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The Great Privation, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington, DC

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  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 ...
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Damn Yankees, Fichandler Theatre, Arena Stage, Washington, DC

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  Alysha Umphress as Gloria Thorpe with members of the team in Damn Yankees at Arena Stage. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman, Let me get right to the point: Arena Stage’s Damn Yankees is damn good! Originally produced in 1955, it is a classic American musical. Director/choreographer Sergio Trujillo calls it a “revisal”: not exactly a revival, but a revival with revisions to make it more meaningful for the audience 70 years after it debuted. Playwrights Doug Wright and Will Power have dusted off the musical’s book, re-setting it in the year 2000. Wright explains that just as we, in the 1980s and 1990s, nostalgically considered the 1950s to be “a comparatively innocent time,” we may similarly look back on 2000 – before the saturation and domination of the Internet and social media. Of course, changing the time period required and allowed some changes. In the original production, the focus was on the Washington baseball team: not the Nats, but the defunct Washington Se...
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Merry Wives, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC

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  The cast of Merry Wives at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo credit: Teresa Castracane. Some Shakespeare scholars believe that it was during a period of the plague that Shakespeare wrote two of his best-known and most admired plays, King Lear and Macbeth . Just as in that troubled period, during the COVID-19 pandemic (the “plague” of our times), playwrights, actors, musicians, and artists were challenged to think outside “the box” in order to keep their creative juices flowing. New York’s Public Theatre commissioned award-winning playwright Jocelyn Bioh, who received a Best Play Tony Award nomination for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (produced last year at Arena Stage), to work on a new production of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor . The resulting play, now titled Merry Wives , was first produced in New York in 2021. The production program credits Bioh as “Adaptor,” though I am certain that titleTdoes not reflect the magnitude of what she has accomplished, which i...
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Dead Inside, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington, DC

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  Riki Lindhome is a woman with a plan in her one-woman show, Dead Inside , at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Photo credit: Cameron Whitman. The program describes Riki Lindhome as an actress, comedian, writer, and musician, so it comes as no surprise that Dead Inside , the current offering at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, is listed as “created and performed” by her. “Created” covers a number of tasks, in this instance: she conceived (pun intended) it and wrote the text, as well as music and lyrics for the songs. “Performed” also covers numerous tasks in this one-woman show that is sometimes stand-up comedy, sometimes musical comedy, deeply-felt confessional, satirical, extremely funny, incisive, but also quite tender and moving. Dead Inside is Riki’s very personal story recounting her “fertility journey,” which she admits is somewhat misleading, since “journey” implies (in her mind) something that is fun. Riki recounts events in her efforts to become a mother with happy-face and sad-face emo...
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A Wrinkle in Time, Kreeger Theatre, Arena Stage, Washington, DC

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  The company of A Wrinkle in Time at Arena Stage. Photo credit: T. Charles Erickson Photography. Much of the time when I attend the theatre, I am fairly well-acquainted with the material, but once in a while I see something about which I know nothing – or almost nothing. Despite the fact that it is based on what I now know to be a noted, award-winning young adult novel, my near-complete ignorance of the material allowed me to experience the world-premiere musical adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time on its own merits. I cannot speak to how faithful it may be to its source, I can only respond to what I see and experience in the theatre. Arena Stage closes out its season with this daring, creatively rich production. There is much here to be enjoyed and admired – perhaps too much. The plot is both simple and complex: Meg, a girl (whose age is vague) and her little brother, Charles Wallace, along with Calvin, one of the girl’s classmates, embark on a journey through...
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Sondheim's Old Friends, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York, NY

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  The company performing "Comedy Tonight" in Sondheim's Old Friends  in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy. Sondheim’s Old Friends , the Manhattan Theatre Club’s current production at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, is a love letter to the late composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. As pretty much every theatre aficionado, and especially every musical theatre aficionado, knows, Sondheim was the preeminent creative force behind some of the most iconic works of the last half of the 20 th century. And many of those iconic shows have been (and continue to be) revived in the first quarter of the 21 st century: witness the currently-running Gypsy with Audra McDonald, and two Tony-nominated revivals during the 2023-2024 season, Merrily We Roll Along (which won) and Sweeney Todd . Devised by producer Cameron Mackintosh, Sondheim's Old Friends  is a smorgasbord of some of Sondheim’s best. In addition to those revivals, Sondheim’s ...
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Fake It Until You Make It, Kreeger Theatre, Arena Stage, Washington, DC

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  Amy Brenneman as River in Fake It Until You Make It by Larissa FastHorse at Arena Stage. Photo credit: Daniel Rader. I believe that two of the most challenging forms of theatre are farce and satire. I recall a definition of farce as events that are theoretically possible but far from probable, and to a certain extent, the more outrageous, the better. Satire requires the examination of an idea of significance and demonstrating that the idea is not nearly as significant (or sacred) as it is supposed to be. Combining both farce and satire in a play about personal identity in a political environment where the value and validity of exploring (and celebrating) the differences between us are under attack, in the nation’s capital, is gutsy. And that is exactly what is happening at the Kreeger Theatre stage at Arena Stage in a co-production with Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles, where it premiered earlier this year. This is the kind of theatre that DC audiences relish. Larissa FastH...
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