The Play's the Thing, the Thing, and the Other Thing: The Blood Quilt, Jumpers for Goalposts, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, reviewed.

Adam Wesley Brown, Ian Merrill Peakes, and Romell Witherspoon in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. (Teresa Wood)

Liam Forde, Kimberly Gilbert, Zdenko Martin, and Michael Glenn in Jumpers for Goalposts. (Igor Dmitry)

Meeya Davis, Nikiya Mathis, Caroline Clay, Afi Bijou. and Tonye Patano in The Blood Quilt. (C. Stanley Photography)

My reviews of — in alphabetical order — the new play The Blood Quilt, the debuting-in-the-U.S. play Jumpers for Goalposts, and the postmodern chestnut Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, are all in this week's Washington City Paper. Except for the latter two of the three, which are online-only. Find them via the links above.

The Overlook'd Hotel: very still and hard to see, reviewed.

Yasmin Tuazon and friends. (C. Stanley Photography)

I often admire the work Rorschach Theatre Company does, but I struggled with their latest offering, an atmospheric but impenetrable production of Steve Yockey's very still and hard to see. My review is in today's Washington City Paper.

Cheks Mix: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike & Uncle Vanya, reviewed.

We've got an An-ton of Chekhov in DC just now, what with Arena Stage doing Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning, Chekhov-inflected Sonia and Masha and Vanya and Spike, while Round House Theatre has put together a sublime new Uncle Vanya, working from Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker's recent translation of the play.

I review both of those in today's Washington City Paper. I have seen Live Art DC's staged-in-a-bar Drunkle Vanya yet, but it's stumbling distance from my apartment so I should find the time.

FURTHER READING: My 2010 review of Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation. My 2011 review of Sydney Theatre Company's Liv Ullmann-directed, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving-starring Uncle Vanya. My 2012 review of Baker's The Aliens. My 2013 review of Aaron Posner's Stupid Fucking Bird, and its follow-up, from earlier, this year, Life Sucks, or the Present Ridiculous. Surely that's more than enough.

On Around Town, talking Laugh, Man of La Mancha, The Originalist, and Soon.

My regimen of smiling and sentence-speaking practice continues as I join host Robert Aubry Davis and Washington Post arts writer Jane Horwitz for another Around Town panel discussion of what's happening on stage here in Our Nation's Capitol and its close suburbs. In this batch of videos, which have also been airing irregularly on your public television, we discuss three shows I reviewed for the Washington City Paper and one I didn't: Beth Henley's homage to silent film comedies Laugh, the Shakespeare Theatre's new production of the classic musical Man of La Mancha, Arena Stage's world premiere play about divisive Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, The Originalist, and Soon, a new musical about the end of the world, kind of, at Signature Theatre.

These links no longer play nice with my blogging platform, so they're not embeddable.

Laugh

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462454/

Soon

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462413/

Man of La Mancha

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462437/

The Originalist

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462393/

John Kevin Boggs, 1963-2015

John Kevin Boggs had many people closer to him than me, but we were friendly acquaintances for a decade and running into him never failed to improve my mood. I wrote what I remember and admire about him for The Washington City Paper.

Judgment Days: Signature Theatre's Soon, reviewed.

Alex Brightman and Joshua Morgan in Soon.

My review of all-rounder Nick Blaemire's world premiere apocalypse musical Soon is in today's Washington City Paper. Or you can save an already-killed tree and read it here.

Deliberations of the Cross: Passion Play and The Originalist, reviewed.

Edward Gero as Antonin Scalia and Kerry Warren as Cat in The Originalist. (C. Stanley Photography/Arena Stage)

Jon Hudson Odom and Laura C. Harris in Passion Play. (C. Stanley Photography/Forum Theatre) 

It's a strong week for theatre here in our Nation's Capitol. My reviews of The Originalist, Arena Stage playwright-in-residence John Strand's much-awaited play about Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and United States v. Windsor, and Forum Theatre's magnificent production of Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play, are in today's Washington City Paper. Go read 'em. Please.

I did mention in my draft how similar The Originalist is to Red – the John Logan-penned Arena Stage show from 2012 wherein Originalist star Ed Gero played a different colossal American, the painter Mark Rothko, yelling at a young assistant haunted by a parental tragedy. But I only get one page in the paper, so something had to go.

FURTHER READING: My 2010 review of the prior play I saw about a Supreme Court Justice, wherein Laurence Fishburne played Thurgood Marshall, whose tenure on the court overlapped with Scalia's from Sept. 1986 to Oct. 1991. And United States v. Windsor, in its game-changing entirety.

An Imperative, Not a Noun: Beth Henley's Laugh, reviewed.

Jacob Ming-Trent, Creed Garnick, Helen Cespedes, and Evan Zes in Laugh. (Igor Dmitry/Studio)

Pulitzer Prize-winner Beth Henley's new play Laugh is not like her other plays. It's wacky. How you feel about wacky will be a better predictor of your experience than you feel about Henley. 

My Washington City Paper review is here.