Jordan Wright
May 11, 2015
Special to The Alexandria Times
 L to R) Meeya Davis as Amber, Nikiya Mathis as Cassan, Caroline Clay as Gio, Afi Bijou as Zambia and Tonye Patano as Clementine in Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt – Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Earth, wind and fire blew into town for the world premiere of The Blood Quilt now at Arena Stage. Written by Katori Hall, who based the story on the Gullah Geechee culture of Sapelo Island, and directed by Kamilah Forbes, this soul-wrenching play, filled with the tears, anger and laughter of a family divided by distance and psychological baggage and held together by the power of sisterhood.
Four sisters, Clementine, Gio, Cassan and Amber, and Cassan’s daughter, Zambia, gather together on the windswept island of Kwemera, one of Georgia’s Sea Islands, and the African word for “endure”. The scene is the ancestral cottage of the Jerrnigans and home of their recently departed mother – – a woman they both revered and feared. Each summer the women craft a new quilt, stitched together from clothing and rags handed down from family members. Woven into these quilts are their deepest memories, gut-wrenching hardships and personal failures. It is within these stitches that they tell their truths in a story as old as time and as foreseeable as the circle of life.
 (Clockwise from left) Tonye Patano as Clementine, Meeya Davis as Amber, Caroline Clay as Gio, Nikiya Mathis as Cassan and Afi Bijou as Zambia in Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt – Photo by C. Stanley Photography. To provide the foundation for this story, it is important to know that hundreds of years ago Geechee culture, as it is called, arrived by boat from West Africa onto these remote Georgian islands. Slave ships bore men and women who were sold off to work on the islands’ rice plantations. After the Civil War some of the freed slaves stayed behind, becoming landowners and raising many more generations. The dialect they spoke is still heard today and is echoed throughout the play.
Within this mysterious world spiritualism, mythology and shibboleths run deep, influenced by the stars and the sea. These traditions provide a singularly rich backdrop for this comic-drama, recalling the evocative film Daughters of the Dust that drew on the African-centric Gullah culture of North Carolina.
Much of the Geechee’s mysterious customs and rituals are threaded throughout this deeply affecting tale reflecting a legacy of memories embodied by the fabric scraps incorporated into the quilts. The play turns around the question of who will inherit the one hundred precious quilts. And therein lies the rub.
Set Designer, Michael Carnahan, has created a breathtaking stage set that features a simple cabin set beside a shoreline. An arc of waist-deep water frames the proscenium and patches of crazy quilts hang from the rafters. Delicate Spanish moss sways over the rooftop and the whole is bathed in a roseate hue, courtesy of Lighting Designer, Michael Gilliam. Snippets of old time gospel music are sung in harmony, and the classic “I’ll Fly Away” evokes the contrasting confluence of church combined with tribal culture.
 (L to R) Tonye Patano as Clementine and Meeya Davis as Amber in Katori Hall’s -. Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Clementine (Tonye Patano), who takes direction from the natural world, is the eldest. Assuming her new role as matriarch, she shushes and bosses her younger siblings, insisting they carry out what she believes their mother would have wanted. “Mama was my god,” she reminds them. But her interpretation is not borne out by their mother’s will. Meeya Davis plays Amber, “Perfection is my shield and my protection,” she reveals. A successful Hollywood attorney and Harvard grad, she has been given the responsibility of reading the will. Davis gives a razor-sharp performance with elegance and wit to match Patano’s commanding presence.
 (L to R) Caroline Clay as Gio and Afi Bijou as Amber, with Nikiya Mathis as Cassan, in Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt – Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Caroline Clay soars in the role of Gio, a tough talking, beer-guzzling cop cursed with a chip on her shoulder as wide as the sea. Why, we wonder, is she so angry? Cassan (Nikiya Mathis) has brought her daughter Zambia (Afi Bijou) who is a hijab-wearing, political activist just beginning to spread her wings. Bijou proves she is well up to the challenge of playing against such seasoned actors in a role that calls for her to be the polar opposite of the others.
The cast is as tightly woven together as the quilts they covet in this haunting and hugely comical play filled with the ghosts of the past, the challenges of modern life, and the guidance of an ancient culture imported from an Africa they never knew.
Highly recommended.
Through June 7th at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., SE, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information call 202 488-3300 or visit www.ArenaStage.org.
 Dr. Joan Gaither in front of one of her quilts * * Be sure to wander through the theatre to view the seventeen spectacular contemporary quilts created by Dr. Joan Gaither of Baltimore. These exquisite quilts use appliqué and trapunto stitching on lush velvet and brocade to tell a modern story. They will be on display throughout the run of the show. I had an opportunity to meet Dr. Gaither during press night and query her about the meaning of her quilts and the importance of this show. “Quilting comes from the soul. I’m not a traditional quilter, although I believe each quilt can hold and tell an entire story. The images I use celebrate those stories. I try to do that in such a way that they become American stories, because I believe we all share a common history.”
The Little Theatre of Alexandria
Jordan Wright
April 27, 2015
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Brendan Quinn (Jesus), Jennifer Lyons Pagnard (Florence), Gayle Nichols-Grimes (Olive), and Philip Krzywicki (Manolo) – Photos by Keith Waters / Kx Photography Neil Simon’s long-running, ever-popular play The Odd Couple has had more reincarnations than an Indian mystic. First there was the Broadway premiere in 1965. Art Carney of The Honeymooners fame was the obsessive-compulsive neat freak, Felix Ungar, and Walter Matthau the slovenly, devil-may-care, Oscar Madison. (You’ll recall Jack Klugman later replaced Matthau in the TV role.) In 1968 Matthau was brought back for the film version with Jack Lemmon, the two reprising their roles in 1998 for The Odd Couple II. Meanwhile The Odd Couple TV series starring Randall and Klugman ran for five years in the early to mid-70’s.
In the 80’s another TV version came onto the landscape – – The New Odd Couple with two black actors, Ron Glass and Demond Wilson. And, drum roll please. This February, in its latest television reincarnation, Matthew Perry plays Oscar. People just can’t seem to get enough of this disparate duo.
Backgrounding these many productions was Simon’s female version for the stage. Written in 1985 he cloned the personalities of Oscar and Felix, breathing new life into them as Olive Madison (the female Oscar) and Florence Ungar (the female Felix). The play too is set in 1985, a time of women’s liberation, the re-examination of traditional female roles and changing sexual mores. It all seems so old hat now.
 Elizabeth Replogle (Renee), Michelle Fletcher (Mickey), Kat Sanchez (Sylvie), and Natalie Fox (Vera) – Photos by Keith Waters / Kx Photography I must confess that the stuff of American sit-coms is not really my cup of tea. Friends insulting friends in the most jovial sort of way, and gleefully backstabbing them when they leave the room, is not my idea of charming and witty humor. I didn’t like The Three Stooges either, if that tells you something. But if The Golden Girls gave you belly laughs, then this will be right up your alley.
Florence is in the throes of a divorce and Olive has already been-there-done-that when she takes her in as a roommate. The unhappy duo is oil and water, struggling to maintain their friendship through the hard times and hysteria, of which there is entirely too much to bear. Are we bonding yet?
 Gayle Nichols-Grimes (Olive) and Jennifer Lyons Pagnard (Florence) – Photos by Keith Waters / Kx Photography In addition to Olive (Gayle Nichols-Grimes) and Florence (Jennifer Lyons Pagnard), there are Mickey (Michelle Fletcher), Sylvie (Kat Sanchez), Renee (Elizabeth Replogle) and Vera (Natalie Fox). Later on we meet Olive’s two hot-to-trot Spanish neighbors, brothers Jesus (Brendan Quinn) and Manolo (Philip Krzywicki) – – one sloppy, one neat – – what a surprise.
All in all the cast throws out some lively, if stale, one-liners, “Everything you do irritates me”, “I can’t even have dirty dreams! You clean them up”, and “She’s changed our nice game into the Christian Science Reading Room”. It keeps the audience happy and the actors working.
As to weighing this production on its merits, I give kudos to Set Designer MYKE for creating a believable 1980’s era living room for Olive’s Manhattan apartment, the scene of all the action; Costume Designer Ceci Albert who has dug deep into the wardrobe trunks for plenty of polyester and pearls for the six women in the cast; and note another fine performance by Michelle Fletcher, this time as the tough-talking cop.
Through May 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
Jordan Wright
April 22, 2015
Special to DC Metro Theater Arts
A fresh breeze blew into town last night and she was wearing rhinestone-encrusted cat eye glasses out to there, and a hot pink fringe gown glittering with Swarovski crystals. Yes, you guessed it – – the internationally infamous, dearly beloved, barb-slinging insultress known familiarly as Dame Edna. Trashing more Washington politicos than the Drudge Report at election time, the saucy senior can take down Jesus and the apostles in one slanderous swoop, “they wore the 50 shades of gray badly,” she sniped to an audience of devotees.
 Dame Edna – Photo credit Craig Schwartz Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye – The Farewell Tour (A meditation on loss, gender, climate change, gay marriage and ethnicity) takes on these weighty issues with showbiz and razzmatazz. Barry Humphries, who first channeled Mrs. Edna Everage in 1955 in Melbourne, Australia, is no stranger to the double-entendre. A veteran of Broadway and London’s West End theatres, the Tony Award-winning performer has been dazzling and dishing with faithful fans for over half a century.
Directed by Simon Phillips, the glitzy two-acter opens with film clip cameos of Hollywood celebs. Stars as disparate as Charlton Heston, Kelly Osbourne and Hugh Jackman describe their run-ins with the naughty grandma as the glam goddess tells tales of her shabby Australian past, her dysfunctional children and her husband’s prostate “murmur”. Hoofing is provided by four leggy dancers who surround the mauve-haired wonder with giant purple ostrich fans. Move over Florence Ziegfeld!
 Dame Edna with giant purple ostrich fans – Photo credit Craig Schwartz Jonathan Tessero is the production’s Musical Director & Onstage Accompanist and Wayne Barker and Andrew Ross provide the tunes for the caterwauling songstress who describes herself as “the quintessence of kindness”. Never have scandal and sarcasm been such great pals.
In the second act choreographer, Eve Prideaux, turns to Bollywood as Dame Edna describes her spiritual adventures in an ashram. “It’s a trailer park for the soul,” she moans as the dancers swirl around her in gold-edged saris.
 Dame Edna and Bollywood Dancers – Photo credit Craig Schwartz But the real howls come when, as in years past, she singles out unsuspecting audience members. Claiming to be clairvoyant she tells one, “I believe in past lives and you look as if you might have been something.” Ouch! It hurts so good. To a group of elderly audience members she calls out, “Oh, the seniors are still here! Someone must have topped off their medication.” The zingers fly fast and furiously. You gotta keep up. She is as outrageous as she is captivating and as endearing as a child with Asberger’s (her diagnosis, not mine).
Highly recommended for death-defying irreverence.
In town for a limited run at The National Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20004. Performance Schedule is as follows. Tuesday, April 21st – Thursday, April 23rd at 7:30pm, Friday, April 24th at 8pm, Saturday, April 25th at 2pm and 8pm and Sunday, April 26th at 4pm. For tickets and information call 202 628-6161 or visit thenationaldc.com or www.dameednafarewell.com
Jordan Wright
April 13, 2015
Special to DC Metro Theater Arts
 Edward Gero as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in The Originalist. Photo by C. Stanley Photography. The controversial Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, comes to life in the hilariously acerbic The Originalist at Arena Stage. The much-acclaimed world premiere has just been extended for the second time and will continue until May 3rd resuming again on May 19th and running through May 31st. I give you this latest news upfront so that you can grab your tickets now. This is a can’t miss tour de force starring consummate actor Ed Gero as Scalia supported by Kerry Warren as Cat, Scalia’s liberal law clerk, and Harlan Work as Brad, Cat’s opposite, a young member of The Federalist Society and Scalia’s Sycophant-in-Chief.
 (L to R) Edward Gero as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Harlan Work as Brad and Kerry Warren as Cat in The Originalist. Photo by C. Stanley Photograph As the Court’s notably right-wing curmudgeon, Scalia has won friends in many circles with his humor and charm (you can’t be all bad and still have über liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a ‘bestie’), and John Strand (Arena Stage’s Resident Playwright) takes full advantage of that dichotomy, bringing it to life through historical quotes overlaid with the playwright’s imaginings of how Scalia crafts his opinions. It is one of the most thrilling pieces of theatre I have ever seen.
Strand uses the impending and long-awaited Supreme Court’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as the centerpiece for the characters’ legal arguments, using the device to pit Scalia’s philosophies against Cat’s vehement opposition. It’s tremendously irresistible to anyone interested in law, the Justices, or the Court’s nation-altering decisions. (I sat next to a female attorney who had taken Scalia’s Contract Law class at the University of Chicago and proclaimed him feisty, yet humorous, even back then.)
 (L to R) Kerry Warren as Cat and Edward Gero as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in The Originalist. Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Accompanied by interstices of grandiose operatic arias (Scalia is a known opera buff), he delivers arguments and pronouncements like bullets on a battlefield, but so does his verbal sparring partner, Cat, an equally combative Harvard Law grad determined to change his mind. “I dissent!” is the most oft repeated line from the man who once had acting aspirations. He later confesses, “The court is my theatre. I am not an ideologue. I am an originalist!” In explaining his reason for hiring her he reveals, “Every now and then I like to have a liberal around. It reminds of how right I am.” Cat, who views the court as a “fantasy palace”, is determined to change his dogmatic ways. She seeks his heart, while he wants her soul. “You’re stuck alone in your bunker. Your constitution is just a shield you hide behind,” she parries, defining his brand of government a “monsterocracy”.
Gero is magnificent. His comedic timing and arrogant swagger are nothing less than breathtaking and perfectly counterbalanced by the supremely talented Kerry Warren. So riveting is their sparring on gun rights, gay marriage and the constitution, that if there was one soul in the audience who didn’t hear the proverbial pin drop, it didn’t. (Speaking of sparring, boxing terms are used so frequently I wondered if it they’re something the Justice is known for.)
 The set of The Originalist designed by Misha Kachman in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. The Originalist runs March 6-April 26, 2015. Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Setting the tone and highlighting the majesty and gravity of the Court and its private chambers, Lighting Designer Colin K. Bills gives us two massive crystal chandeliers in order to appropriately frame the pronouncements from Scalia’s Kingly Court of Conservatism. Set Designer Mischa Kachman adds floor-to-ceiling red velvet drapes trimmed with golden tassels: lest you forget the import of where you are.
Highly recommended.
See above for new dates. Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., SE, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information call 202 488-3300 or visit www.ArenaStage.org.
Jordan Wright
March 30, 2015
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Joshua Morgan (Steven), Natascia Diaz (Adrienne), Alex Brightman (Jonah), and
Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood. The world is ending and Charlie (Jessica Hershberg) is obsessed by the lurid headlines. Listening to broadcasts of the President’s speech declaring the planet’s demise, she becomes consumed by Wolf Blitzer. “His voice reminds me of my father’s,” she admits. Her dwindling stash of peanut butter explains her inability to rise up from the imagined safety of her sofa to venture out into the world to replenish it and she holes up in her tawdry East Village apartment while indulging in the schadenfreude of CNN’s apocalyptic reports of the devastating effects of climate change. Agoraphobic, depressive, defeatist and snide, she’s hardly anyone’s idea of a heroine.
Her sometime boyfriend, Jonah (Alex Brightman) can’t lure her outdoors and neither can her mother, Adrienne (Natascia Diaz), nor her roomie, Steven (Joshua Morgan). “I’m busy acknowledging the inevitable,” she moans, forgoing her dreams of starting a neighborhood bakery. And as she stays put in her apartment with her pet goldfish, Herschel, life goes on around her while the others appear and disappear both in the present and from the beyond.
 Alex Brightman (Jonah) and Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature
Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood. In Soon a compact musical with book, music and lyrics by Nick Blaemire, the four intersecting lives are highlighted through some pretty quirky tunes. “Peanut Butter” and “Bar Mitzvah for the First Jewish Fish” are two of the eleven numbers that express the mood of the characters.
Director Matthew Gardiner, who last year brought us the brilliant Sunday in the Park with George, has assembled a capable cast of top-drawer talent to push this musical to the next level. In particular Natascia Diaz, who we raved about in last year’s The Three Penny Opera, and Joshua Morgan, whose performance as the campy gay roommate electrifies the stage and provides necessary comic relief.
Also of note are the production values enhanced by the work of Projection Designer, Matthew Haber, who splashes across the walls the gloom-and-doom newsreels of the world’s natural disasters; and Dan Conway whose set design, replete with crime prevention bars on the apartment, reflect Charlie’s self-imposed, emotional prison.
 Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood My only complaint is with the story. It is overly challenging to drum up empathy for Charlie, even when we discover that she has contracted a disease through her own mother. She is heartless and dismissive to Jonah, who begs for her affections. “Everything I ever wanted never happened,” she whines. Who puts up with that? Well, the long-suffering Jonah, the man who gives her a goldfish in hopes that it will bond him to her forever, does. Even in a particularly tender moment when he tells her that his parents have offered to pay for her medical care, she blows him off.
By the time we get to the fairytale ending and Charlie has caved to Jonah’s unfathomable love, it is of little satisfaction to watch them picnicking while the world ends to the strains of the number, “Make Love”. Think post-apocalyptic sci-fi romance. Millennials will thrill to the futility and despair.
Through April 26th in the ARK Theatre 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 25, 2015
Special to DC Metro Theater Arts
 Ziggy Gruber with Zellagabetsky Paula Murphy Glorious six-inch high pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, matzoh balls floating airily in a rich chicken stock the color of fresh hay, chopped chicken liver blended with onions and hard-cooked egg served in baseball-size orbs, smoked whitefish and Nova sliced so thin you can see right through a single silken slice to see your bubbeleh across the table. Fat red cherry blintzes.
 Erik Greenberg Anjou and Fyvush Finkel In the The Deli Man, the third and last of Director Erik Greenberg Anjou’s trilogy about Jewish culture, we are given a seat at the tables of some of North America’s greatest delicatessens where third and fourth generation deli men, whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers brought their treasured recipes across the Atlantic to Canada and the U. S., still keep the beloved traditions alive. And where men without money, or a country to go back to, came by the droves to the Lower East Side of Manhattan determined to open a restaurant with the food their families held dear.
 Director Erik Greenberg Anjou and crew with Jerry Stiller Many of these delis, Reuben’s, Lindy’s, the Stage Deli, Katz’s, Nate n’ Al’s and Carnegie Deli, served the vaudevillians that worked in the nearby theater district. Comedians like Jack Benny, Henny Youngman, Eddie Cantor, and my late father, Georgie Price, had sandwiches named after them and you could find a deli on every street corner in New York. A few of these iconic delis are still around. Hundreds more around the country closed their doors due to the changing American cultural and culinary landscape.
 Ziggy Gruber at serving counter The Deli Man is a loving documentary portrait of the hardworking men, and women, who have kept their delis alive despite the rising costs of meat and fish, and the never-ending hours. The film is informed by the backstory of David “Ziggy” Gruber, owner of the Houston, Texas-based Kenny & Ziggy’s Delicatessen. Ziggy, an overachiever with a big heart, explains his devotion to his Hungarian roots and the dishes that he loves so well, “When I cook I feel my ancestors around me.”
Appearances by Larry King and Jerry Stiller brighten this Jewish culinary love story. Stiller explains its importance in daily life, “The deli was something you deserved after working your ass off.”
 Larry King The Deli Man opens on Friday, March 27th at AMC Mazza Gallerie and AMC Shirlington. Rated PG-13.
Highly recommended if there is a deli within ten minutes walking or driving distance – – otherwise you will drool like a bulldog and your Yiddishe Mama will kvetsh.
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