A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Douglas Sills (Center) as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof , with his daughters: Hodel (Lily Burka), Tzeitel (Beatrice Owens), Mia Goodman (Shprintze), Rosie Jo Neddy (Chava), and Allison Mintz (Bielke). Photo credit: Daniel Rader. “A little musical about Jews in Russia. I don’t know if it will turn into something or not,” or something to that effect, is how legendary director/choreographer Jerome Robbins described Fiddler on the Roof to Richard Altman, who became his assistant on the original production and would go on to recreate Robbins’s staging all over the world, including London, Tokyo, and Tel Aviv. That’s how Altman told his story to me, when I had the great good fortune of meeting and being taught and directed by him as a visiting artist when I was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro almost 50 years ago. As I recall, he was introduced to Robbins at a party by Carol Burnett, who had been his classmate at the University of Southern California...

  Rob Collletti (center) and the cast of Guys and Dolls . Photo credit: Teresa Castracane Photography. Since October 2022, I have seen three productions of  Guys and Dolls : the first was the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage production (if you are interested, you may find my blog entry at https://theatregoerthoughts.blogspot.com/2022/10/guys-and-dolls-kennedy-center.html ), the second was Nicholas Hytner’s “immersive” production at London’s Bridge Theatre in September 2023 (which I did not write about), and the third is the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s current production at Sidney Harman Hall. Each of these productions, of course, is built on the dynamic and ingenious work of composer Frank Loesser and librettist Abe Burrows. (Jo Swerling shares the writing credit contractually, for having created an initial draft that was not accepted; Burrows may or may not have borrowed from that draft.) The year was 1950, the so-called “Golden Age” of American musical theatre, at th...

Maalke Laanstra-Corn as Hedvig, David Patrick Kelly as Old Elving, Nick Westtrate as Hjalmar, Melanie Field as Gina, and Alexander Hurr as Gregers in The Wild Duck at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Photo credit: Gerry Goodstein, We spend a lot of time these days questioning “truth.” We have been told that there are “alternative facts” and that “fake news” is rampant. Many of us have learned to question the veracity of information we receive and to bring into question the credibility of those who share that information, even when there is incontrovertible evidence that what is said is wholly truthful. “The truth will set you free” is an often-quoted maxim most of us have grown up hearing. It never occurred to me to try to trace the metamorphosis of that phrase, but I now know that it is Biblical. In the New Testament, the Gospel of John (8:32) quotes Jesus as saying, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Here, “the truth” is expressed in spiritual terms, but ...

  Bradley Gibson as Robert, Stanley Andrew Jackson as Walter, Wildlin Pierrevil as Frank, and Jeffrey Rashad as Tony in  Fremont Ave.  at Arena Stage. Photo credit: Marc J. Franklin. Reggie D. White’s Fremont Ave. receives an inspired production in its world premiere run at Washington’s Arena Stage, continuing through November 23, in a co-production with South Coast Repertory. White has a true gift for creating dialogue that is smart, snappy, character-appropriate, and by turns, raucously funny and poignantly moving. In a sense, White has given us three plays in one, unified by a family’s three generations – and some characteristics that are shared among them – in a single setting of a Los Angeles suburb over three decades. Under the deft direction of Lili-Anne Brown, the eight actors create a panorama that spans the years from 1968 through the 1990s, up to the 2020s. The changes in time are accomplished through costumes (designed by Jos N. Banks) and period music, as we...

  Jonathan Del Palmer (Marc Anthony) and Brandon Carter (Julius X) in Folger Theatre's production of  Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare,  written by Al Letson and directed by Nicole Brewer, on stage at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Photography by Erika Nizborski.  Julius X is subtitled, on the title page of the program, as “a re-envisioning of the tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.” It is a bold, creative, some might even say audacious, incorporation of the story of Malcolm X, the controversial civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1965, into this classic play. Playwright Al Letson has crafted this play using much of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a framework. Letson uses some of Shakespeare’s original dialogue, augmenting it with his own words. Much of the time Letson emulates Shakespeare’s language, while contemporizing much to fit the period (the mid-1960s) and location (Harlem). While this...

  Victoria Omoregie as Charity and Yetunde Felix-Ukwu as Mother in The Great Privatio n at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Photo credit: Cameron Whitman. Part of the legacy of this nation’s history of the enslavement of Africans torn from their homelands is – and unfortunately may continue to be – the marginalization of African Americans in the area of healthcare. One of the most famous (and infamous) examples is “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” in which the United States Public Health Service and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied approximately 400 Black men, for 40 years, from 1932 to 1972. Available treatments were withheld, resulting in much suffering and many deaths that could easily have been avoided. In this and similar circumstances, the lives of African Americans were (and perhaps are) controlled by societal and government (White) establishment. The men were literally human guinea pigs. The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into ...