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Filtering by Category: theatre

Mucho Mistrust, Love's Gone Behind: Rorschach's Glassheart, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Megan Reichelt and Lynette Rathnam

Megan Reichelt and Lynette Rathnam

That's a refrain from Blondie's "Heart of Glass," by the way. Who knew? Not me.

I'm of the opinion that Reina Hardy's spin on Beauty and the Beast, Glassheart, is an undercooked play, but the cast of Rorschach Theatre's production is doing admirable work. My review is in today's Washington City Paper.

Diamond Dawgs: Bang the Drum Slowly, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Evan Crump as Author  Richie Montgomery as Bruce in Bang the Drum Slowly. (Johannes Markus) 

Evan Crump as Author  Richie Montgomery as Bruce in Bang the Drum Slowly. (Johannes Markus) 

I've never been a big sports fan, but I'm weirdly susceptible to baseball stories. I found American Century Theatre's stage adaptation of Mark Harris' 1956 baseball novel Bang the Drum Slowly to be an anachronistic pleasure. My review is in today's Washington City Paper.

Quiet Act: Synetic's Twelfth Night and Forum's Meena's Dream, reviewed

Chris Klimek

"I have been and always shall be your... twin sibling." Alex Mills as Sebastian and Irina Tsikurishvili as Viola in Twelfth Night. (Koko Lanham)

"I have been and always shall be your... twin sibling." Alex Mills as Sebastian and Irina Tsikurishvili as Viola in Twelfth Night. (Koko Lanham)

My reviews of Synetic Theatre's silent, early-cinema-and-Jazz Age-inflected Twelfth Night and Anu Yadav's solo show Meena's Dream are in today's Washington City Paper.

Painted by Association: The Old Masters, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

The Adoration of the Shepherds, now attributed to the Renaissance master Giorgione, hangs in the National Gallery of Art.

The Adoration of the Shepherds, now attributed to the Renaissance master Giorgione, hangs in the National Gallery of Art.

The authorship of this painting is the ostensible subject of The Old Masters, one of Simon Gray's final plays. My review of Washington Stage Guild's production is in today's Washington City Paper.

Wilder Thing: Our Suburb, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Some kind of technical problem prevented a chunk of this week's Washington City Paper from being posted online. My review of Darrah Cloud's play Our Suburb at Theater J was among that chunk, so I'm posting the full text of the review here.

Writer Darrah Cloud’s Internet Movie Database page indicates she was once a prolific imagineer of made-for-TV movies: A Christmas Romance, A Holiday for Love, A Holiday Romance, The Sons of Mistletoe, and -- shades of intrigue! -- Undercover Christmas. I haven’t seen those films, but the titles imply the sort of cornball mawkishness that some people -- specifically, people who are very wrong -- associate with Thornton Wilder’s oft-revived, Pulitzer-winning 1938 play, Our Town.

Our Suburb is Cloud’s riff on Wilder’s classic in the way that Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird was a reworking of Anton Chekhov’The Seagull, only she isn’t debating her source material the way Posner’s thrilling play did. She’s moved the action -- well, “action;” she’s kept Wilder’s sense of life as a sequence of mostly prosaic moments that we are tragically incapable of appreciating   --  from the fictitious hamlet of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire in the early years of the 20th century to her native Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, about 75 years later. There we follow three households, alike in rigorously striving dignity: The white Majors, and black Minors, and the Jewish Edelmans.

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I loves you, Porgy & Bess. Or The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. Whatever.

Chris Klimek

Bess, Porgy. Porgy, Bess. Alicia Hall Moran and Nathaniel Stampley.

Bess, Porgy. Porgy, Bess. Alicia Hall Moran and Nathaniel Stampley.

Yes, it's clearly an insult to DuBose Heyward, who wrote the novel Porgy, and to his wife Dorothy Heyward, with whom he collaborated on the script for a play derived from the novel, that the latest (2011) Broadway version is called The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, as if the Heywards had nothing to do with the creation of an American classic. But I was still moved past the point of articulate expression by the show when its touring version stopped in Washington Christmas week, as my tongue-tied Washington City Paper review demonstrates.

Because I decided the most honest way to approach the piece -- which was assigned late, for a short run of a show opening on Christmas night, leaving me no time to prepare -- was to cop to the fact I'd never seen Porgy & Bess before, I left myself vulnerable to the accusation I lack the appropriate credentials to review it. That's a question I'll be addressing at length later this month.

Our Pottymouthed Year: 2013 on the DC Stage, Assessed.

Chris Klimek

Drew Cortese and Quentin Maré in Studio's The Motherfucker with the Hat. (Teddy Wolff)

We're wrapping up a highly rewarding and admirably trend-resistant year on DC's stages, as I aver in this week's Washington City Paper.

Mourning Edition: Edgar and Annabel, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Maboud Ebrahimzadeh & Emily Kester. (Igor Dmitry) 

The short version of my Washington City Paper review of Sam Holcroft's Edgar and Annabel, now getting its U.S. premiere in a Studio Theatre production directed by the great actor Holly Twyford, is that you have to see it. It synthesizes about a half dozen well-chosen curated cinematic influences while remaining resolutely its own thing.