A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Grace Yoo (top, center) as Hillary Clinton at America's most famous restaurant in  Soft Power  at Signature Theatre. Photo credit: Daniel Rader. Signature Theatre’s current offering,  Soft Power , is a musical with book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang (a Tony-winner for  M. Butterfly ) and music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori (who won Tonys for  Fun Home  and  Kimberly Akimbo ). Part satire, part fantasia, even part homage to the classic American musical  The King and I , and often based on real-life events,  Soft Power  defines its own genre. As the program note tells us, “soft power” is a political strategy in which cultural influence is used to achieve diplomatic results. Think, for example, of China lending pandas to American zoos. In this instance, a Chinese theatre producer tries to convince a Chinese American playwright (known in the script simply as “DHH”) to create a show to be staged in a new theatre built in Sh...

  Stephen Pasquale as Guido Contini in the Kennedy Center's production of Nine . Photo credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. From the time that Nine was announced for this season’s Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center, I have been looking forward to it. Then when Steven Pasquale was announced as the star, I became even more eager, since he made such a strong impression in the KC production of Guys and Dolls in October 2022. After seeing Signature Theatre’s production of The Bridges of Madison County a year ago, I sought out the cast recording, which starred Pasquale and beautifully demonstrated his vocal expertise. Nine is a musical based on what many consider to be Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, “8-1/2” (1963). Playwright Arthur Kopit created the libretto to accompany Maury Yeston’s Tony-winning score (both music and lyrics), which incorporates a variety of musical styles. I haven’t seen the film, but I was fortunate enough to see the ori...

  Julia Masli in ha ha ha ha ha ha ha at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Photo credit: Cameron Whitman Photography. The current offering at Woolly Mammoth, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (which I will refer to as ha 7 ) created, written, co-directed, and performed by Estonian clown Julia Masli, fits neatly with the five Woolly Mammoth shows (one co-produced with Folger Theatre) I have seen in the past year. While they are wildly divergent in subject matter, what ties them all together is this: they would not (and most likely could not) be produced by any other professional theatre in the DC area. Woolly Mammoth’s work gives us a glimpse into a variety of cultural experiences that would not otherwise be accessible to DC audiences. They expand our horizons and challenge our preconceptions about our society and the world around us. The program introduces Julia Masli as “an award-winning clown from Estonia,” but her appearance and performance run counter to mental images of clowns that I brought to t...

  The cast of The Drowsy Chaperone at Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre. (Photo credit: C King Media and SSMTVA.) My first trip to see a show at the Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre (SSMT) in Winchester, Virginia, will not be my last. The Drowsy Chaperone , their current offering (through July 14), was the perfect antidote to the sweltering heat of a July afternoon. It is a rare gem among musicals, totally original, not based on a book, play, movie, or the “greatest hits” of some musician. SSMT gives it just the kind of “lighter than air” production it deserves. We meet “the Man in the Chair,” who addresses us, at first, from the dark. He’s agoraphobic, feeling a little “blue,” in his New York apartment. He seeks some relief by playing the recording of one of his favorite musicals from the 1920s, The Drowsy Chaperone . He recounts the well-worn plot of that show, which is brought to life by the actors who made it famous, and we are treated to the delicious parody that ensues. We are a...

  John Jarboe in  Rose: You Are Who You Eat at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Photo credit: Teresa Castracane. I could not more succinctly explain Rose: You Are Who You Eat than does John Jarboe, who conceived, wrote, and performs it: A true story of gender feasting, set to music. Once upon a vine, John Jarboe’s aunt revealed that John not only had a twin sister in the womb, but that John consumed her: “You ate her. That’s why you are the way you are.” This was a lot for John to swallow! In this musical shrine to the consumed twin, named Rose, John welcomes you into a feast of gender through song, storytelling, and a full plate of wordplay. Something between (or incorporating aspects of) a play, a performance art event, a cabaret act, a stand-up comedy act, and a confessional, this autobiographical tale challenges any (perhaps all) assumptions an audience might have about gender. Opening as it did on the evening after the annual DC Capital Pride parade and during Pride Month, t...

  Step Afrika!'s company performs The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence . Photo by William Perrigen. The current offering at Arena Stage is The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence , performed by the Step Afrika! company, which also created their Magical Musical Holiday Step Show at Arena Stage in December. Migration is a much more diverse production, a synthesis of dance that goes beyond stepping, with aspects of modern, folk, tap, and ballet as well, to a score that combines African-inspired tribal music, jazz, and spirituals, as well as “tunes” created through percussion, including drums, sticks, and the performers’ feet, hands, and bodies, with occasional accompaniment by other instruments. There is minimal use of language outside the lyrics of the handful of songs. The Migration of the title refers to a series of paintings created by the prodigious African American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) depicting aspects of the movement of “the Great Migration” as mil...

  T ina Muñoz Pandya, Lauren Molina, Monica West, Russell Mernagh, and Billy Rude in The Matchbox Magic Flute . Photo by Liz Lauren. Full disclosure: I have very limited experience as an opera-goer and my knowledge of Mozart is mostly confined to Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, Amadeus , and its 1984 film version. Although the performances of both were especially memorable, the details, unfortunately, were not. Mary Zimmerman is certainly having a “DC Moment,” with this play, which she adapted and directed, at the Shakespeare Theatre Company following the Folger’s staging of her Metamorphoses . Both productions continue through June 16. In addition, Zimmerman created The Notebooks of Leonardo daVinci , which STC presented in 2022. A program note lets us know that the “matchbox” in the title refers to those tiny cars on a scale of 1:64. Zimmerman considers this a “miniaturization,” what I see as a kind of “opera-lite” or an abridgement as in Reader’s Digest versions of novels that I...