DC Metro Spotlight: June 2006

From searing new dramas to beloved musicals, the nation’s capital is awash in first-rate theatrical offerings this month.

Literature and art lovers are eagerly awaiting the world premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s latest work, Picasso’s Closet (Theater J, June 21-July 23). In this work, the author of Death and the Maiden has imagined a world in which Pablo Picasso did not live until 1973, but was killed in Paris by the Nazis during World War II. Or, actually, what if it were his soul, and not his body that was murdered? Meanwhile, The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater offers a brief run of Love-Lies-Bleeding (June 17-July 25), a play by author Don DeLillo dealing with the subject of mercy killing and the value of life. The production, starring John Heard and directed by Amy Morton, comes directly from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

The Washington Shakespeare Company, which is still stuck in Arlington’s crumbling Clark Street Playhouse, is offering two plays in repertory: Lillian Hellman’s 1934 drama The Children’s Hour, with its examination of what rumors can do to private lives at a private school (June 1-July 2), and Julie Jensen’s Two-Headed, which focuses on four decades of friendship between two Mormon frontierswomen following the Mountain Meadow Massacre of 1857 in southern Utah (June 14-July 9).

Bridget Carpenter’s sharp satire The Faculty Room, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (June 5-July 9), takes us into the inner sanctum of a high school teacher’s room, where the faculty can, no doubt, take refuge from gunfire. Studio Theatre takes us into another place most of us never get to see, the inside of a jetliner cockpit, with Charlie Victor Romeo, a taut docudrama based entirely on transcripts from those dreaded black boxes after a crisis in the air (June 7-25).

The Shakespeare Theatre Company downtown returns to the Bard for Love’s Labor’s Lost, with Michael Kahn directing this comedic war between the sexes (June 6-July 3). The Olney Center for the Arts in suburban Maryland also has classic material on hand: Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (June 21-July 23).

Musical lovers also have a great deal to look forward to, beginning with the national tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot, the smash Broadway show that took the 2005 Tony Award for Best New Musical (Warner Theatre, June 6-July 9). Two of the shows expected to be among the biggest audience draws this month are Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins at Arlington’s Signature Theatre (through July 16) and the Kennedy Center’s revival of Jerry Herman’s Mame with Tony Award winners Christine Baranski and Harriet Harris in the leads (through July 2).

Meanwhile, Arlington’s The American Century Theater is doing double duty this month. First, they’ve scheduled a brief concert staging of the rarely seen Call Me Mister, Harold Rome’s musical about soldiers adjusting to civilian life after World War II (June 15-18 at Theatre on the Run), followed by a full-scale production of U.S.A., an adaptation of John Dos Passos’ novels of America as it was 100 years ago (June 22-July 15).

Renegade Theater is taking on Michael Frayn’s frantic comedy Noises Off, which takes us onstage and backstage of a sex farce produced by a bumbling English theater company (Warehouse Theater, beginning June 15). And if you like things frantic, there’s also Landless Theatre Company’s production of Psycho Beach Party, Charles Busch’s campy look at dastardly deeds on a teen beach (1409 Playbill Café, June 23-July 15).

While that’s not family fare, there are plenty of options for the younger set, including Little Women, the Musical, based on the Louisa May Alcott story (Kennedy Center Opera House, June 28-July 23); another little woman, a red-headed moppet named Annie (Wolf Trap, June 27-July 2), and an even littler woman, Barbie Live in Fairytopia, which brings the perennial best-selling doll to life (Warner Theatre, June 21-25).