A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Bill Irwin in On Beckett at Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo credit: Craig Schulman. Bill Irwin may well be the ultimate “man of many talents.” According to his cast biography for the current Shakespeare Theatre Company offering, On Beckett , an Irish Repertory Theatre production, he is “a Tony Award-winning actor, director, writer, and clown.” His Wikipedia profile adds choreographer, comedian, creator, and adapter. He is also a true genius, as evidenced by his selection as the first performance artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, often colloquially referred to as “the Genius Grant.” He may well be the actor with the highest identity as an interpreter of the work of Samuel Beckett, the enigmatic, Nobel Prize-winning Irish writer, who wrote in French and later translated his work to English. Theatre artists and scholars sometimes revel in their classifications, though Beckett defies simple classification. As a student, I was taught Beckett’s plays as “theatre of the ab...

  Claudia J. Arenas (Ruth), Brigid Cleary (Barbara), Naomi Jacobson (Fanny), and Michael Russotto (Hal) in Ali Viterbi's  The World to Come , co-produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Theater J. Photo credit: Cameron Whitman. Because I read (and write) about plays, it is not often that I find myself at a play I have never read (perhaps because it is a world premiere) and about which I have not read much. It is an experience I enjoy, one that puts me in the place of a more casual theatregoer. This was the case when I had the opportunity to attend The World to Come , the world premiere of a new play by Ali Viterbi, co-produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theater J. Because of the way that the play unfolds, part of me would like to skip any discussion of the plot, but I will, because so many of the press items about the play include it. If you would like to have that “first look” experience, please skip ahead to the last paragraph. Part of Viterbi’s strength as a pl...

  Amelia Aguilar, David Toshiro Crane (back to camera), Chelsea Williams, Tracy Lynn Olivera, and Angelo Harrington II in Octet  at Studio Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman. If ever there were a musical that was “of the moment,” Dave Malloy’s intimate a cappella chamber musical Octet is it. Currently on stage in an intimate production in the Victor Shargai space at Washington’s Studio Theatre, Octet allows us to observe eight adults meeting as an addiction support group for what well may be the most common contemporary (and often denied) addiction:   the Internet (referred to as “the Monster” by the characters). The audience is subjected to what some may call a bit of separation anxiety before the play begins: prior to entering the theatre, audience members must power down their own devices and place them in a locked pouch that the theatregoer maintains possession of until exiting the theatre. “But what will they do during intermission?” is not an issue, since the musi...

  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 ...