The Grand Parade: It Takes a Lot of Chagall

Photo by Maria Baranova; courtesy Arena Stage.

I reviewed Double Edge's Theatre's The Grand Parade (Of the 20th Century) at Arena Stage.

Yippie kai yay, Motherfucker with the Hat: Studio's trash-talking triumph. Plus, Kafka on the Shore

Unhappy motherfuckes: Drew Cortese and Quentin Maré. (Photo: Teddy Wolff / Studio Theatre)
 

Embarrassing admission: I didn't realize until after I'd filed my review of Studio's superb production of The Motherfucker with the Hat that its playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, is the selfsame motherfucker who wrote The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, the best thing I saw on a DC stage in 2008.

Also reviewed: Spooky Action's Kafka on the Shore, DC's second Frank Galati-scripted stage adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story or novel in four months.  This one is looser and more wobbly than the last one. Your mileage may vary.

Today's Washington City Paper is, as always, available wherever fine newspaper are given away for free.

Rorschach's The Minotaur: Reflections in a Bull's Eye

Sara Dabney Tisdale and David Zimmerman play half-human half-siblings.

There's at least one good reason to see Rorschach Theatre's co-world premiere production of Anna Ziegler's The Minotaur: the eponymous beast his own surprisingly rational, philosophical, well-spoken self.

I review the show in today's Washington City Paper.

You Gotta Move: Synetic's A Trip to the Moon and A Commedia Christmas Carol, reviewed

A Trip to the Moon, 1902

I was a big admirer of writer/director/illustrator Natsu Onoda Power's Astro Boy and the God of Comics at Studio Theatre earlier this year, and also of Martin Scorcese's 2011 film Hugo, which was in part about pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. So I was excited to see Power's new stage adaptation of Méliès’ most famous film, A Trip to the Moon -- which I found promising but underdeveloped.

I review it in today's Washington City Paper, along with a Faction of Fools' A Commedia Christmas Carol.

Psilocybin Tea and Sympathy: Studio Theatre's The Aliens, reviewed.

Scot McKenzie and Brian Miskell in The Aliens. Photo: Scott Suchman.

Wherein I gradually fall under the under the slow-burning spell of Annie Baker's The Aliens, the pausiest third of her Vermont Trilogy. I reviewed its other two-thirds already: Theater J's production of Baker's Body Awareness back in September, and Studio's production of her Circle Mirror Transformation two years ago.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

This Band Is Your Band: Woody Sez, reviewed.

His life was short and sad, but his songs will live forever.

I reviewed the bio-musical Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie, which is at Theater J this month.

Digging in the Dirt

​Holly Twyford and Natalia Payne

In today's City Paper, I review the second entry in the Studio Theatre's Lab Series for new plays, Bryony Lavery's Dirt. She wrote the masterfully chilling unsettling kiddie-killer drama Frozen, which played at Studio in 2006. She also wrote Beautiful Burnout, a boxing play that I'm eager to see because I like stories that involve boxing for the same reason I love to box: metaphors for the bruising, thrilling experience of life itself don't come any clearer.

I was a big admirer of Studio's production of the first Studio Lab show, Duncan Macmillian's Lungs, which was at Studio at this time last year. Dirt has some thematic congruity with that play, but it isn't quite as surefooted, at least not yet. There's some wastage. But the good stuff is very good. Holly Twyford elevates everything she's in and DC newcomer Natalia Payne is an actor I hope we'll start seeing all over the place. She's phenom-mana.

The War on Droogs: Scena Theater's A Clockwork Orange, reviewed.

Malcolm MacDowell in Stanley Kubrick's inescapable 1971 film version.

Scena Theatre's production of A Clockwork Orange, using Anthony Burgess' adaptation of his own 1962 novella, did not make me want to throw up. Reviewed in today's Washington City Paper.

Thanks to my editor, Jon Fischer, for what he called the "inevitable" hed. I have to admit, it's better than The Milk-Plus of Human Cruelty.