is the first time Tboy has seen that image. He sat, believe it or not, in a spot from which the staging made it impossible to see the Witch's transformation. And her disappearing act.

Which, if you've never seen Into the Woods, are kinda two of the big moments. You'll want to steer clear of the seats at the very back of the section that's straight ahead of you as you walk into The Max.

Random other opinions: DCist is here, Potomac Stages here.

Meanwhile, down at the Lansburgh ... Richard III gets a qualified rave from BMon in this week's City Paper:  "Slow patches plague a second half that really ought to be building to a flashy finish," he warns, but "the finish is there"-- and "Kahn helps the actors run with the text to places nearly as unfamiliar as the strangely angled stage they’re ricocheting around."

Where Mondello riffed (interestingly, Tboy thought) on the off-kilter set and what it says about the play's skewed world, Marks led with Geraint Wyn Davies' singularly scarred Richard: "Add a half-mask," says the WashPo, and he'd be the Phantom of the Plantagenets."

(Nothing yet from DCist, alas, nor from DC Theatre Reviews, but the reliable Brad Hathaway has of course weighed in.)

N.B.: Nobody said much about the gloriously ripe Queen Elizabeth of Margot Dionne. Your mileage will vary, and she's certainly not always in the same play with the others. But Tboy and Dr. H both decided they liked it -- and not just a little -- for two reasons:

• She's flinging a lot of fur around up there, and the grandness of the portrayal goes rather nicely with that. In a way that approaches camp, but then stops just short.
• Elizabeth, née Woodville, is essentially a commoner, remember--a commoner who's been elevated to royalty by a marriage some claimed she bewitched Edward IV into. (One of the kinder summarys Tboy can find online says only that her folks were "not entirely parvenus.") So of course she's a little over-the-top.

All in all, Tboy thought Dionne's Liz was rather delicious.

Other things what got themselves reviewed this week:

• Bricktop at MetroStage (photo, right). Celia Wren sez it's "infectious, if somewhat scattered," but CP's Glen Weldon went "Eh, the characters could stand a little more arc." (Tboy paraphrases).

• Keegan's The Tempest. Underwhelming, sez me. (Second item.)

• The Folger's King Lear, by a not-amused Mondello: "A director less intent on illuminating the script than on managing showy acrobatics ... Preisser’s staging is not helped by a certain unevenness in the cast. " (Second item.)

And that, sez Tboy with an exhausted sigh, was the week that was.

Change is good.

Welcome to the new, cleaner Theaterboy.  The old design: Pfaugh. Three columns + a few ads + all those blogrolls and booklists and whatnot = way too cluttered.

Notice the category cloud, which looks fun and is more compact than the old category list. Notice the new e-mail sign-up box, for those of you who might not always be tied to your computer, but who lust to have Tboy delivered to your CrackBerry. (No more than one a day, or at least that's what the nice people at FeedBurner promise.)

Notice the adorable Stageblogs logo, which links you to an ever-growing "hive" of theaterbloggers (including Tboy) with whom you may advertise the projects of your choice.

You may have noticed that the press-nights calendar was a giant pain in the butt, and unfortunately it still is. Google doesn't offer a setting narrow enough for it to work in that left-hand sidebar.

But fear not: Because he craves your pity, Tboy will embed the calendar here, in the very mainbar of the blog, each week. Starting in just a minute. Under the now-traditional heading "Death By Theater."

Not that Tboy ever resents the way y'all schedule openings, or anything.

Enjoy.

The Week in Review(s)

Tboy tackled Synetic's Macbeth this week, and while the Tsikurishvilis' Scottish Play isn't quite as dazzling as some of their company's best work, "the production comes fully into its own with a sequence that makes a compact and yet seemingly endless horror of the Macduff murders." And watch out for the "the titanic blood and thunder of Cunis’ final confrontation with Kavsadze": The forest do indeed come to Dunsinane, and what follows is "fearlessly big, sensuously charged, a conscious flaunting of bodies and training and technique—and it fairly explodes off the stage." (UPDATE, Saturday noonish: Peter Marks swoons over it today.)

Not so much the Theater J show -- "a quirky memory play capable of accelerating from zero to saccharine in 6.3 seconds."  (Second item on this page)

Peter M. weighs in today, too, on Sleeping Arrangements. He likes Halo Wines (in fact he seems to have liked everything Tboy didn't and vice-versa), but the script itself  "suffers too many defects to stake out any sort of original claim in the crowded genre of the memory play."

One interesting note: Marks complains about the production not having a specific sense of place -- and indeed it doesn't -- but Tboy hears rumors that it was the author pushing the abstract set design, so it's a bummer that director Delia Taylor and her design team take so much heat for that in the Post review. (On the other hand, Tboy does ultimately believe that directors are like presidents: The bucks stop there, and they should be prepared to live with that.)

Bob Mondello weighs in, as promised, with a round of huzzahs for the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that continues its triumphant run at the Eisenhower:

• "Rocks the house with laughter for two acts, then turns so harrowing ... that it’s hard to remember what could possibly have seemed funny."
• Kathleen Turner ... turns [the] couplets [of her Act 3 meditation on her marriage] into the most delicate sort of haymakers imaginable. ...
• [Bill] Irwin’s George ... moves to mysterious rhythms, his arms flapping, head untethered, hips thrust forward as if he’s balanced his upper body on them the way a clown balances a towering pile of crockery just before someone adds one last plate and the tower comes crashing down."

Metro Weekly's Jolene Munch, interestingly, liked it rather less.

Earlier this week, Nelson Pressley walked softly on the subject of Mark Jaster's Seven Ages of Mime at Round House Silver Spring, saying "the show's not always that lively -- it's a considered stroll down memory lane, with pauses that sometimes feel like full stops -- but it's consistently winsome.

But Mondello, in today's paper, picks up a big stick and swats away: Jaster's opening bits are nice enough, but the Chaplin homage and whatnot come off like "a pale imitation  of something that’s available in film clips." (Last item.)

As for the Folger Theatre's King Lear, Tim Treanor was first out of the gate (if'n you don't count Tboy's briefly appalled note from Wednesday night, which you shouldn't). Treanor posted Thursday, summing it up as "a seven-course meal with no entrée." CP will get to it next week, and the Post is presumably cooking something up shortly.

Bonus: Scott Vogel's weekend column profiles designers Lee Savage and Jennifer Moeller, the infant Yalies who've designed Michael Kahn's new Richard III.

Tboy got a peek at the set, which is a poisonous industrial thing off-kilter enough that he bets it'll send a few patrons reeling seasick up the aisle.  Also: He hears the text alterations, or some of 'em anyway, are aimed at making the horror more intimate and personal. Which sounds promising, given the clinical (but exceedingly effective) brutality of the last go-round.

p.s.:  A mucky-muck argues that Ming Cho Lee ain't quite "retired," as the Post piece would have it; he's still teaching at Yale, and though he doesn't design much anymore, he does occasionally take on a project (like Lorenzaccio) when it rings his bell.

The week in review(s)

Tboy confesses he's gotten out of the Pay-What groove. As a compensation, he thought he'd offer this little roundup of critical opinion:

Bob Mondello tackled Studio Theatre's This is How It Goes this week, and he liked it rather better ("an intriguing if slightly muddy exploration of the social and personal costs of racial prejudice ... briskly cogent and never less than savvy in [the design team's] use of color ") than Peter Marks did ("a baroque contrivance ... a tortured and windy affair").

Tboy himself had a whack at the Washington Stage Guild's production of The Countess, and found it almost entirely admirable. (Though he was startled to see that his editors appear to have tagged the review with the headline from this week's Savage Love. Which, perversely enough, is basically about This Is How It Goes .... Go figure. That's the closest-to-borderline hed, by the way, since a former CP copy-desker capped a review of an earnest drama about female genital mutilation with the appallingly punny "Nipped In the Bud." Only time Tboy has actually pitched a fit about a hed.) The Post doesn't seem to have reviewed yet.

American Century's Desire Under the Elms earned a middling notice from new stringer Lisa Traiger in the CP. The Post's Celia Wren liked it less: Nobody, Tboy's just guessing, gets excited to open the paper to a review that starts "You can't blame So-and-So for ..." But nevermind: Tboy hears the show has been selling well anyway. Anything with "Desire" in the title, he expects; sounds all bodice-ripperish and whatnot. And Mondello, who saw it for WETA-FM, says he'll be "enthusiastic" about the production on tomorrow's edition of Out & About.

Nelson Pressley went for "spotty" with reference to Charter Theatre's Fear Itself (which the City Paper hasn't gotten to). But he seemed pretty taken with Keegan's Mojo Mickybo ("engaging stuff, the adrenaline kick of two young friends thrilling to the challenge of Us Against the World") -- as did the CP's other new stringer, Glen Weldon. (His review will be in next week's print paper, but will be online shortly was posted at the CP site this afternoon.)

And Peter has already weighed in on Virginia Woolf: "Rapturous ... magnificent ... superb ... stunning ... sterling." And that's just in the first two paragraphs.  From which Tboy gathers that (a) he liked it, and (b) the Kennedy Center continues its long tradition of allowing the big paper in a day earlier than everybody else. Harumph. (We love you anyway, Tiki. Please don't hurt us.)

The Albee is pretty sensational, by the way, or at least Tboy thought so when he saw it last night. Bill Irwin's body language is a pretty seriously eloquent characterization, all by itself, and Kathleen Turner is a voracious thing. Mondello intends to rave next week in CP and on WETA.

Also of interest this week:

• Yvonne De Carlo died.
• Jackie Trescott strolled through the new Signature Theatre on Thursday (which excursion was interesting in part because the story seems to indicate, there in the one-two-three-four-fifth paragraph, that producer Cameron Mackintosh has taken up playwriting).
• Scott Vogel offered up his take on the same edifice for the Weekend section today.

Two pieces on the new house. And they say the Post doesn't devote enough resources to local theater ...

Tboy does hear it's a very nice building. He gathers there's an open house this weekend. Perhaps he'll go see for himself.

Playwrights who suck

Y'know, I've felt a little twinge of conscience now and again about a particularly stinging review of a play or an especially unforgiving assessment of a performance.

It's good for my sanity, then, that you all can be relied on to remind me that actors are often far nastier about each other than any critic would dare to be -- and that if you think actors are bad, playwrights can be downright insufferable.

For the latest example of which, I refer you to the maddeningly pretentious and thoroughly obnoxious thread of Saddam Hussein/David Hare postings on the [dramatists] Yahoo group.

I tell you: It's inoculated me against feeling tender-hearted about playwrights for, oh, at least six months ...

Pollyanna wouldn't have made a good critic.

Nor much of a playwright, either.

Which is why Tboy was surprised to see the thoughtful playwright and critic George Hunka headline a post with the distinctly Pollyannish "Let's All Be Nice."  Never fear, though: Turns out that by "nice" he mostly means "honest."  And maybe "respectful in our disagreements." 

His point, if Tboy understands it correctly, short form: Blogs and bloggers aren't going anywhere, but serious conversation about the arts in other media sure is. (Where's it going? Away.)

So blogs and online journals are among the few forums left for that serious conversation, and artists need to come to grips with that--at least with the bloggers who put some thought and some passion into what they're writing about. A knee-jerk, bruised-ego reaction to criticism, complaints, even snark--whether it's about the art made or the business of making it--doesn't engage, advance, or even acknowledge the conversation.

Long form, on the topic of "criticism, the blogosphere, and the nexus of the artist and the on-line critic, " is over here. It's worth a read.