Mini Reviews

Friday, June 16, 2006

Mini Reviews

A star (*) denotes a show recommended by our critics.

Opening

CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO

(At Studio Theatre through June 25)

This is an agonizingly realistic ride in the cockpits of six doomed aircraft that crashed between 1985 and 1996, based on the transcripts of recorded conversations among pilots and air traffic controllers, grimly reenacting the final stages of each of these real disasters, in which pilots are confronted with friendly skies suddenly becoming harrowingly hostile. The play -- whose title comes from industry lingo for "cockpit voice recorder" -- is fascinating in the way that a car accident seems to be. Virtually all the airline employees depicted here are engaged until the last seconds in a methodical effort at trying to solve problems of bewildering complexity. It's cathartic but by no means entertaining. You might be glad you saw it, although it's also likely you'll never want to see it again.

-- Peter Marks

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR

(By Washington Shakespeare Company at the Clark Street Playhouse through July 2)

In this desiccated, Southern Gothic staging, director H. Lee Gable marinates Lillian Hellman's right-minded 1930s melodrama in postmodern sexual politics. He unconventionally repopulates Hellman's saga of a homophobic panic and its consequences, most notably putting men in two critical female roles. The play takes place in a girls school that a little devil named Mary brings down through vicious innuendo and blackmail. Miffed over not much, Mary whines to her influential grandmother that Martha and Karen, the women who run the place, are, well . . . you know. There's nothing subtle about the casting gambit. Jay Hardee is a towering, physically majestic young Rosalie, the nervous girl whom Mary blackmails into confirming her ruinous lie. As Martha, who's in a crippling funk over the impending marriage of Karen to good-natured Dr. Joe Cardin, Christopher Henley is reedy and doomed-looking. Radical recalculations come with additions and subtractions, and these are the casualties of Gable's absorption with the second part of Hellman's brokeback play (the tale of Martha and Karen), as opposed to the first part (the tale of Mary, the bad seed, Hellman's original inspiration). That preference is understandable: The end of the play, when it works, is what wrecks you.

-- Nelson Pressley

* LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

(At the Shakespeare Theatre through July 30)

Michael Kahn's Beatles- and Rolling Stones-inspired rethink of this classic proves to be a frisky mingling of Elizabethan wit and Nehru-jacketed satire. Kahn has transferred this Shakespeare high comedy, with its multiple pairs of standoffish lovers and sly juxtapositions of foolishness and wisdom, to an ashram in India, where the King of Navarre (Amir Arison) is now a mystic. The young lords are world-famous rock-and-rollers, and their love objects are dishy, miniskirted coquettes. Composer Adam Wernick turns Shakespeare's lyrics into rock ballads for the lovesick members of the band -- pleasingly played by Hank Stratton, Erik Steele and Aubrey Deeker. The long-haired rockers grab electric guitars and drumsticks to sing about their puppy-dog crushes. Although they begin the play as recruits to Navarre's brand of asceticism, swearing off women in favor of study, all of them, Navarre included, succumb to attraction. By play's end, they're not merely besotted, though. They've all come to a more mature understanding of love, one worthy of the type of strong commitment they initially sought just as adamantly to avoid.

-- P.M.

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT

(At the National Theatre through July 9)

Jews, gays, cows, amputees, monks, Finns, historians, bunnies, bed-wetters, socialists, the French, the English, the Scots, the runs, the dead, the Apostles, the Bible and Andrew Lloyd Webber all find their places on the smorgasbord of rib-tickling targets in the silliest romp to hit these parts since Wilbur Mills played the Tidal Basin. The new touring version of the Tony-winning musical, is of absolutely, positively no redeeming social value. It leers, it taunts, it panders, with the selfsame mix of highbrow and lowbrow lunacy that made Monty Python one-of-a-kind funny. The gags, many recycled from classic Python sketches and, principally, from the group's 1975 film, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," don't all go over uproariously. But far more than enough of its rampant shamelessness survives here -- thanks to director Mike Nichols and the daft Python alum Eric Idle, who wrote the script -- to ensure that you feel you've successfully taken the outrageous-comedy cure.

-- P.M.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND OTHER PLAYS

(By Scena Theatre at Warehouse Theatre through July 9)

If you hunger for Harold Pinter's polemics, you can subject yourself to this tedious showcase of short works in which Pinter broods on how the powerful abuse the powerless. Robert McNamara has grouped three one-acts written in response to international conflicts. "One for the Road" is the dramatist's 1984 outcry against actions in Nicaragua; "Mountain Language," his 1988 protest against Turkey's treatment of the Kurds; and "The New World Order," (1991) a grim meditation on the Persian Gulf War. The scenarios are nightmarishly vivid, but they seem tethered to a peculiarly simplistic view of evil. McNamara's production trots out some harrowing images, and the show has an asset in David Bryan Jackson, who brings a sinister charisma to bad-guy roles in all three pieces. This 70-minute production will appeal to Pinter specialists, who will be best equipped to appreciate the echoes and variations among the three dystopias.

-- Celia Wren

Continuing

* ASSASSINS

(At Signature Theatre through July 30)

Director Joe Calarco has found an absorbingly original way to bring out the harsh, satirical colors in this controversial 1991 Sondheim musical. Rather than place the historical characters -- nine killers and would-be killers of U.S. presidents -- in some surreal environment, as other productions have done, he's made a home for them in the kind of surroundings every consumer of entertainment has to be familiar with. The approach is boldly, stylishly theatrical, a match for the nerviness of the show itself. Calarco's achievement is allowing us to develop an intimate bond -- and perhaps even better understand our shared cultural conditioning -- with the lunatics, misfits and malcontents who shoot their way into American political history.

-- P.M.

* CAROLINE, OR CHANGE

(At Studio Theatre through July 9)

Librettist Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori add affecting hues and textures to the gathering strife in and around a Southern Jewish household in the early phases of the civil rights era. Studio's juicy production, ably staged by director Greg Ganakas, does justice to this tricky material, and the show is thrillingly sung by the 18 actors who've been cast with both a fine eye and a keen ear. Anchoring the evening are sixth-grader Max Talisman, playing 9-year-old Noah Gellman, and Julia Nixon, who is a wonderful, brooding Caroline Thibodeaux, the Gellman family housekeeper. Noah grieves over the death of his mother and fixates on Caroline, despite her contempt for him and his family. Noah gets little support from his distraught, distant father and callously dismisses his stepmother's maternal overtures. Studio has distinguished itself of late with a spate of standout productions, and now the company is hitting more high notes.

-- P.M.

* THE ELEPHANT MAN

(At Olney Theatre Center through Sunday)

I n many respects, this is the same effectively dark, focused production staged at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop by the Catalyst Theater Company in 2004. Director Jim Petosa is back, as are five of the six actors, with the lone new player deepening the show considerably. The historical figure referred to in the title is the famously deformed John Merrick, a Victorian Englishman who evolved from a back-alley freak-show attraction to a curio of mainstream society. Scott Fortier's turn as Merrick is as compelling as before, and Valerie Leonard, James Slaughter, James Konicek, John Dow and Barbara Pinolini are back as the strong ensemble. Christopher Lane joins the cast as Merrick's doctor, Frederick Treves. As Pomerance's indictment takes shape, it's Treves who delineates the contours. L ane brings enough inner turbulence to do the show justice, making this "Elephant Man" not just bigger, but better.

-- N.P.

* FAUST

(By Synetic Theatre at the Kennedy Center through Sunday)

It's no picnic being Dr. Faust, but in the naughtily fertile imaginations of Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili, at least it's an orgy. The temperature rises in the team's adaptation of the legend of the man who sells his soul to Satan. What you get is Goethe by way of the Playboy Channel, in which a gym-built Faust (Greg Marzullo) partakes steamily of the flesh served to him on a Mephistophelean platter. Director Paata Tsikurishvili has the notion that the bargain Faust strikes propels him into a punk-bar demimonde, populated by attractive young dancing demons and presided over by a leather-clad Satan (Dan Istrate). Marzullo and Irina Tsikurishvili make for supple house dancers, and Istrate reveals himself to be a fine, slithery major domo. At the Club Beelzebub they create, hellish is not a bad way to feel.

-- P.M.

* FROZEN

(At Studio Theatre through Sunday)

Nancy Robinette, Andrew Long and MaryBeth Wise are a superb triumvirate in Bryony Lavery's crisply devastating play about the intertwining calamities that befall a criminologist, a serial killer and the mother of a murdered child. The crux of the play is the kidnapping and killing of Nancy's daughter, a girl we never meet. From this hub the narrative spokes radiate, conveyed through interwoven monologues and a chain of encounters. The production, directed by David Muse, is an exhibition of exquisitely wrought acting. Andrew Long, MaryBeth Wise and Kimberly Schraf star in Bryony Lavery's crisply devastating play about the intertwining calamities that befall a criminologist, a serial killer and the mother of a murdered child. The crux of the play is the kidnapping and killing of Nancy's daughter, a girl we never meet. From this hub the narrative spokes radiate, conveyed through interwoven monologues and a chain of encounters. (The role of Nancy, originally played by Nancy Robinette, has been taken over by Kimberly Schraf.) Wise's Agnetha interviews the incarcerated Ralph (Long), then meets with Nancy (Schraf), who ultimately instigates Ralph's prison catharsis. The production, directed by David Muse, is an exhibition of exquisitely wrought acting.

-- P.M.

GAUCHOS

(By Teatro de la Luna at the Gunston Arts Center through Saturday)

Illumination is often a good thing in a play, and in Carlos Pais's quirky Argentine work, it's the essential thing. Patricia (Anabel Marcano), a young freelance writer, has just moved into a shabby apartment with no electricity. Word is that there's a guy who lives under the bridge who can wire up anyone, anywhere. But the guy who enters isn't the guy. Instead of that guy, she encounters an older man, Poyo Mojado ("Wet Chicken"), whose funny stories are delivered deadpan by actor-director Mario Marcel. Marcano's character remains shapeless until near the end of the play, when Patricia blows up about the world's injustice and confides about the bleak book she's writing. That is when Pais most directly invokes the desaparecidos, the thousands killed or "disappeared" in Argentina in the 1970s. Another playwright might have chosen to exhume that history in a second full act. Everything is not illuminated, but at least the switching on of a single bulb signifies a way to move on.

-- N.P.

MAME

(At the Kennedy Center through July 2)

Christine Baranski creates an earnest wake as the title character in director Eric Schaeffer's genial production. However, her work isn't sufficiently take-charge; it exposes us to the gifts of a skilled actress rather than a star. Given some of the musical's constraints, Schaeffer and his team do a more than respectable job of maximizing the show's assets. The choreography by Warren Carlyle has real verve, and the cast is Broadway-caliber, including Harrison Chad as young Patrick, the nephew dropped into Mame's privileged life. Despite all the progressive ideas in which she schools him, she watches in horror as he grows up enamored of bigoted white-bread Americana. The deck is stacked so heavily in Mame's favor that the only possible role the show allots us is as her personal cheering section. If we're going to root for Baranski on her own terms, then she's got to meet ours: Please, Ms. Baranski: Relax and be a star.

-- P.M.

* THE MONUMENT

(By Theater Alliance at H Street Playhouse through Sunday)

In Colleen Wagner's stark 1995 drama, Stetko (Alexander Strain) is a captured soldier in some war-ravaged Eastern European state, and Jennifer Mendenhall's Mejra is his peasant-jailer who forces him into slave labor and pummels him with planks and shovels. Stetko has confessed to the rapes and murders of 23 women, acts he claims to have committed only because it was expected of men in the ranks. When Mejra finally coaxes out of him the information she's after, she must struggle with her own moral code. Mendenhall is fiercely watchable as a marginalized woman suddenly dealt an upper hand, and Strain imbues Stetko with all the repulsive cowardliness the role demands. Tautly directed by John Vreeke, this is a powerfully staged meditation on war crimes and those who seek to avenge them.

-- P.M.

A MURDER, A MYSTERY AND A MARRIAGE

(At Round House Theatre through June 25)

This adaptation of a Mark Twain story gets an original bluegrass score, with dialogue and lyrics by director Aaron Posner and music by James Sugg. Set in a hicker-than-hick Missouri town called Deer Lick, Hugh (Ben Dibble) is in love with Mary (Erin Weaver), the daughter of poor hog farmer John (Anthony Lawton). However, after John's rich brother David (Thomas Adrian Simpson) stipulates that Mary can get his money upon his death only if she does not wed Hugh, Mary's father forbids their marrying. Soon, David turns up with a knife in his back and Hugh stands accused, even though the shady, French-accented ferriner (Scott Greer) is acting awful guilty-like. Country-bumpkin humor is a hard sell, and the charms of "A Murder" seem as synthetic as the laugh track on "The Beverly Hillbillies."

-- P.M.