Mini Reviews

Friday, October 3, 2008

MINI REVIEWS

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

Newly Reviewed

* BIG APPLE CIRCUS

At Dulles Town Center through Oct. 13

This mix of clowns, jugglers, trapeze artists and animal acts manages to dazzle the senses with new routines while providing the comforting familiarity of a simpler, long-ago time. The theme of this year's spectacular is "Play On!" -- with heavy emphasis on the play. Part of Big Apple's charm is the way its acts appeal to all ages. The youngest attendees (and 2-year-olds are regulars) just stare gape-mouthed at what's being done. Older kids try to figure out how it's being done. Parents -- looking at performers often their age or older -- wonder why it's being done. The best theatrical performances transport the audience. The Big Apple Circus does just that -- taking us back, if only for two hours, to a far simpler time.

-- Tracy Grant

Friday at 7, Saturday and Sunday at 12:30 and 4:30, Tuesday at 7, Wednesday at 11 and 7, Thursday at 11 and 7. 21100 Dulles Town Cir., Dulles.http://www.bigapplecircus.org.

BUSYTOWN

At Imagination Stage through Nov. 2

A cheery valentine to the quotidian and adapted from the work of iconic author and illustrator Richard Scarry, this play conjures up a world where a really serious crisis is the delayed arrival of a birthday card or the brazen theft of a bunch of bananas. The story centers on the curious young cat Huckle (Matthew A. Anderson), who tries to bake a cake for a party thrown by his pal Betsy Bear (Emily Levey). Meanwhile, Huckle's best friend, Lowly Worm (a puppet), acts as a letter courier, traveling by boat in the company of the cuddly pirate Capt. Salty (Don Kenneth Mason). Because the narrative is so unsophisticated, the play is probably best suited to younger children.

-- Celia Wren

Saturday and Sunday at 12:30 and 3:30, Wednesday and Thursday at 10:30. 4908 Auburn Ave., Bethesda. 301-280-1660.

* HOST AND GUEST

By Synetic Theatre at Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre through Nov. 9

With heart-stopping artistry, Paata Tsikurishvili has brought back one of his signature pieces, and six years after its unveiling, it is still a stunner. Ben Cunis, Dan Istrate, Philip Fletcher, Irakli Kavsadze and Irina Tsikurishvili, Paata's choreographer-wife, play principal characters in this shattering story of eye-for-an-eye, and they do so with a passion and sure-footedness. Adapted for the company in 2002 by Roland L. Reed from a 19th-century Georgian epic poem, the production explores in 75 gripping minutes the blood-lust that consumes a village in the mountains of the Caucasus after one of its own gives shelter to a member of an enemy tribe. The blunt-force clarity of the play invites you to experience not only the hearts and homes afire in the Caucasus, but also the long-simmering enmities that burst into flame everywhere else.

-- Peter Marks

Friday and Saturday at 8, Sunday at 3, Thursday at 8. 1611 N. Kent St., Arlington. 703-228-1850 or 202-397-7328.

* THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE

At Signature Theatre through Nov. 16

A gloriously macabre immersion awaits you in this riotous comedy that, of all the crazy things, milks Irish terrorism for laughs. A word to the faint of heart: It's crude, it's noisy, it's messy in there. Which of course is the only way to send up a history of pointless carnage. The play's plot concerns a sadistic terrorist hightailing it home to Inishmore at some distressing news. For though he blithely tortures people, Padraic (Karl Miller) harbors a soft spot for Wee Thomas, whom his own wary father (John Lescault) gingerly informs Padraic is feeling poorly. That Wee Thomas is a cat will set in motion a series of twists leading to a wild rendezvous at Pop's cottage. McDonagh's humor is a wondrous mix of the sick and sublime.

-- P.M.

Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, Sunday at 2 and 7, Tuesday at 7:30, Wednesday at 7:30, Thursday at 8. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. 703-820-9771 or 202-397-7328.

* ROMEO AND JULIET

At the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop through Saturday

The all-female production has a merry, let's-put-on-a-show feel about it. Taffety Punk, an outfit run by actors Marcus Kyd and Lise Bruneau -- the latter directs the production -- goes after the male-dominated version across town with a Tina Fey kind of cheek. Bruneau knows how to wring feeling from the poetry, so there is a tender fervor to the attraction this Romeo (Rahaleh Nassri) exhibits for his Juliet (Kelsey Rae Grouge). The actresses of Bruneau's modern-dress treatment effect masculine mannerisms without laying on the swagger (Abby Wood's Tybalt is the exception). The balcony scene, performed on and around the set's sole fixture, rudimentary monkey bars, sweetly illuminates the bloom on Romeo and Juliet's fast-budding love. Julia Brandeberry's Paris, Erin Sloan's Lady Capulet and Elizabeth Webster's Escalus create especially sturdy portraits. And Gilbert brings a welcome air of bravura to Romeo's hyper-dramatic friend.

-- P.M.

Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 3 and 7:30. 545 Seventh St. SE. 202-547-6839.

Continuing

* 1984

At Atlas Performing Arts Center through Sunday

In playwright Christopher Gallu's efficient conversion of George Orwell's cautionary novel, you're meant to feel the full, oppressive weight of a regime obsessed with eradicating dissent and recasting history in its own image. The first act chronicles dystopian rebel Winston Smith's witheringly dull life as a drone in a government records office, where the drudgery involves creating a historical reality based on the whims of the ruling party. Big Brother voiced in the ominous basso of James Konicek is apparently still watching. Only now in HD. As Winston falls in love with the clandestine revolutionary Julia (Laura C. Harris), the scenes give way to more naturalistic ones. In the more dramatic second act, Winston is in custody and faced with the horrific choice of being tortured further or betraying the person he cares about most. Still, the climactic moment at which Party hack O'Brien (Ian LeValley) taunts Fortier's Winston with exposure to his most nightmarish terror brings this production to just the right paranoid temperature.

-- P.M.

Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8 and Sunday at 2. 1333 H St. NE. 202-399-7993.

THE AGING OF THE PLUM

At GALA Theatre-Tivoli through Oct. 12

A portrait of an eccentric all-female household told in scenes whose lyrical dialogue hints at a magical reality evokes the childhood home of two sisters: the spunky Celina (Monalisa Arias) and the more timid Eleonora (Lorena Sabogal). The siblings grow up surrounded by distaff-side relations, including their woolly minded great-aunt, Adriática (Enriqueta Lara), who falls -- or does she fly? -- to her death from the plum tree in the garden. Certainly this production has its vivid and touching moments. In her pigtails and denim capri pants, Celina is engagingly tomboyish, crawling on all fours to stalk imaginary rats or licking a lollipop with reflective slyness. But the script is so lacking in dramatic momentum that this Spanish-language production (there are English surtitles) gently directed by Abel López reels under the influence of its own amused, bemused nostalgia.

-- C.W.

Friday and Saturday at 8, Sunday at 3, Thursday at 8. 3333 14th St. NW. 202-234-7174.

DR. COOK'S GARDEN

At Gunston Arts Center Theater II through Saturday

Things are just a tad too orderly in the peaceful little Vermont town where a young doctor named Jim arrives back home for a sentimental visit. The plot proceeds via long stretches of high-minded conversation until two extremely close colleagues, Jim and his mentor, the avuncular Doc Cook, wind up alone in an unlikely life-and-death struggle. Everybody seems to know everyone else in Greenfield, and the atmosphere is all smiles and affection. But playwright Ira Levin lets the cat out of the bag at the end of Act 1 (the first of three), and once the good Dr. Cook's dirty secret is out, it's tough for the actors to wring much more suspense out of the piece. J.B. Bissex gives a no-nonsense performance as the sympathetic young Jim. The order-obsessed Dr. Cook, on the other hand, is like a wan Dr. Evil in David Schmidt's cooing, smirking turn. As the show staggers toward its mushy finish you'd rather have something crazy and flamboyant to chase away the feeling that you've learned more about Ira Levin than you really need to know.

-- Nelson Pressley

Friday at 8 and Saturday at 2:30 and 9. 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington. 703-548-3092 orhttp://www.americancentury.org.

HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS

At Round House Theatre through Oct. 12

The most becoming features of Blake Robison's eye-pleasing production are the portraits of the four Garcia sisters, embodied with charm and brio by Maggie Bofill, Sheila Tapia, Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey and Veronica del Cerro. In modeling her play closely on the literary structure and style of Julia Alvarezas incisively layered novel, playwright Karen Zacarias manages to navigate much smoother channels when evoking more routine sorts of domestic turmoil -- when she is painting for us the interlocking alliances of the sisters, for example, or the inevitable cultural clashes with Papi (Emilio Delgado) and Mami (Marian Licha). The play succeeds most vividly as a bittersweet, coming-of-age comedy, one not afraid to reflect on various degrees of women's grown-up disillusionments. Even so, this version of the story seems to be waiting in its own sort of limbo, for a subtler and more cohesive next draft.

-- P.M.

Friday at 8, Saturday at 3 and 8, Sunday at 3, Wednesday at 7:30, Thursday at 8. 4545 East West Hwy., Bethesda. 240-644-1100.

RESURRECTION

At Arena Stage through Sunday

Daniel Beaty's perky new poetry slam of a play about the hardness and softness of life for African American men evinces lyrical power, but the taste it leaves on this occasion tends to be a bit saccharine. Beaty splits his inspirational voice six ways, parceling it out to actors playing six male characters across a generational spectrum, their ages running in 10-year increments from 10 to 60. Each character is assigned a central problem: Dre has infected his pregnant girlfriend with HIV. Isaac (Alvin Keith), a 40-year-old Harvard MBA, can't bring himself to confide a key facet of his private life to his 60-year-old minister-father, called simply the Bishop (Jeffery V. Thompson), who himself suffers from an eating disorder. Beaty compels us to accept these men as thoughtful and complex, though his insistence on putting them on symbolically ornate pedestals prevents them from moving us as deeply as they might.

-- P.M.

Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8 and Sunday at 7:30. 1800 S. Bell St., Crystal City. 202-488-3300.

* THE ROAD TO MECCA

At Studio Theatre through Oct. 19

Based heavily on the life of South African artist Helen Martins, Joy Zinoman's riveting revival of Athol Fugard's 1988 drama examines the price one pays for one's art, one's independence, one's values. The Afrikaner citizenry of dusty Nieu Bethesda in the autumn of 1974 is not at all happy that Helen (Tana Hicken) has made her property a haven for "idolatry." Helen's sole ally is an outsider, Elsa (Holly Twyford), a younger woman and English teacher who on this day has driven 800 miles from Cape Town to be with her distressed friend. The town, in the person of a local pastor, Marius (Martin Rayner), is determined to rid itself of Helen and assuage its own guilt over wanting to get rid of her by persuading Helen to give up her house and move into a church-run old-age home. Hicken retreating at times into Helen's shell of insecurity, and advancing at others to embrace the needy Elsa is the urgent heart of the play, ebulliently completing Fugard's penetrating human triangle.

-- P.M.

Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, Sunday at 2 and 7, Tuesday at 8, Wednesday at 8, Thursday at 8. 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-3300.

ROMEO AND JULIET

At Sidney Harman Hall, Shakespeare Theatre through Oct. 18

Does a muskier version of Shakespeare smell as sweet? Er, sorta kinda. The fresh-faced actors playing Romeo (Finn Wittrock) and Juliet (James Davis) in this all-male cast convincingly convey the cau tion-to-the-wind impetuosity of young love. But not the raging fires. The romance with which Wittrock and Davis imbue the story is of a demure variety their kisses are little more than pecks that never allows you to go along fully with the idea they would jump into the grave for each other. The crucial fate-sealing plot twist strikes one as a minor cause for regret, not major source of heartbreak. The goal seems to be to cloak the all-male artifice in as much credibility as possible. The actors play along admirably. Although you'd love to see every aspect of the play so vividly illuminated, director David Muse's gender-restricted gambit is an estimable reminder of how many ro utes can be traveled with Shakespeare and how many more this company needs to explore.

-- P.M.

Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, Sunday at 2 and 7:30, Wednesday at 12 and 7:30, Thursday at 8. 450 Seventh St. NW. 202-547-1122.

THIS PERFECT WORLD

At Theatre on the Run through Oct. 12

T he lone character in Chris Stezin's production is a bit of a basket case, and he seems to know it. Remembering through the dark waters of perception is how Alan, the shell-shocked subject of this hour-long monologue, describes his mission. Coupled with a mean streak of post-9/11 xenophobia, this character study is a mashup of psychological puzzles and outright lies that you are not terribly compelled to solve. Facts and fictions eventually get sorted out, but it's hard to connect Alan to anything larger than the unhappy and sometimes ugly patterns in his own head. Actor Jason Lott's storytelling has understated drive, and he is nicely attuned to the bits of comic relief; it's not a humorless play. But the drama is a little too gnomic for its own good. "Living is a straight line," Alan says in one of his many unlikely writerly pronouncements, "but remembering is a kaleidoscope." The play is indeed a restlessly turning kaleidoscope, but at least the performance is a nif ty straight line.

-- N.P.

Friday and Saturday at 8, Sunday at 3, Thursday at 8. 3700 S. Four Mile Run Dr., Arlington. 703-243-6366.