Corteo Features an Elegant Victorian Vibe with All the Dazzling Acrobatics You Have Come to Expect from Cirque du Soleil
Corteo at Eagle Bank Arena Jordan Wright May 18, 2024 Special to The Zebra
(Photo/Maja Prgomet)
I’ve been covering Cirque du Soleil for twelve years when they first came to the DC Metropolitan area with Amaluna at National Harbor. Since then, all their productions have been in a massive tent in Tysons II. Last night they brought Corteo to the Eagle Bank Arena at George Mason University. Instead of their iconic basketball games , the arena was constructed to fit a theatre-in-the-round that utilized around half of the 10,000 seat arena which was filled to capacity.
Corteo which means cortege in Italian is a joyful procession, a festive parade imagined by a clown. The costumes and set design are of the Art Nouveau period and as such are quite charming and elegant. Quite different from the more recent productions which are enormous and with all the activities onstage, the innumerable spotlights and large ensemble can often be confusing and distracting. It opens with the central character of the hapless clown getting his wings from an angel who teaches him how to fly heavenward. Beautiful angels two-stories high factor a great deal in the entire production. The spoken words are partly in English, partly in Italian and partly in French with the foreign languages using a vocabulary easy to understand.
(Photo/Maja Prgomet)
The clown pictures his funeral taking place in a carnival atmosphere, watched over by angels. Juxtaposing the large with the small, the ridiculous with the tragic, the magic of perfection with the charm of imperfection, the show focusses on the strength and fragility of the clown, as well as his wisdom and kindness.
The show combines the actor’s passion with the acrobat’s grace and power to plunge the audience into a fantasy world of silliness and spontaneity in a mysterious space between heaven and hell. It harkens back to the olden days of circuses and pantomimes, hilarious sketches and extraordinary feats of daring.
Pillow fights on trampolines disguised as brass beds evoke the period as does the music of the era with the accordion being prominent and an oompah band visible towards the rear of the stage and musicians and singers in globe-lit boxes on either side of the stage.
(Photo/Maja Prgomet)
There are crazy-funny comedy sketches – one of two Scotsmen golfers in their plus fours hitting a ‘live ball’ whose head pops up from beneath the stage while teasing the duffers who thankfully never manage to hit the ‘ball’. Many of the characters sport satin Pierrot harlequin costumes or big bloomers echoing the period. The Maestro in red satin cutaway jacket and black top hat whistles Mozart. In one juggling scene dozens of rubber chicken fall from the rafters, in another, gypsies compete in a daredevil parallel bars competition. There are countless scenes of stunning beauty and extraordinary athleticism – one such features a tiny lady appearing to be in a snow globe. Jugglers and aerialists feature prominently with all acts backed by a beautifully melodic musical score. I was particularly drawn to two small performers enacting Romeo and Juliet in a Punch and Judy routine within a scaled down Teatro Intimo. A bicycle-riding highwire act and gorgeous lady acrobats on chandeliers had us gasping.
The creativity in all of Cirque’s shows is boundless, although I found that, though smaller in scale to what we have been accustomed to with Cirque in the Grand Chapiteau, Corteo was more intimate and elegant, and just as mind-blowing as any of the dozen or so productions I had seen in the past.
(Photo/Maja Prgomet)
Corteo is as beautiful as it is thrilling and endearing at the same time. With set curtains inspired by the Eiffel Tower and gorgeous hand-painted central curtains, the ambiance is one of immersive time travel.
Directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, this one will forever be one of my all-time favorites.
Highly recommended!!!
At the Eagle Bank Arena, 4500 Patriot Circle, Fairfax, VA 22030
Performance Schedule – May 17th at 7pm, May 18th at 3pm and 7pm, May 19th at 1pm, and May 25th at 3pm and 7pm. Tickets at www.CirrqueduSoleil.com/Corteo
Rose: You Are Who You Eat Where: Woolly Mammoth
When: June 5 – June 23
Find more information at www.WoollyMammoth.net
Metamorphoses Where: Folger Shakespeare Theatre
When: Now through June 16
Find more information at www.Folger.edu
Long Way Down Where: Olney Theatre Center
When: Now through June 23
Find more information at www.OlneyTheatre.org
Image via the Kennedy Center
Bye Bye Birdie Kennedy Center
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Find more information at www.Kennedy-Center.org
The Magic Matchbox Flute Where: Shakespeare Theatre Company
When: Now through June 16
Find more information at www.ShakespeareTheatre.org
Postcards from Ihatov Where: 1stStage
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Letters to Kamala and Dandelion Peace Where: Voices Festival Productions – at Universalist National Memorial Church
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Find more information at www.TicketTailor.com
Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical Where: Adventure Theatre
When: June 21 – August 19
Find more information at www.AdventureTheatre-mtc.org
Image via Roundhouse Teatre
Top Dog/Underdog Where: Roundhouse Teatre
When: Now through June 23
Find more information at www.RoundhouseTheatre.org
The Elephant in theRoom Where: Keegan Theatre
When: June 1 – June 23
Find more information at www.KeeganTheatre.com
The Migration
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The Minutes Where: Providence Players of Fairfax When: June 7 – June 22
Find more information at www.ProvidencePlayers.org
Miss Nelson is Missing
Miss Nelson is Missing Where Imagination Stage
When June 20 – August 10
Find more information at www.ImaginationStage.org
The Haymaker’s Wife Where: Theatre J
When: June 8 – June 25
Find more information at www.TheatreJ.org
Rent Where: Dominion Stage
When: June 7 – June 22
Find more information at www.DominionStage
American Psycho Where: Monumental Theatre Company
When: June 28 – July 21
Find more information at www.App.Arts-People.com
The Drowsy Chaperone Where: Workhouse Arts Center
When: Now through June 23
Find more information at www.WorkhouseArts.org
Dixie’s Tupperware Party Brings Wild and Crazy Southern Schtick to the Kennedy Center
Dixie’s Tupperware Party John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Jordan Wright May 15, 2024
Yes, Dixie Longate is a real person who has been selling Tupperware for 22 years. I need to put that out there because initially I was unsure if what I was seeing was a person or a character – definitely a bit of both. Ms. Dixie has won countless sales awards in no small part due to her outrageously hilarious and super salty brand of humor and earnestly flippant pep talks. To join her party be prepared to be charmed, included (parts are interactive) and doubled over with laughter. Dixie is the best friend and soulmate you were not entirely sure you needed, but how on earth did you reach adulthood without her detailed instructions on relationships? Her prescription (maybe I should call it “The Gospel According to Dixie”) for a successful life offers tough love, Tupperware and sex advice – all delivered tongue-in-cheek.
Strutting the stage in ruby red high heels and tossing out advice like tabs from a Pez dispenser, this Mobile, Alabama gal chides the audience while doling out her own life story. In her saucy red gingham dress with candy cane striped skirt festooned with bows and topped ever so sweetly with a retro cherry-print apron, this feisty six-foot plus gal doles out platitudes and life lessons the audience laps up like kittens to a bowl of sweet milk. How can you not love a gal sporting a bouffant hairdo that’s as close to God as a rattail comb can achieve? For some reason I began to desperately crave a cherry Coke, fried green tomatoes and a Moon Pie.
Image via the Kennedy Center
If you don’t get the vapors from her non-stop, double entendre repartee, you’ll learn a lot about how Tupperware relates to Life as she regales you with stories of prison and her trailer park background before she found her muse, Brownie Wise, the housewife founder of Tupperware in-home parties who changed the world of business for women everywhere. That part is true. As Dixie tells it, “I have three kids – Wynona, Dwayne and Absorbine, Jr. and 3 ex-husbands. All of ‘em have somehow died, but I ain’t crying about it. I’m way too busy traveling all over the place bringing creative food storage solutions to your town.”
Dixie loves her gays and they love her back. She calls them her “homosectionals” – the rest of us are lovingly referred to as “hookers” – and likes to challenge the audience to interactive games, bringing a select few onstage while dispensing Southern schtick. There were moments when I was entirely prepared to see Baltimore filmmaker John Waters pop out from behind the curtain with the late actor “Divine”. Ah, well, Miss Dixie is a truly pretty Southern gal – just don’t tell John I said that.
Be sure to see Dixie in her wild and crazy Tupperware World. It’s tons of fun!
Image via the Kennedy Center
By Kris Andersson; Directed by Patrick Richwood; with Lighting Design by Richard Winkler and Sound Design by Christopher K. Bond.
Through June 2nd at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Family Theatre, 2700 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20566. For tickets and information call the box office at 202 467-4600 or visit www.Kennedy-Center.org.
The Psychedelic Age of Aquarius Shines with “Hair” at Signature Theatre
Hair Signature Theatre Jordan Wright April 28, 2024 Special to The Zebra
Peace signs, African beads, bellbottoms, tie dyed t-shirts, dashikis and fringe jackets. Sound familiar? If not, you were born long after the Peace Movement and hippie culture radicalized the American landscape. Created organically as a result of Nixon and Reagan politics and the Vietnam war, and framed by marijuana, LSD and peyote, this movement defined the late 60’s and early 70’s spreading out from California (doesn’t everything?) through the heartland to the East Coast. Communal living and free love, before the age of AIDS, generated a free and open spirit that saw a multitude of campus protests, countrywide activism, the start of the new women’s movement and the ascension of Black Power.
Olivia Puckett (Sheila), Jordan Dobson (Claude), and Mason Reeves (Berger) (Photo/Christopher Mueller)
The world was changing, and it was not driven by political insiders, but by student activists, American youth and the mood of a country fed up with the graphic nightly broadcasting of the Vietnam war. This political shift was emblematic of the nation’s divisions. Three men caught this shift in the mood of the country. They were Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt Macdermot who collaborated on one of the first rock musicals ever written in the age of Aquarius and they called it Hair to reflect the polarization of the long-haired youth and the straight, predominantly White ruling culture. This radical experiment in musical theatre elevated the movement and gave it a beautiful and complex voice. I first saw it in the mid-60’s at Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival Theatre on a small stage and it was magical – encapsulating everything the counter culture movement was trying to say and the political machine it was up against.
Director Matthew Gardiner has seized the vibe and faithfully respected its original purpose. As an interactive piece that often breaks the fourth wall, it allows the audience to share the emotions and passions of its characters – fifteen strong-minded youths with racially diverse middle-class backgrounds, living together – and not always getting by – but always getting high.
The cast of HAIR at Signature Theatre (Photo/Christopher Mueller)
Forty numbers give voice to the relevant interests of American youth – fear of 1-A draft status, fascination with the British Invasion “Manchester England”, sex, Aretha, Hendrix, festivals and love-ins, East Indian culture and flower power. It’s what’s happening, baby. Even if you didn’t live it, it’s resurgence echoes in the current Boho fashion style with macrame and peace signs. Wait! Where’s my mood ring? Even Margaret Mead makes an appearance to investigate the scene – for anthropological research, of course.
Backgrounded with video projections of the era, and a kick-ass 9-piece band conducted by Angie Benson, this production will catapult you to a moment in time that revolutionized music, art, politics and culture – a time when there were bad trips and good times. A time of activism, questionable wars and the malaise of youth happening yet again on college campuses today.
Ashleigh King’s hyper-energetic choreography focusses on Dance, Dance, Dance with this multi-talented, hyper-exuberant ensemble. You can sense the cast is loving the atmosphere Gardiner has created for them to explore. Coupled with Paige Hathaway’s set design incorporating iconography of the period, it is a brave, exuberant and immersive experience.
Highly recommended!
Jordan Dobson (Claude) (Photo/Christopher Mueller)
With Jordan Dobson as Claude; Amanda Lee as Dionne; Mason Reeves as Berger; Noah Israel as Woof; Solomon Parker III as Hud; Olivia Puckett as Sheila; Nora Palka as Jeanie; Caroline Graham as Crissy; Jamie Goodson as Suzannah/Mother; Keenan McCarter as Steve/Father; Nolan Montgomery as Jonathan/Margaret Mead; Greg Twomey as Paul/Hubert; Savannah Blackwell as Lorrie; Patrick Leonardo Casimir as Walter; and Alex De Bard as Emmaretta.
Lighting by Jason Lyons; Sound Design by Eric Norris; Video Design by Patrick W. Lord; Wig Design by Anne Nesmith; Fight Choreographer Casey Kaleba; Resident Intimacy Consultant and Choreographer Chelsea Pace.
Through July 7, 2024 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Avenue, in Shirlington Village, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call the box office at 703 820-9771 or visit www.SigTheatre.org.
STC’s Modern Production of Macbeth Stars the Great British Actor Ralph Fiennes in a Triumphant Performance
Macbeth Shakespeare Theatre Company Jordan Wright April 16, 2024 Special to The Zebra
Indira Varma and Ralph Fiennes (Photo/ Marc Brenner)
From the opening roar of a fighter jet overhead to the ultimate rhythmic uttering of one of the Three Witches, “by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”, this production will be the one Macbeth you will remember above all others. I honestly felt as though I had neither heard, studied, nor seen it before – certainly never performed so brilliantly nor staged so creatively. We not only see Lady Macbeth (Indira Varma) as a woman who longs to equal a man’s powers, “…unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direct cruelty. Make thick my blood,” she entreats the spirits, but we see Macbeth (Ralph Fiennes) drenched in blood, going mad with the fear of divine retribution for his evil deeds as predicted by the Three Witches (Lucy Mangan, Danielle Flamanya and Lola Shalam).
Enough cannot be said about the two leads and the raw passion in these tour de force performances by Fiennes and Varma. Fiennes delivery, slowing down the pace when the lines and the mood need emphasis and heft, and drawing the audience deep into his sphere, are fiercely captivating. This slowing down of the pace allows the audience time to process and that is what separates this staging from many others. The actors’ well-honed delivery and Director Simon Godwin’s keen respect for the prose reflected here.
Lola Shalam, Lucy Mangan, and Danielle Fiamanya (Photo/ Marc Brenner)
Singers are told, “Don’t throw away a line. Give it meaning.” No line should be incidental and no action superfluous. Here everything is carefully drawn and purposeful. This is not the revved-up Shakespeare we have come to expect with lines delivered staccato. In this interpretation deeper meaning is imparted to each interaction and to every word. It is a glorious thing to behold. This is the same experience we have when watching a great movie where the viewer is afforded pauses in the action to better process the scene allowing for a more intimate and visceral experience.
Fiennes’ extraordinary ability to inhabit Macbeth is as complex and gripping as it is nuanced. The same can be said for Varma as the diabolical Lady Macbeth. The two are in total sync and it is absolutely delicious. Though we well know the plot, it’s still edge-of-your-seat action – from the sword fights to the grisly murders to the diabolical treachery, the grief and the ultimate revenge.
Ben Allen, Indira Varma, Rose Riley, Richard Pepper, Steffan Rhodri, and Levi Brown (Photo/ Marc Brenner)
Surprisingly, the production is not held in either of STC’s downtown theatres. It’s in a former BET-TV production facility in Northeast DC that lends itself to the magnitude and enormity of this unique event. Upon entry into the massive facility, you will pass through what appears to be a bombed-out street scene. A burned-out sedan rests on a pile of rubble, reflecting the emotional disasters to come. Fiennes insisted this Macbeth be in an industrial space on the outskirts of the city. The same requirement applied to its previous iterations in Liverpool, Edinburgh and London where it was mounted before coming to DC.
A triumph for Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Simon Godwin and this outstanding and predominantly British cast!
With Ben Allen as Ross; Ewan Black as Malcolm; Levi Brown as Angus; Jonathan Case as Seyton; Keith Fleming as King Duncan/Siward; Michael Hodgson as Second Murderer/Captain; Kiyoko Merolli as Macduff’s Daughter; Jake Neads as First Murderer/Donalbain; Richard Pepper as Lennox; Steffan Rhodri as Banquo; Rose Riley as Menteith; Rebecca Scruggs as Lady Macduff/Doctor; Maxwell Kwadjo Talbert as Macduff’s Son; Ethan Thomas as Fleance; Ben Turner as Macduff; Adrianna Weir as Macduff’s Daughter; and Mila Weir as Macduff’s Daughter.
Adapted by Emily Burns; Set and Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw; Sound Design by Christopher Shutt; Lighting by Jai Morjaria; Composer Asaf Zohar; Fight Director Kate Waters.
Ben Turner (Photo/ Marc Brenner)
Through May 5th presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company in association with Wessex Grove, Underbelly. At 1301 W Street, NE, Washington, DC. For tickets and information call the box office at 202 547-1122 or visit www.ShakespeareTheatre.org.
If you are unable to secure tickets to this once-in-a-lifetime production, it will be in local movie theatres beginning May 2nd.
