Then Ingvarsson’s character’s new husband dies, leaving her poverty-stricken. Through (another) series of unfortunate events, the daughter winds up working in a whorehouse where — sorry, it gets worse — the evil ex-husband is a regular customer.
On the bright side, all is well and functional at the real Ingvarsson-Hemmingsen household. Ingvarsson and Hemmingsen have been acting together since the late 1980s, though they disagree on how many shows this one makes for them (she says 25; he thinks it’s closer to 40). They were pleasantly surprised when their 14-year-old son, Sebastian, expressed interest in auditioning for the show, despite the fact that his part, the son of Ingvarsson’s character, is a non-speaking role.
“I decided we can just make [the play] a family activity,” Ingvarsson said. Their son “can see why his parents are so weird and crazy all the time.”
“It was tougher than I thought,” Sebastian Ingvarsson-Hemmingsen said. “Because I had to go to rehearsal a lot. I had to stay home some days to do homework because I didn’t have time to do it on rehearsal and show days.”
Hemmingsen, who first saw his wife onstage in a 1984 performance of “Hamlet” (the attraction “was instantaneous,” he remembered, which probably did not go over well with his date), says his wife is “one of my favorite actors to work with.”
As for the newest thespian in the family, “I’m proud of my son,” he said. “It’s not an easy feat, but he pulls it off.”
Through Dec. 9. 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. www.wscavantbard.org, 703-418-4808.
A ‘Game’ the audience plays, too
Dog & Pony DC’s “A Killing Game” isn’t a play that you watch. It’s a play that you play.
“A traditional play, as much as I’m loath to say this, can be done without an audience,” said Rachel Grossman, one of the artistic heads of Dog & Pony DC. “And if we don’t have an audience, we can’t do three or four scenes in the show. Literally, there’s no way of executing them.”
The premise: Both audience and actors are residents of a town. The inciting incident: A plague suddenly starts killing citizens at random and sans reason. The result: a study of how humans react to crisis.
Audience members at “A Killing Game” are given cue cards, some of which tell them when and how to die. They are also encouraged to bring smartphones and iPads to follow the end of the world on Twitter, where rumors and paranoia speedily spread, perhaps even outpacing the plague.
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