A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Suli Holum as Daughter (L) and Holly Twyford as Mama (R, projected onto the exterior of her apartment) in My  Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Photo credit: DJ Corey Photography. Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, is more than 5000 miles from Washington, DC. A bit of Ukraine, however, is alive and fighting on D St. NW, where the Woolly Mammoth Theatre (in a co-production with Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre) stages the world premiere of an important new play, continuing through October 8. Sure, you can read about the Ukrainian invasion by the Russians online or catch a report on the news. But if you really want to understand, see My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion by Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova. The program’s “About the Show” provides a more concise summary than I could create: Sasha’s 82-year-old mother, Olga, is on the frontlines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, having lived in Kyiv her whole life. Olga is thrust into increasingly f...

  Omar Lopez-Cepero (center) and the cast of Evita   at Shakespeare Theatre Company.  Photo credit: DJ Corey Photography. Evita , currently running at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (produced in association with the American Repertory Theatre of Cambridge, MA), was the third collaboration between lyricist Tim Rice and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Their first two collaborations focused on Biblical material: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar . Writing a musical (or what one might consider a “rock opera”) about the deceased wife of an Argentinian dictator was about as far afield as possible from its Bible-based precursors. But after listening to a radio program about the life of Eva Perón , R ice convinced Lloyd Webber that this story could be dramatized for the musical stage. Like its predecessors, Evita began life as a “concept album,” released in 1976. Two years later, it appeared on the stage in London’s West End and a year lat...