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.
Jordan Wright
February 25, 2013
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Richard Isaacs (Tony Wendice) and Jerry Hoffman (Captain Lesgate)- Photo credit Heather Norcross Had they updated the title to the more technologically correct “Press “M” For Murder” or perhaps “Text “M” For Murder”, we would have no less a delicious whodunit as the one currently playing at The Little Theatre of Alexandria. That we no longer spin a dial to place a call, does not by one scintilla alter the pulse-stopping suspense of Dial “M” For Murder, Frederick Knott’s nifty psychological thriller.
Let’s start with the corpse, or rather not, it won’t factor in for a good bit, and it won’t be the corpse you thought it might be. Perhaps we should name the killer, or maybe not, it won’t be who you’d expected either, even though once the action commences you’ll be in on the plot. But that’s the fun part, knowing who did it when the police captain and the inspector clearly don’t have a clue.
Meet the Wendices. A couple of bourgeois Londoners, he a former tennis pro with failing fortunes, she an unblinkingly beautiful heiress. Tony (Richard Isaacs) has a plan and Margot (Jenni Patton) has a boyfriend, or rather ex, but why split pretty blonde hairs? Isaacs plays Tony with just the right amount of smarmy snap while Patton, as the cool and clueless Margot embodies British reserve.
 Jenni Patton (Margot Wendice) – Photo credit Heather Norcross To delve into the plot in this review would most assuredly give away the clever twists and turns, and edge-of-your-seat sense of bearing witness to a murder when no one on stage, save the murderer, can guess how the bloody hell it was done and if the killer will get his due, and I won’t be the spoiler. Suffice it to say that I heard the proverbial pin drop, so riveted was the audience.
Actor James Meyers, coming off his success in last fall’s Cantorial at LTA, gives a smooth performance as the American crime writer boyfriend, Max Halliday, and John Henderson is as sure-footed as a stalking tiger in the role of the gumshoe Inspector Hubbard. But it is Jerry Hoffman’s stunning entrance and sly manner as the seemingly bumbling Captain Lesgate (Ah, fond memories of Columbo!), that will make you sit up a tad straighter in your chair. A bouquet of kudos are in order for Dialogue Coach, Jane Waldrop, a true Londoner who trained at the British Old Vic Theatre School, for coloring their accents with the staccato patter of the British upper crust.
 John Henderson (Inspector Hubbard) and James Myers (Max Halliday) – Photo Credit Heather Norcross Even if you’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock’s film version starring matinee idols Ray Milland and Grace Kelly, a mere slip of a girl at twenty four when she made this film, and the mild-mannered Robert Cummings, you will be no less impressed with this tidy package of blackmail and red herrings.
Through March 16th at The Little Theatre of Alexandria, 600 Wolfe Street. For tickets and information call the box office at 703 683-0496 or visit www.thelittletheatre.com
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