A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Kelly McAndrew, Megan Hill, Sarah-Anne Martinez, Natalya Lynette Rathnam, Felicia Curry, Yesenia Iglesias, and Naomi Jacobson in  POTUS  at Arena Stage. Photo by Kian McKellar. The program for POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive by Selina Fillinger, currently on-stage at Arena Stage’s Fichandler Theatre (through November 12), describes the play’s setting as: The White House. Perhaps not the current administration, exactly – but broad strokes of past presidents, combined with stress diagrams of future ones. And if we’re being honest, an amalgamation of them all… How does someone satirize contemporary politics when reality often stretches the imagination? How can a playwright create a situation that is even more absurd and bizarre than those we’ve lived through in the past 25 years or so and/or are currently experiencing? In retrospect, some of the plot twists that seemed unthinkable on recent series such as “Veep” and “...

  Chelsea Lee Williams, Stacey Sargeant, Ximone Rose, and Whitney White in Macbeth in Stride . Photo credit: Teresa Wood. Macbeth in Stride , the current offering at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Klein Theatre, defies easy classification. Not exactly a play, not exactly a musical, it is a mix of numerous musical genres, part concert, part musing upon one of the most famous female characters in Shakespeare’s canon, part feminist screed, part reenactment of scenes from the play, it is a contemporary critique of sexual politics in general and sexual politics of the African American woman in specific. Those who experience it – and I use that word purposefully, because the audience members are not mere spectators – will find their attention rapt in its ideas and will challenge the more traditional interpretations of the character. One woman is at the heart of it – the heart and soul (in every possible meaning of the word) is Whitney White. “Created and performed by Whitney White” i...

  Shubhangi Kuchibhotla (Citizen 8), Derek Garza  (Citizen 9), Kim Be y (Citizen 1), Shaquille Stewart  (Citizen 4), and Constance Swain (Citizen 2) in the  2023  Ford ’ s Theatre world premiere production of  Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard  by Pearl Cleage , directed by Seema Sueko .  The production continues through  Oct.  15, 2023,  and  features s cenic d esign by  Milagros Ponce de León , costume design  by  Ivania Stack , lighting design by  Jeanette Oi - Suk  Yew , sound design by  André  J. Pluess , p rojection  d esign by  Shawn Duan, h air and makeup design by  Danna Rosedahl, dramaturgy  by Faedra Chatard  Carpenter, and dialects and voice direction by  Lisa Nathans. Photo by Scott Suchman. A cast list that includes one named character (“The Witness”) and nine others named Citizen 1, Citizen 2, etc. indicates right away that  Something M...

  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...

  Mark Evans (Robert Kincaid) and Erin Davie (Francesca Johnson) in The Bridges of Madison County . Photo credit: Daniel Rader. Amazing, when you think about it, how much of our lives can be traced back to chance meetings, to finding ourselves in a place or with people unexpectedly. We may think we plan, but much of life is happenstance.  As Francesca sings in “Always Better,” the final number:      You could have driven into someone else’s driveway.      You could have tried to find the bridge another day.      I could have gone off to the Fair,      Or locked the door, or washed my hair…. A chance encounter incites the action of The Bridges of Madison County , the 2014 musical version of the best-selling 1992 novel by Robert James Waller, which also served as the basis for the acclaimed 1995 film starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. Marsha Norman is responsible for the book and Jason Robert Brown for the music ...