DC Metro Spotlight: March 2006

It’s a month of mostly tried-and-true favorites in the nation’s capital, but there are a couple of world premieres to satisfy those with a hunger for something new.

Arena Stage is opening two major productions that are both proven crowd-pleasers. N. Richard Nash’s The Rainmaker is a gentle story of faith, community, and rebirth in a drought stricken town as a woman, who believes she is destined to be an old maid, is enchanted by a mysterious man who promises rain. Broadway’s Johanna Day stars as lonely Lizzie Currie, Tony Award winner Frank Wood is her ultimate love interest, Sheriff Fife, while Michael Laurence plays charming con man Bill Starbuck (March 3-April 9). Meanwhile, the Kreeger becomes a small bar in South Philadelphia, circa 1959, for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, an intimate “play with music” that showcases the life and music of Billie Holiday as the singer plays one last gig before her untimely death (March 31-June 4).

TV star Scott Bakula is starring in another audience favorite, the Civil War musical Shenandoah, at Ford’s Theatre, directed by Jeff Calhoun. Bakula plays a pacifist Virginia farmer who tries to shield his family from the war. (March 17-May 21). Studio Theatre has a fresh adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie from Jay Presson Allen in the Metheny Theatre. Local favorite Sarah Marshall stars as the charismatic schoolteacher in 1930s Scotland who seeks to influence her students as war clouds gather (March 8-16). And director-choreographer Maurice Hines opens his brand new musical Hot Feet at the National Theatre for a pre-Broadway tryout. This re-imagining of the classic “The Red Shoes” stars Keith David, Ann Duquesnay, Allen Hidalgo, and Vivian Nixon, and boasts a score by Maurice White of the famed R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire. (March 21-April 9).

Elsewhere around town, local playwright and director Paul Donnelly has the world premiere of Whole Against the Sky at Trumpet Vine Theatre Company, about a gay man and his sister dealing with their mother’s pending marriage to a homophobe (March 23-April 15); the Irish troupe Solas Nua serves up The Mai, Irish playwright Marina Carr’s play about a middle-aged headmistress living in a remote area with her children and estranged husband (March 2-March 26); Washington Stage Guild presents Fanny’s First Play, George Bernard Shaw’s 1911 play about a father who invites critics to tell his playwright daughter what they think about her work (March 2-April 2); and the Didactic Theatre Company stages Sam Shepard’s dark comedy God of Hell (March 2-March 19).

Theatre Alliance delves into a musical adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, about a storyteller who loses his ability to tell tales and the son who sets out to the fabled Sea of Stories, where many of his father’s wild yarns live (March 2-April 2): Spooky Action Theatre presents a new version of philosopher Denis Diderot’s 18th-century satire of French society, Rameau’s Nephew (March 8-April 2); The American Century Theatre stages Lillian Hellman’s little-seen The Autumn Garden, about six friends looking back on their lives (March 16-April 15); Signature Theatre presents the East Coast premiere of Julie Marie Myatt’s The Sex Habits of American Women, a comic skewering of sexual mores in the 1950s (March 28-May 7); Rorschach Theatre revisits Tony Kushner’s first play, A Bright Room Called Day, about artists caught in the rise of Nazi Germany (March 29-April 29); and the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts revives the great Cole Porter musical Anything Goes (March 29-April 30).

Finally, parents seeking something thought provoking for the kids should note that The Kennedy Center’s Family Theater is presenting a stage version of Barry Denenberg’s book Citizen 13559: The Journal of Ben Uchida, the story of a Japanese-American boy who is sent to a California internment camp during World War II (March 10-March 26).