A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

.  Adil Mansoor in Amm(i)gone at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Photo by Teresa Castracane. The program note (available online) for Woolly Mammoth’s production of Amm(i)gone (a made-up word that cannot be mispronounced: mentally I pronounced it as “am-MIG-oh-nee”) summarizes things more eloquently and succinctly than anything I might write: Creator and performer Adil Mansoor invites his Pakistani mother to translate Antigone into Urdu [the national language of Pakistan] as a means of exploring the tensions between family and faith. Should he keep his queerness buried from his devout Muslim mother? Through Greek tragedy, teachings from the Quran, and 9 audio conversations with his mother, Mansoor creates this theatrical personal story about locating love across faith. In this one-person show, themes of family, devotion, religion and faith, cultural differences, acceptance and respect, and views of the afterlife emerge as Mansoor shares his very personal story. But the way in which he cr

  Indira Varna and Ralph Fiennes in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Macbeth . Photo by Marc Brenner. Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has extended its space for its current production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth , as adapted by Emily Burns, to the former studios of Black Entertainment Television at 1301 W St. in Northeast DC. The former soundstage takes on the feel of an industrial warehouse for this “environmental production.” Somehow losing the “trappings” of the fine Sidney Harman Hall, where one might have expected to find this performance, focuses us more clearly on the reality of each unfolding moment. Conceived by STC artistic director Simon Godwin and acclaimed English actor Ralph Fiennes, who stars as Macbeth, the production was staged in similar “found” spaces in Liverpool, Edinburgh, and London, before coming to Washington. It is fitting that a play about a man with an unquenchable thirst for power, spurred on by a wife who shares (and perhaps even exceeds) his

  Lora Lee Gayer and Adam Chanler-Berat in Unknown Soldier . Photo credit: Teresa Castracane. I first saw Judy Kuhn on the Broadway stage in August 1986, when she co-starred in the far-too-abbreviated run of the Stephen Schwartz musical Rags . Later that season, she originated the role of Cosette in Les Mis érables , which had a decidedly longer run and brought her the first of her four Tony nominations. Now, more than 37 years later, she is playing a grandmother, Lucy Anderson, nee Lemay, in the current offering at Arena Stage, a new musical titled  Unknown Soldier. Her voice retains the same beautifully crystalline quality I remember so clearly from those two long-ago performances. Unknown Soldier , with book by Daniel Goldstein, music by Michael Friedman, and lyrics by both, tells the story of Ellen Rabinowitz, a 40-something physician preparing to sell her grandmother’s home where she grew up in Troy, New York. As she goes through endless old papers and photographs, she comes ac

  The cast of Suffs . Photo credit: Jenny Anderson. Two of my favorite musicals, 1776 and Hamilton , find their inspiration in the characters and events of early American history but, like much of history, what we’ve seen is the men doing “the work,” while the women labor in the background. In 1776 , for example, we see only two women (Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson) who are seen only because of their relationships with their husbands. In Hamilton , we see four (the Schuyler sisters: Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy, as well as Maria Reynolds, with whom Hamilton has an affair that almost destroys his marriage and political future), who exist as characters only because of their relationship to Alexander Hamilton. A new Broadway musical, Suffs (short for “suffragists,” not “suffragettes,” which suggests a diminutive status), tells the story of the years-long fight for women’s suffrage through fascinating characters who are not appendages of husbands or fathers and whose role as mother

  Eden Espinoza in  Lempicka . Photo credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. It is partly my fault – a lifetime of experience creating theatre or seeing it has left me with an almost-unquenchable thirst for information. Because of this lifelong habit, it is a rare event for me to see a new play or musical about which I know almost nothing. Especially since my dear friend Beth Leavel is in the cast, you could not have kept me from seeing Lempicka , now in previews at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre. Purposely, I kept my pre-show knowledge to a minimum: I had read a synopsis, a Wikipedia article about its subject (a Polish painter named Tamara de Lempicka), and saw a very brief clip that included a snippet of one song. Although you may never have heard of Lempicka, you may well have seen some of her work along with that of other icons of the Art Deco era. There is a magical sense of discovery when something like Lempicka comes along, bringing to life a significant but little-known pers

  Britney Coleman as Bobbie (center) and the North American Tour of Company . Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade. Director Marianne Elliott’s “gender swapped” production of Company was in previews on Broadway in March 2020, scheduled for an official opening on the 90 th birthday of its composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, when the pandemic caused the closure of all theatres. Previews resumed in November 2021, just a few days before Sondheim’s death. The production was acclaimed, winning five 2022 Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival and Best Director of a Musical. Sondheim had worked on (and approved of) Elliott’s production in London when it opened in 2018. In truth, though, I would argue that this production, the national company of which is currently playing in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, is not, in fact, a revival, but a significant revision. It shares the score and most of the libretto with the original, but it is a total re-conception, updating the 1