DC Metro Spotlight: April 2006
The Broadway debut of Julia Roberts in Tony Award winner Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain is creating tons of buzz, but theatergoers in the nation’s capital are more excited that Theatre J is staging the world premiere of his Bal Masque (April 3-May 21). The play takes us back to 1966 and Truman Capote’s famous Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel, and while we don’t get to see Capote, but his presence is felt as Greenberg introduces us to three mismatched, celebrity-obsessed couples.
Meanwhile, over at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, we go back all the way to 472 B.C. for Aeschylus’ tragedy of the Athenian-Persian war, The Persians, in a new version starring company stalwarts Helen Carey and Ted van Griethuysen (April 4-May 21). The Kennedy Center has a show so big you’ll have to visit the white palace on the Potomac twice to see it all. England’s prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company is back for a presentation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s classic The Canterbury Tales, spread out over two self-contained parts that do not need to be seen in chronological order (April 15-May 7). The Folger Theatre on Capitol Hill goes back to 1730 for The Game of Love and Chance, Pierre de Marivaux’s classic tale featuring a double identity switch as a woman and her suitor both struggle to judge if the other is suitable for marriage (April 7-May 14).
Another monster production is taking place at the DC Arts Center, where the Landless Theater Company is offering the American debut of Godzilla (April 13-May 7). A dinosaur-size hit when it premiered in Japan, it’s a romance of the timeless girl-meets-fire-breathing-monster variety. Portions of the show will be presented in Japanese — with projected English subtitles. Speaking of fire-breathing, the team at Synetic Theatre has worked their special brand of movement-inspired theater on Goethe’s Faust, which will premiere at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre in Rosslyn (April 20-May 21) before moving across the Potomac to the Kennedy Center’s Family Theatre in June.
Elsewhere around town, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company restages The Gigli Concert (April 3-May 7) about a therapist whose patient wants to sing like a famous Italian tenor. Roundhouse Theatre has The Retreat from Moscow (April 5 -30), about a middle-aged British couple facing the end of a marriage. Studio Theatre’s Secondstage presents Frozen (April 12-May 7), Bryony Lavery’s drama about three people affected by the disappearance of a child. Washington Shakespeare Company has a new version of the Bard’s bloody history lesson, Richard II (April 13-May 14) at Arlington’s soon to be demolished Clark Street Playhouse.
Elsewhere, the Rorschach Theatre presents Tony Kushner’s early play A Bright Room Called Day (April 19-May 21), about the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Alexandria’s Metrostage delves into the life of feminist writer George Sand in a new musical called Becoming George (April 19- May 28). The Play’s the Thing (April 20-May 21) at Washington State Guild, is P.G. Wodehouse’s adaptation of Ferenc Molnar’s comedy about theater.
Keegan Theatre has Bold Girls, about women in Belfast dealing with too few men and too much violence, at Theatre II of Arlington’s Gunston Arts Center (April 27-May 13). Theater Alliance performs Lee Blessing’s Two Rooms (April 27-May 28), focusing on an American held hostage in the Middle East, while his wife suffers at home in America.
Lastly, the Kennedy Center’s Imagination Celebration series for children has a different take on the Middle East, debuting Walking the Winds: Arabian Tales, a mixture of storytelling, dance and music that is a unique international partnership joining theater artists from Jordan and the United States at the Family Theatre (April 7-15). This collection of Arabian stories is designed to build bridges between the two cultures.
