APRIL 10, 2013 BY JORDAN WRIGHT
Special to The Credits – MPAA
 Featured image of Mimi Kennedy on HBO’s Veep. Photo by Lacey Terrell, courtesy HBO
Mimi Kennedy pops up on the screen in the most unexpected places, but as an actor, writer and political activist that should be no surprise. She recently played the formidable madam in a house of ill repute in ABC’s Scandal, Jason Segel’s tough talking mother on the big screen in The Five-Year Engagement and the soigneé mother-in-law-to-be in Woody Allen’s all-star cast of Midnight in Paris. Known early on for her TV role as Dharma’s hippie mother in Dharma & Greg, last year Kennedy appeared on Anger Management, Up All Night and In Plain Sight. And now, she has recently wrapped shooting in Baltimore with director Armando Ianucci and Julia Louis-Dreyfus for HBO’s second season of Veep. Set to air this Sunday, April 14, this hilarious political satire is based on Ianucci’s BBC series The Thick of It, which was a take on the Tony Blair style of modern British government. It later hatched the American film In The Loop. Veep stars Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, a one-time presidential hopeful now mired in her role as Vice President.
Kennedy joins a cast of comedy juggernauts, including Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and Timothy Simons. The Credits caught up with Kennedy at her LA home to talk about her new role on HBO’s most reliable comedy.
The Credits: What is your role on Veep?
Kennedy: I play the House Majority Leader.
What was the most exciting part about being cast in Veep?
At first I was just so thrilled that Armando had written me into the script. But when I was on the plane to DC on my way to the shooting, I see this tall drink of water and it’s Zach Woods. He told me Ianucci was reuniting the American cast members who had been in In The Loop. David Rasche and Chris Addison, also in Baltimore directing an episode that would be in rehearsal while we were there, would be in the episode too, and we’d see writers Simon Blackwell, Jesse Armstrong and Tony Roche again, who wrote and worked on In The Loop. Unfortunately James Gandolfini was the only one of the American cast members that wouldn’t be back since he was shooting elsewhere. I felt as if Armando had planned a surprise birthday party for us.
What was the atmosphere on the set?
Armando gathers the cast and we read the script at the table. Then we get scenes on our feet. He lets us loosely just riff on what we think is going on between our characters. So when he introduces a new character he can see the flavor of the relationship developing, which gives the writers more ideas about how to point a scene or what else to introduce. That’s what we did for two days. Then they write a new script, generally the same arc as the original script, though adding some of what they might have picked up in rehearsal. We shoot all of that. After that, they come up with new pages and say, “The scene is this now.” You will see very different details and different jokes and that’s the fun of it. They’ll say, “What if you guys do this?” It’s shot in a warehouse in Baltimore with hand-held cameras and the actors are given a lot of freedom to move around and improvise.
What’s it like working with Julia Louis-Dreyfus?
She’s fantastic to work with—deadpan funny, my favorite style. Julia and I were in a scene together and the set up was we had to negotiate some budget compromises before midnight. We had to do it at her daughter’s birthday party. So she’s torn as a mother between having to do it at her daughter’s noisy 20-somethings party with a DJ playing and her ex there, and I’m yelling over the music, “We have to do this now.” We go into the ladies room to talk it out and there’s a fight in there. So we go into her office and I have this huge allergy attack from some flowers. I lost my voice for two days from all the sneezing, choking and coughing I faked. At one point I laughed so hard at something Julia was doing that I broke up and she said, “Close your eyes!” I’m sure she gets that all the time, because she’s so hilarious. In fact the whole cast is brilliant to work with.
Frank Rich, one of my favorite culture/political writers [former theatre critic for the New York Times (then an Op Ed columnist), contributor to New York Magazine] is one of the executive producers so talking to him was a “rich” experience for me! He and I knew each other tangentially. He informs the writers about American policy issues, although they have all kinds of consultants. At one point Julia was saying, “Let’s leave. Turn right, turn right.” And I said, “I always turn right. You follow me right.” And they said, “We can’t use that. We can’t refer to the left or right or liberal or conservative.” They try to stay to the center so it’s not predictable. They walk that line. The whole thing moves very fast, even when they’re improvising. And they pack a lot in. Armando said the first cut of In The Loop was four and a half hours that they had to get down to 92 minutes.
Jordan Wright
for the Alexandria Times
April 8, 2013
 Jamie (James Gardiner) and Cathy (Erin Weaver) share a tender moment. Photo: Teresa Wood Being a theater critic is not always the best way to enjoy a show. I’m not a typical audience member out for a spot of entertainment. Scribbling furiously in the dark I analyze each scene, each song, each performer. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint why I am not moved, not amused, not inspired. In Signature Theatre’s The Last Five Years the acting and singing are exemplary. The set design and lighting inspired – the dialogue lively or suitably dramatic, depending on the scene. There is nothing “wrong” with this show. So why does it feel flat?
Well, it’s complicated, in this case as complicated as the plot which jumps from early courtship to their breakup for our hero Jamie, and takes the opposite route for our heroine Cathy, occasionally meeting in the middle for a duet. Known as a “song cycle”, the music by Jason Robert Brown, tells the story of an aspiring actress and a recently published writer who attempt to keep their love alive while pursuing their individual careers in different cities. That is to say when they aren’t living in the same city where he is enjoying success and temptations of the female variety, while she spends her days going on cattle calls in hopes of landing a part.
It is certainly not because actors Erin Weaver, whom we recently adored in Signature’s production of Xanadu, and James Gardiner, a local favorite we are soon to see in Signature’s upcoming productions of Company and Miss Saigon aren’t right for their roles. They both have wonderful voices and a keen sense of comic timing. Gardiner’s sense of physical comedy is especially noteworthy in the number “The Schmuel Song” about a Jewish tailor who sews 41 dreams into his wife’s velvet dress. And Weaver shines in “A Summer in Ohio” a Cole Porteresque tune that lists all the things that are worse than waiting for his return. “I could get a root canal in hell!” she croons, though she follows that with the line, “The torture is just exquisite while I’m waiting for you.” You see the dichotomy of her emotions.
 Cathy (Erin Weaver) settles into her relationship with Jamie . Photo: Teresa Wood It cannot be that Director Aaron Posner, the recipient of three Helen Hayes Awards and two Barrymore Awards, all of a sudden knows nothing of direction or that playwright Brown who has composed four major musicals and won countless awards doesn’t write his tail off with songs that are complete, emotionally solid and melodic. No, no it’s not the music, that’s the issue here, but a human connection that goes missing. The je ne sais quoi moment that reaches deep into your soul and tears out a piece you’d be glad to offer up, if only it were needed. It’s the part that’s not in the script, not in the songs, not in the staging. Because you really did come for that emotional ride – to believe – to buy into the moment – but sometimes the magic isn’t there.
The story is written to showcase Brown’s songs and the script is the device to string it together rather than the other way round – a construct originating with Beethoven and popular today in the TV shows “Smash” and “Nashville” which center around the music rather than the story. If you are ready to let it come at you as an evening of music, rather than a backwards forwards plot chronicling the perils of young love played out in two cities, you’ll be better prepared to enjoy its pleasures.
Through April 28th 2013 at Signature Theatre (Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit www.signature-theatre.org.
Jordan Wright
March 31, 2013
Special to The Alexandria Times
 (L-R) Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris as Elizabeth Keckly and Naomi Jacobson as Mary Todd Lincoln – Photo by Scott Suchman. Four indisputably exceptional actors command the stage at Arena Stage’s world premiere of Mary T. and Lizzy K. Of that there should be no argument. They are a master class in acting – – powerful and fierce in their portrayals of their roles. But what’s troubling here is not the fine acting by Naomi Jacobson as Mary Todd Lincoln, Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris as Mary’s dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly, Thomas Adrian Simpson as Abraham Lincoln, and Joy Jones as Lizzy’s assistant, Ivy, it is the disjointed script and tedious dialogue by Tazewell Thompson, who also serves as the play’s director. Adapted from the book Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly by Jennifer Fleischner, Thompson’s attempt to portray the women as friends is a flimsy frame on which to hang the plot.
Tazewell’s own notes describe the two women’s relationship as a “partnership and sisterhood…a formidable alliance”. But is it really? Mary holds Lizzy in her thrall by not paying her for the last twenty-seven ensembles. A condition that would be more aptly referenced as indentured servitude. The play slogs on as Mary degrades and belittles Lizzy, begging then ordering her to make another frock to wear to her countless parties, to which Lizzy capitulates, “Tell me who I am and what I must do for you.” Though Lizzy has already bought her freedom, Mary clearly has taken ownership of Lizzy’s life. Far from an equal relationship, it seems more akin to the Stockholm syndrome.
 Naomi Jacobson as Mary Todd Lincoln and Thomas Adrian Simpson as Abraham Lincoln – Photo by Scott Suchman. Mary’s lavish spending and melancholia have been well documented in many historical writings, yet Tazewell’s interpretation puts the focus exclusively on these two points. These are Mary’s opening lines, “An Indian spirit is removing the bones from my cheeks. I am inundated by strangers that invade my thoughts.” Is this a woman who might be considered a reliable friend? The director defines their “friendship”, as “marked by its warmth, trust, intimacy and loyalty.” You may recall that slave owners also referred to their house servants as loyal and trustworthy.
Thompson imagines Mary as bipolar – by turns ferociously jealous, vengeful, bullying and delusional, then flipping like a light switch into girlish charm and political shrewdness. She would give Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf a run for her money. Certainly there were moments I thought I had stepped into the wrong theatre.
Tazewell’s odd device to hold this disjointed piece together is Mary’s preoccupation with her clothes. Mind numbing nattering about the fashions of the day fill the script and stunt the play’s momentum.
Mary spends a great deal of time center stage on a trunk, while Lizzy and her indentured assistant Ivy, conduct fittings. Mary carps about the perils of her unwieldy dresses – – bones and stays, crinolines and hoops, and a device worn under the dress called a “pagoda” that she loathes yet cannot do without – – and yet she wants more clothes, more shoes, more hats and more shopping sprees. See what comes of being a clotheshorse, the play seems to say.
 (L-R) Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris as Elizabeth Keckly, Naomi Jacobson as Mary Todd Lincoln, Joy Jones as Ivy and Thomas Adrian Simpson as Abraham Lincoln – Photo by Scott Suchman. As for the costumes by designer Merrily Murray-Walsh, they accurately reflect the popular 19th C fashions of the day from Godey’s Lady’s Book, but designer Donald Eastman’s set, described in the playbill as “a room”, is little more than a smattering of piled up trunks, an unhung chandelier and an armoire, looking more like the contents of an attic than a proper Victorian parlor.
Through April 28th at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., SW, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information call 202 484-0247 or visit www.ArenaStage.org.
 James Franco as Oz in ‘Oz the Great and Powerful.’ Courtesy Walt Disney Pictures
James Franco’s appearance at Sundance this year was a stunner. But then again the risk-taking renaissance man is accustomed to surprising his critics. At Sundance’s New Frontiers the actor/director/producer/visiting professor/writer presented his collaborative effort with gay filmmaker Travis Mathews. The graphic sixty-minute documentary Interior. Leather Bar, a hard core riff on the gay leather bar scene, and two other films, Kink and Lovelace, in which he plays Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner in the latter, had audiences and critics alike scratching their heads . Edgy? Sure. Coming from Franco? Hardly shocking. Once named “Sexiest Man Alive” by People Magazine, Franco has enjoyed an unusually prolific and varied career. For a man just reaching the middle of his third decade, his broad interests and accomplishments have made him too elusive to pigeonhole. TV credits include such disparate roles as a recurring role on General Hospital; the cult classic Freaks and Geeks; and occasional appearances on 30 Rock. Film roles range from playing Harry Osborn in the first reboot of the Spider-Man series to his much beloved turn in stoner film Pineapple Express to the sexy love interest in Eat, Pray, Love and the lead in Danny Boyle’s kinetic, jaw-dropping 127 Hours, in which he played real life canyoneer, Aron Ralston, a demanding role for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 2011. Other break out roles have established him as a versatile actor, starring opposite Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant’s Milk, the story of San Francisco’s gay mayor, Dean in James Dean and as the young Beat Generation poet, Alan Ginsburg, in Howl.
His latest star turn is as Oscar Diggs, the cunning charlatan in Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, which opened on March 8. At the same time he was promoting Oz, he is also directing an indie, Bukowski, referencing poet and writer Heinrich Karl “Charles” Bukowski, Jr., one of LA’s darkest literary luminaries, a man once referred to by Sartre as “America’s greatest poet” and the basis for the 1987 film Barfly.
As a published poet and prolific author himself, he was recently asked by Yahoo! to write a poem to Obama on the occasion of his final inauguration. Franco is the author of the Strongest of the Litter (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series) and the short story collection Palo Alto. His poetry collection, Directing Herbert White (Graywolf Press) is scheduled to be published soon along with a memoir entitled A California Childhood (Insight Editions).
Franco also currently teaches at UCLA, CalArts, USC and NYU sharing his considerable knowledge as an actor and filmmaker and tapping his circle of acting pals and personal resources to support student film projects.
We chatted with him, albeit briefly, about Bukowski. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all…
The Credits: Why did you choose Bukowski’s life for your next project?
Franco: I’ve always been a fan.
Does it resonate with you in a personal way?
I think artist coming of age stories always resonate with me.
Will it follow his semi-autographical book “Ham on Rye”?
No, it focuses on his childhood.
How will it differ from earlier films on Bukowski?
It’s about his youth.
Who’s writing the script?
Adam Rager.
Where will it be shot?
In LA.
Who’s in it?
Tim Blake Nelson, Alex Kingston, newcomer Jacob Loeb and kids.
In addition to directing it, will you appear in the film?
Nothing’s been decided yet.
Does it parallel your life in any way?
Just in the sense that I discovered writing and reading in the same way.
What cinematic style will you use to create the film?
Steadicam and old lenses used to make it look old.
Have you begun shooting and if so what challenges have you faced so far?
Yes. It’s been great, but it’s hard getting enough cars from the 1920s.
Featured Image: James Franco as Oz in ‘Oz the Great and Powerful.’ Courtesy Walt Disney Pictures.
Jordan Wright
February 27, 2013
Special to The Alexandria Times
 The cast of Metamorphoses Ashleigh Lathrop, Lisa Tejero, Raymond Fox, Doug Hara, Chris Kipiniak, Tempe Thomas, Lauren Orkus, Geoff Packard and Louise Lamson – Photo by Teresa Wood. At Arena Stage’s Mead Center, Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses is presented on a stage transformed by a giant central pool. Ornamented by a single crystal chandelier, the shallow pool is surrounded by wooden decking, which the actors walk, run, skip, and crawl on when not actually in the water, faux swimming, having sex or merely drowning. By my count there are eleven separate stories from David Slavitt’s translation of Ovid’s masterpiece written in 8 A.D., by the Latin poet describing the history of the world. A weighty proposition with the only constant being change.
Most of the vignettes here are the familiar cautionary tales of greed, lust, incest…oh let’s just say the seven deadly sins and call it a day. The actors play multiple parts in a whirlwind of clever costume changes that serve to clarify segues to the next story. This proves helpful since the program makes no attempt to list the multiple roles each actor portrays, nor the individual vignettes.
There’s a lot to be said for brevity when it comes to complex themes of love and loss and in these stories, the objective is clear. In each piece we meet the hapless cast of characters and learn of the hot mess they’ve gotten themselves into, usually expressed by the muse or the god positioned slightly off stage. The frailties and passions of mere mortals are highlighted, while the gods, busy spewing their edicts and curses, are fodder for ridicule. Drum roll, please. Et voila! The moral of the story is revealed for all time, sometimes after a vision quest.
The play begins with Zeus explaining the creation of the world – birds, fish, game, paradise – brief pause – and man was born. The choice of Midas as the opening myth, is a good one, since pretty much everyone knows the tale of the greedy king who wished everything he touched turn to gold.
 Chris Kipiniak and Ashleigh Lathrop – Photo credit Teresa Wood Ashleigh Lathrop plays his devoted daughter. The sylphlike Lathrop, all angles one moment all undulating curves as Myrrha in another tale, is captivating. When Midas explains his desire for gold, “It’s all for the family,” he insists, Bacchus sends his emissary in a leopard loincloth, a bottle of wine secured in a paper bag. “What is the secret to eternal life?” Midas inquires. When the drunken Selinus, pointing to his head, replies, “It’s here!” – it’s a no brainer.
But Midas, not one for subtleties, demands his wish be granted and Bacchus complies. In a magnificent scene his daughter, clad in a white lace dress runs through the water to her father, wrapping her legs around his waist. As she becomes the solid gold he wished for, she is bathed in a golden beam of light.
Lighting Designer T. J. Gerckens and Set Designer Daniel Ostling have crucial tasks since there are no set changes and no curtains to draw in this theater-in-the-round, or in this case, rectangular. Along with Sound Designer Andre Pluess, there is a great deal of ambiance and suggestion necessary to support the dialogue and it is exquisitely manifested here.
 Doug Hara in Metamorphoses – Photo by Teresa Wood In another of Zimmerman’s interpretations, Phaeton, son of the Sun God Apollo, floats on a raft in bright yellow swim trunks and wraparound Oakleys – a portrait of the ne’er-do-well scion asking for the keys to dad’s car. To which Apollo responds tongue-in-cheek, “Don’t fly too high!”
In this piece an analyst sits off to the side of the pool and opines, “Myths are the earliest form of science and dreams are private myths.” It is the most revealing moment in the play as to the dramaturg’s motivation and unfortunately we don’t hear it until the ninth story. One wonders if the next line is not autobiographical as the analyst declares, “It is impossible to speak of enigmatic things – both privately and publicly.” Metamorphoses shows that it is possible to speak of enigmatic things when they are brilliantly interpreted and directed by Zimmerman, passionately performed by the entire ensemble, and magnificently staged.
At Arena Stage through March 17th. For tickets and information call 202 488-3300 or visit www.arenastage.org.
Jordan Wright
February 22, 2013
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Morgan played by Elliott Bales, Angus by Paul Tamney and Miles by Daniel Westbrook – Photo Credit Michael deBlois Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy, performed by Port City Playhouse is by turns a darkly funny and deeply poignant piece of theater that examines the bonds of friendship and the deeds that define altruism. It’s the summer of 1972 in rural Ontario, Canada when Miles (Daniel G. Westbrook), an aspiring young playwright looking for material for his drama class at a nearby college, arrives at the door of a rundown farmhouse offering to lend a hand in exchange for a glimpse of farm life. What follows is a tightly crafted piece of theater that reveals two men bound together by tragedy and loss, and another whose observations and willingness to listen afford a kind of healing. The powerful tragicomedy is reminiscent of the Rain Man and George and Lennie’s relationship in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
Morgan (Elliott Bales) and Angus (P. Spencer Tamney) were boyhood friends who served together in London during World War II. One night in a bombing raid, Angus was hit by an explosive resulting in his inability to remember anything for more than a short time. “All he knows is right now!” Morgan tells Miles, though Angus’s mathematical calculations are as skillful as a savant. Still Morgan strives to keep day-to-day life unchallenging to avoid provoking Angus’s migraine-inducing memories.
With his notebook at the ready, Miles records the pair’s every word searching for insights along with farming wisdom. Angus is eager to recount what little he remembers of his life before the accident, but Morgan, who discusses the price of eggs with the same intensity as he pulls the wool over Mile’s eyes, tries to keep the dramatist at arm’s length, telling him to rise at three a.m. to rotate the crops from one field to another, “You break it up into pieces no bigger than you,” he teases the visiting rube, while instructing him to pick corn kernels out of cow puddles with a serving fork.
 The Drawer Boy – Angus & Morgan – Photo Credit Michael deBlois It is only when Miles looking for a deeper understanding of their lives begins to extract Angus’s long hidden emotions that the men’s painful story is revealed and the tragedy of their lives unfolds.
Michael Healey’s drama comes out of a true story of a group of actors who in the 1970’s visited the heartland of Canadian farms interviewing farmers and their families and learning their stories. Nearly a quarter of a century later, after meeting with the same people whose stories were used in the project, Healey was inspired to write The Drawer Boy as a tribute. [Reviewer’s note: In the interest of clarification, Angus is the “drawer boy”, a reference to his skill at rendering architectural plans. Though until this fact was revealed in the second act, I had been nervously awaiting a small child to emerge from a drawer.]
Jennifer Lyman directs this unforgettable play produced by Carol Strachan and Alan Wray. It’s the perfect cast and the perfect piece for Port City Playhouse’s continuing season of thought-provoking socially relevant theater.
At The Lab at Convergence, 1819 North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, VA 22302. Performances are on the following dates – February 22nd, 23rd, and March 1st, 2nd, 5th, 8th and 9th at 8pm and matinees on March 2nd and 9th at 2pm. For tickets and information visit www.portcityplayhouse.org.
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