mb palaver

TheaterPalaver: Little Thing, Big Thing

If you're sticking around DC for Thanksgiving weekend, you have four chances (Friday, twice Saturday, and Sunday) to experience Solas Nua's latest production, Little thing, Big Thing.  Two actors take on a dozen or more roles in this funny, suspenseful, and insightful buddy caper (involving a petty thief and a Scottish nun in Ireland via Nigeria).  The play is staged in a theater in the back of a gallery on G Street near Gallery Place.  These performances are too good not to be given to packed houses.  And the theme is timely, focused on the importance of taking what little steps you can to effect big changes in the face of corruption.  You can find tickets here.

TheaterPalaver: Prince Achmed is Back at Constellation Theatre

Constellation Theater will be presenting, Thursday through Saturday, another production of "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" at The Source on 14th Street.  (Thursday is sold out online, but you can put your name on a waiting list at the box office.)  I loved it when I saw it 3 years ago -- check out my previous rave.  You can also take advantage of the relative quiet in Washington to grab a bite before or after on the patio at Etto, Le Diplomate, Cork, or Doi Moi (or, as my friend Judi calls it, Boy Toy).

TheaterPalaver: Good People?

If you're still looking for something to do tonight or tomorrow night, there are still a few tickets left for "Good People" at Arena Stage.  The theater's description is below.  I thoroughly enjoyed this play -- it's pretty sad in many respects, but in between the sad bits it's hilarious.

 

"Enter the black hole of South Boston’s Lower End at your own risk. It’s an all too familiar place where minimum wage is the maximum wage and hard work and sacrifice don’t always add up to the ‘American Dream.’  But mouthy “Southie” native Margie, a single mother facing eviction, has got a plan to solve all her financial problems - and it’s just crazy enough to work. From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole), Good People is a “poignant, brave and almost subversive” (New York Post) dark comedy about life in a broke and broken American town."

TheaterPalaver: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

I was a bit dubious when Contessa asked if I wanted to see a play about professional wrestling.  But as Chris Klimek at Washington City Paper says:

For a show that urges the fine-dining, public radio-listening sophisticates who make up Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s subscriber base to tap their suppressed bloodlust and chant for a professional wrestler to end one of his opponents with his customary coup de grace—“Pow! Er! Bomb! Pow! Er! Bomb!”—The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is surprisingly philosophical.

I'll leave the philosophizing to him and other critics, and just say that "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," at Woolly Mammoth through October 7, is an entertaining night out, with fine performances, a wrestling ring descending from the rafters, and (fake) wrestling that was so real that the woman next to me kept going into a full-body cringe any time somebody was dropped to the mat.  Kristoffer Diaz's play was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer prize for drama.  Highlights include the, yes, elaborate entrance of the egocentric title character, long-haired, fake-pot-bellied, real-life wrestler James Long mincing around the ring like a cross between a 5-year-old girl and a circus clown, and Mace, the wrestler-philosopher, comparing somebody to Cate Blanchett in Uncle Vanya.

Tickets are available here.

TheaterPalaver: Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play

Imagine America after some undefined apocalyptic event, where no one has access to electricity anymore, and people keep the culture alive by piecing together -- and later staging -- episodes of The Simpson's.   This world premiere of Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play is by turns funny and dark. You don't have to be a Simpsons aficionado (I'm not) to love the play, though I would imagine die-hard fans of the TV show would really eat it up.  Some knowledge of the two versions of the movie Cape Fear (or at least the Robert DeNiro one) wouldn't hurt either.  (And there's even something for Gilbert and Sullivan -- not to mention Diet Coke -- fans.)  See it at Woolly Mammoth through July 1.  As a bonus, Oyamel is offering a fixed price menu in the lobby before the show.  For those not versed in The Simpsons, you might want to try to find a video of the Cape Feare episode before the show, or at least read the wikipedia summary.  Find the Washington Post's rave review here.  Or just go see it!

TheaterPalaver: The Adventures of Prince Achmed at the Source

When a friend asked if I wanted to see a 1926 animated German film accompanied by a live original score, my first thought was "um, I'm busy that month."  But I'm a come-with kind of girl.  And I'm glad I did.  The event, presented by the Constellation Theatre Company at the Source theater on 14th Street in Washington, opened tonight and runs for two more nights.  Tickets are $20, or $13.50 (with service charge) via Goldstar.  The visuals are remarkably inventive, and it's simply astounding that the musical accompaniment is being played by one man -- Tom Teasley -- who didn't seem to take a breath for more than an hour while playing his improvisational eastern-influenced jazz score.  Here's how Constellation describes it:

German visionary artist Lotte Reiniger, using a silhouette technique inspired by shadow puppetry, created The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving animation feature film.  The narrative is based on stories from The Arabian Nights.  A wicked sorcerer tricks Prince Achmed into riding a magical flying horse, which he uses to embark on many adventures. While travelling, he falls in love with the beautiful Princess Peri Banu, and must defeat an army of demons to win her heart.

Helen Hayes Award Winner Tom Teasley’s innovative world music score is based upon his collaborations with indigenous musicians in Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the West Bank and Jerusalem during his work as a Cultural Envoy for the U.S. State Department. Teasley has been an artist-in-residence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and has collaborated with the National Symphony as both a soloist and composer.  He will play live in Constellation’s upcoming production of Metamorphoses in May.

 

Image from goldstar.com.

TheaterPalaver: Yea Yeats!

If you're looking for a literary way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day this weekend, Scena Theatre is staging readings of three plays by William Butler Yates on Sunday.  Purgatory, At the Hawk's Well, and The Death of Cuchulain will be read at the H Street Playhouse at 7 pm.  Tickets are $20.  I've always liked Yeats, even if this photo, on a poster of Irish writers at Moran's, always reminded me of Dan Akroyd.

Now that I've low-browed Yeats, let me offer one of his best known poems:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

 

TheaterPalaver: Swampoodle

I don't know what to make of Solas Nua's latest theater offering.  The Washington-based Irish arts organization is staging a "promenade show" called Swampoodle, starting this weekend.  All their website gives by way of description is:

It's the question on everyone's lips: What on earth is Swampoodle? A rundown part of town where the Beatles sang and the girls screamed? An underground ghetto where the Irish fought and died? A beat-up urban Cathedral where Malcolm X lectured the Nazis and Nureyev danced? There's only one way to find out!

Warning! Swampoodle may contain eye-popping high-wire feats, roller derby smack-downs and scenes of a spectacular nature.

Please note that this is a promenade show and the audience is not seated.

As far as I can tell, you wander along with the cast inside the U-line arena -- which was renamed the Washington Coliseum n 1959 -- where, according to Wikipedia, the Beatles played their first concert in the U.S.  More importantly (presumably), from Solas Nua's standpoint, it's located in the area of DC once known as Swampoodle -- an area settled by Irish immigrants in the 19th century fleeing the potato famine.  Again, according to Wikipedia (so it must be true):

The name Swampoodle is attributed to a newspaper reporter covering the ground-breaking of St Aloysius Catholic church in 1857, who referred to the land at the site on North Capitol and I street as containing numerous swamps and puddles - which often occurred when Tiber Creek overflowed its banks.

I've lived in DC for most of the past 31 years, and don't ever recall hearing this term, which may be reason enough to check out Solas Nua's potentially bizarre show.

Swampoodle
Friday, May 20- Saturday, May 28
Tickets are $16

Audience members requiring special assistance should contact the Solas Nua office directly at (202) 315-1317 so that arrangements can be made.

TheaterPalaver: Last Call for the Last Cargo Cult at Woolly Mammoth

At some point during Mike Daisey's two-hour monologue at Woolly Mammoth last night about a trip to the South Pacific island of Tanna for their annual John Frum celebration, the American banking crisis, the concept of currency and trust, and assorted other things, he poked fun at the audience's dither over the coming blizzard:  "'We're lucky we're here tonight.  The people tomorrow night are f#%ed.'"  (I'm paraphrasing.  Except I'm sure of the last word.)  Turns out the people tonight and tomorrow night are, indeed, . . .  unlucky, because the show is snowed out.  And it is sold out on Sunday, which was due to be its last night.  Because of the snow-outs, though, they've added a show on Monday night, and tickets are still available.

Though "The Last Cargo Cult" deals with serious themes, it is frequently laugh-out-loud funny.  (I'm not proud to say I split my side when he talked about the way the celebrating islanders wove tinsel through their hair and clothes, and said something like "If Martha Stewart saw what they did with tinsel, she'd s@!& herself."  Note:  this show is not for those who don't care for cursing.)  Daisey tells his story seated at a table with a glass of water, Spalding Gray style, but his delivery is a combination of Lewis Black, Jack Black, and Chris Farley.  Check out the Washington Post review here.

"The Last Cargo Cult"
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
641 D Street, NW  20004
Washington, DC
Box office:  (202) 393-3939

Photo from www.woollymammoth.net.

TheaterPalaver: Avenue Q

Avenue Q, the multi-Tony-award-winning, irreverent, Muppet-like puppet show, started a brief run in DC tonight at the Warner Theatre.  I haven't been yet (I'm going later this week), but who wouldn't like a puppet musical featuring the song Schadenfreude?

The show runs from today through Sunday, February 15, and it looks like some shows still have tickets available.

Warner Theatre
1299 Pennsylvania Ave., NW (near corner of 13th and E)
Washington, DC  20004
(202) 783-4000