Nabil Elouahabi as Tareq and Heather Raffo as Noura ~ Photo credit by Scott Suchman
Can any of us really know what it’s like to be a refugee in America from a war-torn country? Can we understand the heartbreak of leaving family and loved ones to starve or perish? Playwright and actor Heather Raffo delves into the terrifying world of refugees with her tragedy Noura, a story of an Iraqi father, wife, and son Yazen (Gabriel Brumberg) struggling to assimilate into American life after fleeing the only country they have ever known.
Matthew David as Rafa’a, Gabriel Brumberg as Yazen and Nabil Elouahabi as Tareq ~ Photo credit by Scott Suchman.
Noura (Heather Raffo in an unforgettable performance) has forsaken her work as an architect in Mosul to keep a traditional household in New York City where husband Tareq (Nabil Elouahabi) works as a doctor alongside his longtime friend and fellow doctor Rafa’a (Matthew David). Scenic Designer Andrew Lieberman lets us know they are fairly well off with his stylish mid-century modern set dominated by a large Christmas tree. And although it’s clear they are Christians, they suffer many of the same prejudices in America as their Muslim friends.
Noura is excited because Maryam (Dahlia Azama), an orphan she has supported and sponsored to become an American citizen, is coming to visit them for the holidays for a Christmas Eve feast. But when she arrives from her studies at Stanford, six months pregnant and without a husband, or use for one, Noura slut-shames her, only to regret it when Maryam runs off in disgust.
Dahlia Azama as Maryam and Heather Raffo as Noura ~ Photo credit by Scott Suchman.
We see a couple in constant turmoil, striving to stay together while battling their own inner demons. This emotional roller coaster of dueling cultural identities becomes more intense as the walls seem to close in on their personal problems. Should they sacrifice their deeply held traditional roots or let love prevail? Tareq, too, is confused about his role as a man in modern American society. Is Noura too independent? Was she too bold and outspoken during their courtship so many years ago in Iraq? Were they complicit in ignoring the pleas for help from their Muslim friends’ during the war? “I am not a victim,” Noura cries out. I am a coward.” And, though they feel “safe” from ISIS in America, will guilt and fear destroy their ability feel compassion as surely as any war could?
Heather Raffo as Noura and Matthew David by Rafa’a ~ Photo credit by Scott Suchman.
Directed by Joanna Settle, Raffo’s intelligent and brilliantly crafted drama brings us into this fraught scenario cautiously, tenderly, and without judgment, making absolutely certain we recognize the universality of our foibles and frailties. It is a deep dive into the human conscience and an examination of the degree to which empathy and forgiveness can bring us to a greater understanding of all of humankind.
Destined to be a classic, this play is highly recommended.
At the Lansburgh Theatre through March 14th 2018, 450 7th Street NW, Washington, DC 20003. For tickets and information contact the Box Office at 202.547.1122 or visit www.shakespearetheatre.org for additional info on post-show playwright discussions.
(L to R) Jack Willis (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) and Susan Rome (Lady Bird Johnson) in The Great Society. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
In The Great Society, Robert Schenkkan’s 2016 sequel to his Tony Award-winning All the Way based on Lyndon Johnson’s early presidency and the Civil Rights movement, the playwright continues with the final years of LBJ’s administration between January 1965 till December 1968. Those of us who lived through these turbulent times will remember how desperately divided the country was during the Vietnam War and the bloody struggle to achieve the Voting Rights Act for African Americans. I couldn’t help but reflect on our current state – voting machines compromised, Russians interfering with our elections, gerrymandering and trumped-up demands for personal identity keeping legitimate voters from the polls. The fight continues…
(L to R) Tom Wiggin (Robert McNamara and others) and Jack Willis (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) in The Great Society. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
This second term portrays a president who fell under the deceitful influence of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and F. B. I. Director J. Edgar Hoover. At the same time, Johnson was sacrificing American lives in the war, he was also pushing a raft of social programs including Medicaid, Medicare and the expansion of immigration. He was a complicated man during difficult times.
(L to R) Deonna Bouye (Coretta Scott King and others) and Bowman Wright (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) in The Great Society. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Icons in the Civil Rights movement feature prominently – Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses and others whose relationships with Johnson were often stymied by Johnson’s need to pacify his Southern base. “There’s no issue of state’s rights. It’s only human rights,” Johnson insists.
There are plenty of dramatic moments depicted here, including a brutal attack on African American marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in George Wallace’s Alabama and another that reflects the savage tactics against the nation’s anti-war protesters.
(L to R) Jack Willis (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) and Cameron Folmar (Governor George Wallace and others) in The Great Society. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Directed by Kyle Donnelly, the play moves back and forth between the escalation of the Vietnam war and the accompanying anti-war protests to Johnson’s tireless efforts to achieve real social change while arm-twisting members of his own party. A powerful and compelling drama, it reveals much of the rough-and-tumble backroom dealings that later came to light. LBJ made it his business to exploit his adversaries and capitalize on their weaknesses, even if it took threats to achieve his ends. Jack Willis offers up a formidable LBJ, strident, bullying, foul-mouthed and oftimes terrifying, yet an indelibly effective, larger-than-life politician armed with buckets of Southern colloquialisms.
(L to R) Lawrence Redmond (Vice President Hubert Humphrey) and Jack Willis (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) in The Great Society. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Many of the original actors from All the Way return in this tour de force including Jack Willis as LBJ, Richmond Hoxie as J. Edgar Hoover, Desmond Bing as Bob Moses, Craig Wallace as Ralph Abernathy, Tom Wiggin as McNamara, Bowman Wright as Dr. King, Jaben Early as Stokely Carmichael, John Scherer as Bobby Kennedy, Stephen F. Schmidt as Senator Dirksen, Susan Rome as Lady Bird Johnson, and Cameron Folmar as Governor George Wallace. Lawrence Redmond returns in a different role, this time as Hubert Humphrey. Set Designer Kate Edmunds adds rising flames to a rotating presidential seal to remind us of the riots in Watts.
Highly recommended. Be sure to bring your teens.
Through March 11th, 2018 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., SE, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information call 202 488-3300 or visit online.
Jack Willis as President Lyndon Baines Johnson in The Great Society. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Loaded with top Broadway stars, Something Rotten! has got it all including actors who can sing, tap, rap and rock out up to the rafters. Welcome to the Renaissance from the team of composers/lyricists Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw with book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell. It’s utterly delicious.
Down-on-their-luck brothers Nick (Rob McClure) and Nigel (Josh Grisetti) Bottom are eager to one-up Shakespeare (rock star actor Adam Pascal) with a show-stopper of their own creation. Nigel’s the writer and sensitive one falling for poetry-loving Portia (Autumn Hurlbert). Nick and his feminist wife Bea (Maggie Lakis) support Nigel’s aspirations. Pilfering from his wife’s savings, Nick seeks out Nostradamus (the marvelous Blake Hammond) to divine a fresh idea for a play. The seer predicts it will be musicals. “Song and dance and sweet romance. No talking. All of the dialogue is sung,” he assures. Convinced the idea will trump anything the Sultan of Sonnet could pen, Nick imagines a troupe of Rockettes-in-codpieces-with-giant-ostrich feathers song and dance. The show’s backer, Shylock, wonders if “Ham Omelette: The Musical” will sell to the masses. Notwithstanding Shylock’s doubts, critics agreed when this hilarious musical comedy opened on Broadway nominating it no less than 34 times to garner two wins.
Groan-worthy wordplay, over-the-top pastiches, and silly costumes abound. Eggs make an appearance. Naturally. It’s a mash-up of Shakespeare’s greatest quips meet the best of Broadway musical numbers in a crazy ass plot that fills the stage with ye olde rock and roll and vaudeville razzmatazz. Broadway babies will recognize snippets from Cats, The Sound of Music, Music Man, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and more (even Mary Poppins makes the cut) all sung and danced by a terrific cast.
It’s a curious thing that American Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker is more famous in Great Britain where she is the Resident Writer at the Royal Court Theatre and has lately been awarded a commission to write a new play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. That’s heady stuff.
Christopher Dinolfo as Christan and Felica Curry as Susannah. Photo by Carol Rosegg
In Jefferson’s Garden, part of the exciting Women’s Voices Theater Festival, Wertenbaker’s focus is on the American Revolution and how we got there, revealing the contradictions between our founding father’s ideals and both the realities and precarious nature of freedom. It reminds us the it was considered either a revolution or an insurgency depending on who was doing the talking.
Director Nataki Garrett opens the drama on a boat sailing from England to America, where Carl (Michael Halling), a bourgeois German aristocrat, meets a Quaker family who promise to take him to their farm if he learns practical skills. He does. Though the family are pacifists, their young son Christian (Christopher Dinolfo) defies his family to go to war, ultimately breaking a promise to his sister Louisa (Maggie Wilder) that he will never fight.
The Company of Timberlake Wertenbaker. Photo by Carol Rosegg
Nine actors, in different roles through dizzying wardrobe changes, introduce us to many of the founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, Ben Franklin, George Washington – as well as the soldiers affected by the cost of war on their lives and loved ones. The character of the freed slave Susannah (Felicia Curry) and her love story with a white man lend insight into the struggles both sides faced.
It is not until Act Two, that we come to Jefferson’s noted Monticello garden where the men have come to hash out the Bill of Rights and express their considered opinions. There under a gazebo, we meet bossy Southern belle, Nelly Rose, played hilariously to the hilt by Kimberly Gilbert.
It is a high gear everything-but-the-kitchen-sink telling of the American Revolution – at times funny, at others emotional or flat-out educational. Who knew there were four million Americans and only 160,000 Brits at the time of the revolution? And who knew the King offered freedom to slaves who fought for England? Okay, you did. Seems I’d better brush up on my American history!Thoroughly enjoyable.
Additional cast members – Christopher Bloch, Thomas Keegan, Michael Kevin Darnall and Kathryn Tkel.
Through February 8th at Ford’s Theatre, 511 Tenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004. For tickets and information call 888 616-0270 or visit online.
Kyla García (Sarah Polson) in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Artistic Director Molly Smith has always taken risks. With the staging of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s play on the fraught history of the Cherokee Nation, she has gone where no other major theater has gone before. Smith’s direction of Sovereignty adds to her series of innovative “Power Plays” and is part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival.
Nagle, an activist lawyer and direct descendant of John Ridge and Major Ridge, plunges headlong into the genesis of Indian country’s deepest divide exploring both her ancestors, the Ridge family, as well as Chief John Ross who were instrumental in forming the early agreements that determined the future of the Cherokee nation. But which bore the responsibility for allowing President Andrew Jackson to set in motion the Trail of Tears? Who had the blood on their hands of the thousands who perished on that forced march to Oklahoma in the dead of winter? Who capitulated to Jackson’s demands and why? Nagle addresses these and other questions with eyes wide open and starts in a casino in modern-day Indian country.
(L to R) Andrew Roa (Major Ridge/Roger Ridge) and Jake Waid (John Ross/Jim Ross) in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Sarah Polson (Kyla García) is a young Yale graduated attorney determined to reverse a 1978 Supreme Court decision that strips native communities of their right to prosecute non-Indians on their reservations, a decision that violates tribal sovereignty. She is feisty and whip smart and along with another lawyer, Jim Ross, takes on the case. Sarah is a Ridge descendant, but keeps her ancestral past well hidden from Jim. Though their ancestors were well-intentioned tribal leaders, both the Ridges and the Rosses have been accused of poor decisions, greed in the case of the Rosses, and worse, capitulation. To this day each family still blames the other for mistakes made. It is up to Sarah and Jim to right the wrongs of the past.
(L to R) Jake Hart (Elias Boudinot/Watie), Michael Glenn (Samuel Worcester/Mitch) and Joseph Carlson (Andrew Jackson/Ben) in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
At the casino in Oklahoma Sarah meets Ben, a non-Indian SVU cop and friend of Mitch (Michael Glenn who also plays Samuel Wooster), Sarah’s brother. Ben intervenes in a bar fight when Watie, Sarah’s current boyfriend gets rough with Sarah and the two hit it off.
The action swings back and forth between the 1830s to modern day as it grapples with the past through the years of U. S. Government policies of expansionism, Cherokee removal, broken treaties, intermarriage, and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA Section 904) to allow for the prosecution of whites committing crimes against women on Indian lands. After being abused by her lover Ben, Sarah’s goal is to change that.
(L to R) Joseph Carlson (Andrew Jackson/Ben), Kalani Queypo (John Ridge) and Andrew Roa (Major Ridge/Roger Ridge) in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
How Nagle manages to include as many instrumental players in this historical drama is more than clever. Because the play toggles between 19th and 21st centuries, this fine cast plays multiple roles with ease and authenticity. There is Flora, a Ridge cousin (Dorea Smith), Andrew Jackson and Ben (Joseph Carson in dual roles), John Ross and his son Jim both played by Jake Waid, Major Ridge and Roger Ridge Poison (both played by Andrew Roa), and Elias Boudinot (Jake Hart who also plays Watie).
(L to R) Andrew Roa (Major Ridge/Roger Ridge) and Kyla García (Sarah Polson) in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
To enhance the authenticity and period details, both Ken Macdonald’s set and Linda Cho’s costumes incorporate design elements of Cherokee culture.
If you aren’t up on the history of the Cherokee people, I’d suggest Steve Inskeep’s brilliant book, Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson Cherokee Chief John Ross and a Great American Land Grab.
Powerful, informative and important.
Through February 18th at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., SE, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information call 202 488-3300 or visit online.
Ahmad Kamal (Malik) in the world premiere production of 4,380 NIGHTS. Photo by C Stanley Photography.
When the Women’s Voices Theater Festival opened in early January, I found myself explaining its purpose. Some thought the productions focused solely on women’s issues. They don’t. It’s merely an opportunity to focus on plays written by women. And of the ones I’ve seen and reviewed, they approach a diversity of subjects. So, jump right in. The festival continues through March 14th in DC Metro area theaters.
Annalisa Dias ~ Photo Credit: Christopher Mueller
In Annalisa Dias’ powerful play 4,380 Nights, Malik Djamal Ahmad Essaid (Ahmad Kamal in a riveting performance as both Malik and El Hadj El Kaim) is being held in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center accused of being an Al Qaeda recruiter and radical Islamist.
His rights stripped from him without charge, he lives in chains and solitary confinement with visits from Bud Abramson (Michael John Casey who later appears as The Man), a defense attorney appointed by the U. S. government. Malik languishes in prison for twelve years without trial while his family awaits him in France.
Ahmad Kamal (Malik) and MJ Casey (Bud Abramson). Photo by C Stanley Photography.
Directed by Kathleen Ackerley, the story is told to The Man by a sylph-like narrator, The Woman, played by Lynette Rathnam in a sinuously exotic performance. She speaks in lyrical prose echoing the history of the Carthaginians, the French, and much later the Americans who wage war against the Arabs and Berbers.
Lynette Rathnam (Woman) in the world premiere production of 4,380 NIGHTS. Photo by C Stanley Photography
The Man beseeches The Woman to tell him how the story ends, but she puts him off to relate the story that began with Cato’s words from ancient times. No matter which side of the argument you are on, you’ll be left wondering the same thing. Does it ever end, this centuries-old conflict of “the water, the earth, the sand”? Whether for reasons of trade or expansionism, the battles have long been dominated by racism, ignorance and fear. “It’s not the first time you’ve kidnapped Africans and enslaved them,” Malik reminds his American captors.
As the story toggles from ancient times to the present, we meet Malik’s grandfather, El Kaim, a former guide and translator for the French Colonel Aimable Pelisssier. El Kaim fought on the French side, betraying his own people in the Algerian Wars, and Malik feels certain, if he is ever released to his homeland, he will be imprisoned by his own government. Ah, the sins of the fathers.
Ahmad Kamal (Malik) and Rex Daugherty (Luke). Photo by C Stanley Photography.
Luke Harrison (Rex Daugherty who doubles as the Colonel), is a young American soldier who guards Malik. Luke is emotionally imprisoned which causes him to descend into a kind of sadistic madness. Think Abu Ghraib and you have some idea of the barbaric abuse he metes out to his prisoner. Abramson is sympathetic but tells Malik his detainment is awash in “papers, petitions, orders, reviews and broken international laws.”
Dias’ play is filled with expertly crafted dialogue that speaks to the deeply rooted, tangled web of Anglo Arab relations and their effect on long-term global stability. Her indelible characters, molded in the shifting sands of time, afford clarity and perspective to the issues facing our nations today.
Highly recommended.
Through February 18th at Signature Theatre (Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit online.
