Avery Glymph as Marcellus, Michael Urie as Hamlet and Federico Rodriguez as Horatio in Hamlet ~ Photo by Scott Suchman.
Michael Kahn’s swan song in his final season as Artistic Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company will prove to be a lasting memory of his herculean efforts to bring Shakespeare to modern audiences. In a breath-of-fresh-air he has cast Michael Urie, a former student of his, to portray Hamlet. Urie gives a pin-drop performance that enraptured the opening night audience. His is a matter-of-fact Hamlet who is hip to the machinations of his enemies and tormented by his limited options – suicide or murder. Perhaps both. His delivery of the classic lines, is conversational, visceral and physical. Even in this longest of Shakespeare’s plays, the three-hour production zipped by thanks to Urie’s electrifying performance and sense of comic timing.
Kahn switches up the sequence of Hamlet’s melancholy soliloquy from Act One Scene Two, “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt.” to serve as Hamlet’s prologue and introduce us to his wretched state of mind. This unique artistic decision explains Hamlet’s suicidal state of mind and sets the scene for his descent into madness. Remember, Shakespeare wrote three versions of this play and thus none are etched in stone.
Ryan Spahn as Rosencrantz and Kelsey Rainwater as Guildenstern in Hamlet ~ Photo by Scott Suchman.
Kahn imagines the Kingdom of Denmark as the headquarters of a major corporation and the domain of King Claudius (Alan Cox from Translations on Broadway) who is CEO of all Machiavellian PSYOPs. Right from the start Scenic Designer John Coyne puts us at the metal desks of modern day uniformed security guards. On a large bank of CCTV screens broadcasting ordinary images of the building’s access, Horatio (Federico Rodriguez), Bernardo (Chris Genebach) and Francisco (Brayden Simpson) are stunned to see an apparition.
Keith Baxter as Player King in Hamlet ~ Photo by Scott Suchman.
It is the ghost of Hamlet’s father (Keith Baxter) revealed to them as a fuzzy image. In Kahn’s version, suits, security guards and cell phones place us firmly in the world of high tech. Even Hamlet and Ophelia (Oyin Oladejo from Star Trek: Discovery) profess their love and seal their break up through texts. And Coyne reflects this cold, grey, desolate sense of place with steel beams, contemporary furnishings and spiral stairways leading to a vast catwalk.
Alan Cox as Claudius, Oyin Oladejo as Ophelia and Madeleine Potter as Gertrude in Hamlet ~ Photo by Scott Suchman.
Corporate spies abound – Rosenkrantz (Ryan Spahn) and Guildenstern (Kelsey Rainwater) report to Queen Gertrude (Madeleine Potter from An Ideal Husband on Broadway) on Hamlet’s mental state, as does Polonius (the enjoyably duplicitous Robert Joy) who, as you know, has his own agenda, and his son Laertes (Paul Cooper) too – and Hamlet doesn’t get banished to England until the end of Act One. Yet all the pieces fall into place seamlessly.
I can’t say enough about the relevance and riveting modern dynamic of this production – the power and destruction of authoritarianism, its secrets, lies and power struggles – and why, given the current state of our government, we would be wise to listen and take heed.
Highly recommended.
At the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harman Hall through March 4th at 610 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004. For tickets and information call 202 547-1122 or visit online.
If Director Paata Tsikurishvili hadn’t come out on stage to announce the serious intent of his production of The Trial, I might wonder why he had taken such a divergent approach to Kafka’s dystopian story of one citizen fighting against a totalitarian government. In his introduction of what we are about to witness, Tsikurishvili spells out Franz Kafka’s nonsensical world as, “bizarre and illogical, chaos vs. order, and parallel facts.” This sounds quite relatable under our current administration’s habit of delivering daily tweets filled with “alternative facts”.
Josef K (Shu-nan Chu) is an associate VP at a bank. He has been accused of an unspecified crime by a specious government agency and must defend himself to the Committee of Affairs. “The reason for your arrest is kept secret until after the trial,” the Magistrate tells Josef.
Photo Credit: Johnny Shryock
Enter the insects. All the characters, save Josef, are bugs – creepy, crawly, undulating, predatory bugs. From Josef’s friend Anna (Tori Bertocci), a sympathetic and sensuous moth and Mrs. Grubach the landlady (Kathy Gordon triples as Clerk and Leni the seductress bug), to Willem (Chris Willumsen), Josef’s Uncle Karl (Lee Liebeskind), Franz (Thomas Beheler) and Huld the lawyer (Ryan Tumulty who also plays Inspector/Judge/Priest). These bugs range from cockroaches to the unidentifiable, though I think I noted a shield bug and a caterpillar. In this convoluted interpretation of Kafka’s nightmare, the government has gone buggy.
Sorting out the imaginary legitimacy of the kangaroo court is fun – for a while. But eventually, the action devolves into a dark children’s play, an ersatz version of Alice in Wonderland, as opposed to, well, a serious political drama. Huld, in a motorized chair outfitted with blood-filled IVs, proves more comical than ominous and even the disembodied voices and accompanying electronika don’t provoke a wince.
Photo Credit: Johnny Shryock
This is not the caliber of production usually seen from Synetic, a contemporary physical theater company whose work is most notable for their brilliant “Silent Shakespeare” series and other highly creative complex productions.
Costumes by Erik Teague do help set the scene. They include cleverly inventive interpretations of thoraxes, antennae, leather wings, massive metal pincers and glow-in-the-dark compound eyes designed for maximum spooky impact. Ultimately, the only real terror is in the prophetic tale. As the gatekeeper tells Josef, desperate to understand how this inequity has befallen him, “The law is not accessible to all.” How well we know.
Through February 18th at Synetic Theater, 1800 South Bell Street, Arlington in Crystal City. For tickets and information call 1 800 494-8497 or visit www.synetictheater.org.
Rene (Kristine Nielsen) is charmed by Lyle (Daniel Morgan Shelley) at an art exhibit in the Hamptons. (Also pictured: Erica Dorfler and Brandon Espinoza.) . Photo by Teresa Wood
Playwright and Director Theresa Rebeck’s campy, modern adaptation of The Way of the World is one of the early offerings in the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival – on now in theaters around the Washington metropolitan area. Rebeck is best known as creator/writer of TV’s “Smash” and “NYPD Blue” and movie “Harriet the Spy”. In this funny, frothy, scandalous satire, whose original author was 18th C playwright William Congreve, Rebeck switches the setting to the Hamptons – the Gatsbyesque playground of the rich and infamous. That small change of venue proves a deliciously, decadent environs for the classic tangle between the upper crust and the hoi polloi.
Henry (Luigi Sottile) and friend Charles (Brandon Espinoza, right) enjoy a cocktail and the Hamptons’ sun. Photo by Teresa Wood
Sipping twee blue martinis between gossipy luncheons and romps between the sheets, the self-anointed ones tend to their wardrobes and painted lawns. Apparently, vivid green grass is a must at the posher seaside estates.
Blonde beauty Mae (Eliza Huberth) is heiress to a $600 million fortune. Do the summer studs want her for her money or her leggy good looks? What do you think? Her cougar, dowager aunt René is too busy playing musical beds to care. When we meet Henry (Luigi Sottile), a notable gadabout and serial cad, he has just broken Mae’s heart. “To hell with men!” the ladies concur, seconded by the Waitress (Ashley Austin Morris), an out-of-town summer hire who voices the outsider’s view of all this mayhem and reckless acquisitiveness.
Mae doesn’t really give a fig about all that cash. The Birkenstock-sporting, Prius-driving heiress plans to chuck it all and move to Haiti to tend to the poor. Not so her bibulous Aunt René (Tony Award nominee Kristine Nielsen – think Joanna Lumley as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous). As guardian of Mae’s funds, René prefers the lavish life suggesting she does her bit for the less fortunate. “We employ the 99%! We are the curators of the American legacy!”
Rene (Kristine Nielsen) gets to know the enigmatic Lyle Swofford (Daniel Morgan Shelley) of Nantucket. Photo by Teresa Wood.
As with summer season in the Hamptons, it is all about hookups at night and shopping tony boutiques during the day. That’s where the pretty Katrina (Erica Dorfler) comes in. As salesgirl and part-time model of Charles’ designer fashions, she has her nose in everyone’s business, especially her gays, both Charles (Brandon Espinoza) and Lyle (Daniel Morgan Shelley), a scion from Nantucket in town for the season and eager to please his cousin Reg (Elan Zafir), a Peter Pan preppy looking for love.
Hamptonites Katrina (Erica Dorfler), Lyle (Daniel Morgan Shelley, center), and Charles (Brandon Espinoza) enjoy a cocktail and watch the estate lawn get painted a pristine green. Photo by Teresa Wood
As you might expect, the amours and dalliances crisscross between the characters and hilarity ensues – a great deal of it in this delightfully silly and cleverly crafted comedy – where Set Designer Alexander Dodge renders us speechless with a floor-to-ceiling series of spotlit boxes filled with luxe shoes and assorted bibelots and beds that revolve to reveal illicit rendezvous. As for the decidedly stylish fashions, we have Costume Designer Linda Cho to thank for that.
Very clever and riotously funny. Highly recommended.
Through February 11th at the Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003. For tickets and information call 202 544-7077.
For more on the Women’s Voices Theater Festival that runs throughout January and February. And to find the theaters featuring the women playwrights’ productions.
Richard Thomas, Therese Plaehn, Pamela Reed, Lauren Klein, Daisy Eagan, and Luis Veda in the national tour of The Humans. Photo by Julieta Cervantes
Stephen Karam’s The Humanstakes a deep dive into the zeitgeist of the modern middle-class American family where there is much to recognize and even more to ponder. The Blake Family are a caring and tolerant lot, more progressive than their Scranton roots might have ou think. They tenderly care for their wheelchair-bound Momo, the family matriarch, who suffers from acute Alzheimer’s, their gay daughter Aimee, their unmarried daughter Brigid (Daisy Egan) and her social worker boyfriend Richard (Luis Vega), and, what may be even more surprising, they are willing to look away from their father Erik’s career-destroying adultery. What they are not accepting of is how their lost jobs and mounting debt are affecting their future happiness.
As the family gathers around the Thanksgiving table at Brigid and Rich’s recently rented rundown duplex, they appear to be anything but dysfunctional as they exchange gifts and speak in pleasantries and platitudes. Soon though, Aimee (Therese Plaehn), a successful attorney, goes into total meltdown. She’s lost both her job and her girlfriend. To temper the drama there is much dark humor as Momo (Lauren Klein) interrupts with repeated outbursts and foul curses, while Brigid and Rich do their best to explain away the bars on the windows and the cockroaches in the bedroom.
As a deeply Irish Catholic family, they embrace one another’s failings with grace. Deirdre (Pamela Reed), a mother whose schadenfreude extends to musings on lesbians, AIDS, and cancer, keeps up a cheerful front to jolly everyone along.
The play’s suspense derives from a curious cacophony emanating from an upstairs Asian neighbor. What can we draw from that? Does it signify the random incremental erosion of the status quo? Or is it related to Erik and Rich’s talk of dreams and monsters? Talk that seems to affirm the unpredictability of their future. Even the traditional celebratory peppermint pigs, cracked at a table to signify thankfulness, cannot keep out the unknown. “We just have a lot of stoic sadness,” Aimee opines
Director Joe Mantello brings together a superbly flawless cast. Richard Thomas shines as the darkly complex father, Erik, in this compelling and empathetic American dramedy that examines the universal human condition.
A multiple Tony-Award winning play, it is highly recommended.
Through January 28th in the Eisenhower Theatre at The Kennedy Center, 2700 F St., NW, Washington, DC. For tickets and information call 202 467-4600 or purchase them online.
Christie Prades as Gloria Estefan and Company ~ Photo credit Matthew Murphy
When the original ten-piece Miami Sound Machine is banging out a full-on Latin beat smack dab onstage and bringing sizzling hot salsa rhythms and house party funk, you can party like it’s 1985, the year the group’s huge crossover hit “Conga” soared to the top of the Billboard pop charts.
Entering the theatre Emilio and Gloria Estefan graciously greet fans ~ Photo credit Jordan Wright
It didn’t mitigate the excitement that the show’s producers Gloria and Emilio Estefan were in the house last night driving the on-their-feet audience wild with cheers and selfies. But when it comes right down to it, it’s her story. Their story. A universal story of hopeful immigrants everywhere, that bonds us to their triumphs and tragedies in this electrifying musical.
Christie Prades (Gloria Estefan), Mauricio Martinez (Emilio Estefan), Danny Burgos and Omar Lopez-Cepero ~ Photo credit Matthew Murphy
On Your Feet! tells the story of 26-time Grammy Award-winning pop singer/songwriter Gloria Estefan and her producer/husband Emilio and their sensational rise to fame. In spite of a talent agent who blocked the act from crossing over into mainstream American pop and a record company who wouldn’t allow them to sing in English, the pair did an end-run around discrimination by directly approaching local DJ’s and dance clubs where their beat-driven music had an immediate fan base. “See this face?” Emilio demands of his agent. “This is an American!” With this line, the audience broke into instantaneous and sympathetic applause. After all, it’s kill DACA season and we feel their pain.
Mauricio Martinez as Emilio Estefan, Christie Prades as Gloria Estefan and Devon Goffman as Phil the Agent ~ Photo credit Matthew Murphy
The “jukebox musical”, as these throwback rock musicals are familiarly called (though one wonders if anyone from that era has ever played a jukebox), depicts the Estefans as children leaving on the “Pedro Pan” flights from Cuba in the early 60’s – flights that brought families from Havana to Miami from the fresh hell that was Batista’s revolution – and settling into the burgeoning Cuban community in Miami. Emilio hears Gloria sing and invites her to join his band, the Miami Latin Boys to gig weddings, bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras. To her mother’s dismay, Gloria joins the band. Even a mother’s wishes can’t hold back her teenager’s dreams or her talent.
Nancy Ticotin as Gloria Fajardo and Company ~ Photo credit Matthew Murphy
Flashbacks include Havana’s Montmartre Club and her mother’s truncated career as a nightclub singer, her Vietnam vet father José’s (Jason Martinez) tragic end, and little Gloria’s fondness for her grandmother (Alma Cuervo) and her guitar. The story charts the pop star’s meteoric success and the near career-ending tragedy of the car accident that left her unable to perform for months. It’s a deeply personal story that parallels artists’ dreams and immigrants’ aspirations.
Colored by the aqua and hot pink colors made popular by Miami Vice, it stars Christie Prades and Mauricio Martinez (from the original Broadway cast) as Gloria and Emilio. The Tony Award-winning musical includes many of Gloria’s greatest hits in 26 numbers from “Live for Loving You”, “Get on Your Feet” and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”, to heart-melting ballads like “Don’t Wanna Lose You” and “Here We Are”. 80’s period costumes by Emilio Sosa and Cuba-evoking sets by David Rockwell, the band is joined by three additional musicians from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.
Filled with uplifting sparkle. Get ready to party Latin-style!
Highly recommended for the whole family.
Through January 21st in the Opera House at The Kennedy Center, 2700 F St., NW, Washington, DC. For tickets and information call 202 467-4600 or visit www.Kennedy-Center.org.
Company of the National Tour ~ Photo credit Matthew Murphy
(From L) Josh Davis as ‘Inspector Javert’ and Nick Cartell as ‘Jean Valjean’ ~ Photo by Matthew Murphy
The year was 1985 when Les Miserables hit London’s West End. It wowed critics then – Patti Lupone won the Laurence Olivier Award (Britain’s equivalent of an Oscar) for “Best Actress in a Musical” in her role as Fantine and the musical was further nominated for two awards for “Best Actor in a Musical’ (Colm Armstrong for Jean Valjean and Alun Armstrong for Thénardier) – and now. Through all its reincarnations, the operatic sing-through, backdropped by the French Revolution, still fills theaters around the world.
The spirit of this musical is as relevant as if Victor Hugo had just set pen to paper. Let’s reflect on Louis XVI’s agenda, shall we? Alienate the lower classes through starvation. Ignore science and reason for traditions. Keep monarchical rule in place amid mass resistance. And cut taxes on the privileged nobles thus keeping the peasants and rising middle class at bay. Hmmm. Didn’t work out so well for old Louis, hung for his Draconian policies.
“I Dreamed A Dream” – Melissa Mitchell as ‘Fantine’ ~ Photo by Matthew Murphy
At its very soul is the heartbreaking love story of the abandoned prostitute Fantine (Melissa Mitchell) and the reformed thief Valjean(Nick Cartell); Valjean’s death bed promise to adopt Fantine’s daughter Cosette (Jillian Butler); the heartwarming love story of the innocent Cosette and the idealistic Marius(Joshua Grosso); the tragic Éponine (Phoenix Best) and her unrequited love for her compatriot Marius; and the glory and desperation of a revolution led by Enjolras (Matt Shingledecker) that arose from social and economic inequality. There hasn’t been a story with as much 18th century history, nor as much inspirational music, till Hamilton arrived on the scene. And you know how that’s turned out. Tickets to that blockbuster are as scarce as hen’s teeth.
Matt Shingledecker as ‘Enjolras’ ~ Photo by Matthew Murphy
In this national touring company staging the intensity of both the battle and escape scenes are greatly enhanced by projections by Fifty-Nine Productions who have drawn inspiration from the apocryphal paintings of Victor Hugo. And as grim as the story may be, the drama of Valjean’s misery is lightened up decidedly by the characters of Madame Thénardier and her husband Thénardier.
Allison Guinn as ‘Madame Thénardier’ ~ Photo by Matthew Murphy
Played by Allison Guin and J. Anthony Crane respectively, this hilariously dastardly duo are innkeepers of the iniquitous, Au Sergent de Waterloo, where Cosette is raised in indentured servitude.
J Anthony Crane as ‘Thénardier’ ~ Photo by Matthew Murphy
Whether you’ve seen it once or a dozen times, as I suspect many in the opening night audience had, Co-directors Laurence Connor and James Powell give us an awe-inducing production so magnificently staged, so brilliantly performed, and so beautifully sung. Kudos too, for the evocative golden-hued scenes by Lighting Designer Richard Pacholski, who conjures up street scenes reminiscent of Dutch artist Petrus van Schendel’s firelit paintings and edge-of-your-seat, new orchestrations by Christopher Jahnke, Stephen Metcalfe and Stephen Brooker that are gloriously played by Conductor Brian Eads 14-piece orchestra on a total of 28 separate instruments.
(From L) Joshua Grosso as ‘Marius,’ Phoenix Best as ‘Éponine’ and Jillian Butler as ‘Cosette’ ~ Photo by Matthew Murphy
The night I saw it the magnificent operatic baritone, Andrew Love, received a standing ovation and rousing cheers for his understudy performance of Javert. And, in an eyebrow-raising surprise, the audience stayed through all the bows. Not one person fled before the lights went up. A rare sight in today’s theaters.
