A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  The cast during the opening scene of  As You Like It  at Shakespeare Theatre Company: this will be an  As You Like It  as you've never seen before. Credit: Teresa Castracane Photography. I am the first to admit that I do not know Shakespeare’s  As You Like It  well, certainly not well enough to know when portions of Shakespeare’s poetry and prose have been deleted. I can recognize some obvious gender changes (Duke Frederick has become Dame Frances and Duke Senior is now Dame Senior) as well as anachronisms and throw-way added lines (when two characters need to hide at one point, one asks why and the other replies, “Because Shakespeare”). When I saw that the Shakespeare Theatre Company would be presenting  As You Like It  with a score of Beatles songs and in an environment of flower power and free love, I was skeptical. I need not have concerned myself. Just as they did a year ago with their  Much Ado About Nothing  set in the newsroom and studios of the fictitious cable TV Shakes

  The opening number of  Step Afrika!'s  Magical Musical Holiday Step Show  at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Photo by Jati Lindsay. Step Afrika!’s Magical Musical Holiday Step Show , the current offering (through December 17) in Arena Stage’s Fichandler Theatre is an eye-opening, high-energy, creative, acrobatic exhibition of amazing dexterity and versatility by the first professional company dedicated to the tradition of stepping. Step Afrika! was founded 1994 by C. Brian Williams, who continues as the company’s executive director. Stepping gained popularity through the Greek letter fraternities and sororities (the so-called “Divine Nine”) at African American colleges through the last century. Per the StepAfrika! website : Stepping is a percussive, highly-energetic art form first developed through the song and dance rituals performed by African-American fraternities and sororities.  In stepping, the body becomes an instrument, using footsteps, claps and

  Stark Sands (Big Brother), John Gallagher, Jr. (Mate), Wayne Duvall (Captain), and Adrian Blake Enscoe (Little Brother) in the opening scene of Arena Stage's East Coast premiere of  Swept Away . Photo by Julieta Cervantes. Upon entering the Kreeger Theatre at Arena Stage, the image is of the deck of what we will discover to be an 1880s whaling ship. At the center of the stage is a man in a hospital bed, which we learn is in the tuberculosis ward for indigents. In the bed is a character we will come to know only as “Mate.” He is clearly in great pain, probably more psychic than physical. He is delusionary as three figures enter his room from the ship’s deck visible behind him. All know that Mate’s death is imminent. To ease his pain and clear his conscience, the apparitions tell him that he must tell their story, painful as it will be. The hospital bed is removed and we move back in time some twenty years to the deck of that whaler, which is alive with movement and noise as the