DC Metro Spotlight: January 2006

The New Year brings some exciting offerings to local stages, including the revival of a Pulitzer Prize-winning work, the world premiere of a work from acerbic playwright Neil LaBute, and a musical that puts the macabre poetry and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe to song.

Topping the must-see list is the Kennedy Center’s staging of The Subject Was Roses, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play by Frank D. Gilroy. Film and stage star Bill Pullman, two-time Tony Award winner Judith Ivey, and Steve Kazee, star under the direction of Leonard Foglia, who did last season’s On Golden Pond. This1964 play explores a family in crisis following World War II, and promises resonance with contemporary experiences of a society at war (Eisenhower Theater, January 7-January 29).

Studio Theatre, which has done quite well with Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things and bash: latterday plays is LaBute territory again this month, beginning with a staging of Fat Pig, his pointed and sometimes funny look at love, obesity, and prejudice (Mead Theatre, January 4-February 12). Meanwhile, Studio’s Secondstage will be the first to show autobahn, seven short plays set in the front seat of “an average family car” (January 11-February 5). The theater is also promoting “A Day in LaButeville,” a package deal featuring performances of both plays, readings from the writer’s short stories, and post-show discussions (January 21, 22, 28, and 29).

At Arlington’s Signature Theatre, artistic director Eric Schaeffer directs his final show in their current space, a former auto-repair shop in a gritty industrial area that he turned into a nationally recognized theater. He is guiding Nevermore, a world premiere musical that uses Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and short stories to highlight his romantic obsession with several women (January 10-February 26). Another world premiere is Mary Hall Surface and David Maddox’s Lift: Icarus and Me, for which the pair have transposed the Greek myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, to eastern Texas (George Mason University, January 19-February 5).

Arena Stage is welcoming founding director Zelda Fichandler home from New York for the first time in 10 years to direct a revival of Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets. Robert Prosky will star in this story of a Jewish family in the Bronx during the Great Depression. Fichandler is restoring some of the Yiddish that Odets removed in later reworking of the drama, hoping it makes the play a pointed comment on current turmoil over immigration (January 20-March 5). Local playwright-made-good Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s newest work, The Velvet Sky, will premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. It’s a “comic nightmare fantasy” about a woman who has not slept in 13 years because she thinks she has to protect her son from “the sandman” (January 30-March 5). And local theater luminaries Keith Bridges, Chris Stezin, and Richard Washer have come up with something called Monkeyboy, about an annoying cockatoo. It will no doubt ruffle some feathers (Charter Theatre at The National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, January 4-29).

Elsewhere around town, the Shakespeare Theatre Company has a new translation of Molière’s Don Juan starring Jeremy Webb and Michael Milligan (January 24-March 19); the Folger Theatre has Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (January 19-February 26); and the Rorshach Theater Company is presenting Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, Peter Oswald’s adaptation of a 17th-century Japanese play about the forbidden love between a samurai and a lady-in-waiting (January 18-February 18).

Back in Virginia, Arlington’s American Century Theatre promises a “fresh new generational look” at Edgar Lee Masters’ portrait of American life, Spoon River Anthology (January 6-28), while Alexandria’s Metrostage has the local premiere of Two Queens, One Castle, featuring gospel, R&B, and pop music as it explores motherhood, faith, and family (January 18 to March 5).

Those seeking family fare can head to the Kennedy Center’s Family Theatre for Brave No World: Identity. Community. Stand-Up Comedy. This original production by Laurie Brooks features hip-hop music as it mixes storytelling with comedy “rants” inspired by literary classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Invisible Man, and Brave New World into a guide to making the transition from childhood to adulthood. There are a variety of performances of the one-hour show on January 27 and 28.