D.C. Metro Spotlight: June 2005

June gets underway with The Shakespeare Theatre finishing up its two week run under the stars (and the roar of jet engines from National Airport) at Carter Barron Amphitheatre for their annual “Free For All” production, which this year is the audience friendly A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This show winds up on June 5, but The Shakespeare will be back onstage at their 7th Street home two nights later for the opening of Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde’s 1892 comedy. Television’s Dixie Carter stars as a woman who tries to punish her husband, whom she suspects of having an affair, by running away with a Lord. Wilde’s first successful play, this is primarily a vehicle for his barbed witticisms, aphorisms, and epigrams about social conventions. “What is a cynic?” a character asks. “A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” is the reply. And, “I can resist anything but temptation.” Or, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Lady Windermere’s Fan runs through July 31.

Several theater companies are opening shows right at the top of the month. Trumpet Vine Theatre Company finishes up its “Landscapes of Identity” season with The Sum of Us by Australian playwright David Stephens. Running June 2 to the 18th, the play focuses on a gay man and his widowed father, who are forced to make difficult choices when their relationship is tested by their new lovers.
Rorschach Theatre celebrates the arrival of summer with the world premiere of James Hesla’s Behold!, described this way by the theater: “A circus barker, a drycleaner, a sea captain, a Mexican bishop, a waitress and a woman of mystery set off in search of Anna Tingle’s Box of Prophecy, an object whose contents could change the fate of the world. Somewhere along the way they find each other.” All those folks have until June 25th to find the Box of Prophecy.

Round House Theatre stages Once On This Island through July 3 at their Bethesda mainstage. With book and Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, and based on the novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy, it is a Caribbean-flavored adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Here, the heroine is recast as an orphaned peasant girl who saves the life of a wealthy mulatto. Overshadowing their relationship is the power of prejudice, which tests their love. Set in the French Antilles, the musical has a lilting, island-flavored score.

The islands also play a central role in The Emperor Jones, Eugene O’Neill’s rarely performed “expressionist thriller” from 1921 that The American Century Theatre opens June 23 for a one month run. O’ Neill’s play traces the rise and fall of a Pullman porter who becomes a tyrant on a jungle island. The Emperor Jones was a risk for O’Neill, as it premiered during the darkest days of Jim Crow racism, a time when realistic portrayals of African-Americans were few. But there were two Broadway productions in four years, the second one starring Paul Robeson, who went on to play the title character, Brutus Jones, in the film version. For those who question whether O’Neill can successfully create a black man who is a powerful but flawed hero, director Ed Bishop explained, “I call O’Neill a revolutionary in many ways. For this piece, he traveled, he went to the Caribbean, and he researched the African in America experience, and he decided it was important to make some kind of statement. When Brutus is talking, we hear a man who is sensitized, who knows what his realities are and is willing to deal with them in any way he can. But he’s still going down a dangerous path if he does that.” Bishop has left O’Neill’s words intact, but said he has “changed the tempo and the rhythm a little bit,” incorporating a design that is “timeless.” The production is designed as a highly expressionistic, emotional experience and Bishop hopes the audience will feel enclosed in a jungle. And he won’t mind a few audience screams as they feel the presence of “formless fears” brushing against them. Jones is portrayed by Bus Howard, who plays “Ott” on HBO’s The Wire.

This season has been a good one for those who love the classic Greek plays. Washington Shakespeare Company takes up the theme with Euripides’ Medea, running June 2 through July 3 at Arlington’s Clark Street Playhouse under the direction of Jose Carrasquillo and Paul MacWhorter. Having two directors often results in artistic confusion but MacWhorter doesn’t expect that to be an issue. “We complement each other artistically,” he says. “Jose always has a very specific vision for the plays we work on together. His visual, conceptual, and stylistic sense is very strong and clear, while I tend to focus more on the acting and text.” Carrasquillo says they’re directing the play as traditional Greek theatre but hope to “transcend the ‘revenge’ theme and challenge the audience to understand Medea’s every action. We want this to be an illuminating experience because of its simplicity and its clarity.”

Scena Theatre continues the Greek focus with its The Classics Made Easy production through July 10, with three adaptations of favorite Greek plays by Robert McNamara. These are “I, Cyclops” in which Homer’s tale from The Odyssey is experienced through the eyes of the monster, “Thersites,” based on The Iliad, and “Gladiator,” which explores the inner thoughts of a gladiator as he approaches battle.

And if it’s all Greek for you, there’s still time to catch Vanessa Redgrave in her Washington debut as the Kennedy Center stages the Royal Shakespeare’s Company’s production of Euripides’ Hecuba, through June 12.

Metrostage, meanwhile, is going back to modern works after their fling with the ancient Greeks last month in Sophocles’ Electra. The theater opens The Last Five Years June 15. Winner of the Drama Desk Award for best music and lyrics, this contemporary musical is a bittersweet love story about a successful novelist and a struggling actress. The story of how their marriage unravels will run through July 24.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues with the first production in their new D Street home, the world premiere of Mickey Birnbaum’s Big Death and Little Death, through June 12. Billed as an “apocalyptic comedy,” the story line follows discontented teenagers who ponder “whether to go to college, sleep with the guidance counselor or destroy the universe, as life as we know it is called into stark question.” Also continuing are Arena Stage’s Anna Christie, Eugene O’Neill’s play in which Molly Smith has
found both humor and a feminist message, through the 19th, and Signature Theatre’s scaled down Pacific Overtures, through July 3.

Late in the month, Theater J will open two one-act plays by Woody Allen. Central Park West and Riverside Drive will run June 25 to July 24. The Manhattan-centric Allen writes what he knows: Central Park West focuses on a man who leaves his mate for a younger woman, and a park bench on Riverside Drive is the setting for a filmmaker to obsess about the meaning of life in conversation with a vagabond.