TheaterPalaver: Shining City

Last Monday night I saw William Bolcom's opera, "A View from the Bridge," based on the Arthur Miller play, at the Kennedy Center.  I tried to enjoy it.  But without the lyricism of the Italian language, the dramatic, operatic delivery seemed disproportionate to such lines as "I was sitting in my office/Usually I've left work by six/But I'd taken an unusually long lunch/And needed to make up my billables." (I only made up part of that.)  During intermission, my friend E predicted that it was going to come out that tough guy Eddie was a male prostitute, because he'd said he'd been "a patsy and a hustler" on the docks of Hoboken and Weehawken.  If only.  If you're an opera fan don't place much weight on my uneducated word, though; the Washington Post's Tim Page loved it, and the opera received rave reviews when it made its premiere in Chicago in 1999.

All that is a long prelude to say how happy I was three days later to be sitting at the Studio Theatre watching a sad, lonely, talky Irish drama.  In Conor McPherson's "Shining City," a widower haunted by his wife's ghost tells his story to a therapist, who has a host of problems of his own.  I won't say more, other than that the New York Times said that "[i]n terms of construction, 'Shining City' is as close to perfection as contemporary playwriting gets."  And that in one scene I got chills all over; it was the most astonishing 3 seconds I've ever experienced at the theater.

"Shining City" runs through December 16.

Studio Theatre
1501 14th Street, NW (at P Street)
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 332-3300

11/14/07 -- Edited to add:  Peter Marks gave the play a great review in today's Washington Post, so if you're interested in tickets you might want to act quickly.

Comments

[contessa]

I wanted to second MB's recommendation -- it's a terrific 90-minutes of theater. Edward Gero -- a regular for years at the Shakespeare Theatre, usually cast as the virile king/general/lord and the recipient of Helen Hayes nominations galore -- is unrecognizable but spellbinding as the aging widower and therapy patient.