DC Metro Spotlight: July 2006

It used to be that venues closed up shop and performers scrambled to get out of town as Washington’s tropical steam bath rolled into July, but not any more. There are lots of cool offerings in town.

At the Kennedy Center, where the evening breezes waft right off the Potomac River, there’s a pair of comedies in repertory at the Terrace Theater from the Reduced Shakespeare Company, part of their continuing effort to shrink all of drama, history, and literature into bite-sized, comedic morsels. They’ve taken on Shakespeare and the Bible before; now it’s The Complete History of America (abridged) (July 5-23). Three writer/performers rocket through 600 years of history, relating America’s story from past to present, beginning with confusion over who discovered the place to the current political morass, and cramming it all into 90-minutes. (With plenty of physical shtick and audience interaction, it looks like improvisation, but it’s scripted.) Then it’s on to All the Great Books (abridged) (July 11 – 30), as the RSC tackles 83 mighty tomes, from a peppy Proust to “a short Longfellow.”

The songs may not be abridged, but Arena Stage has an evening of 400 years of music in a reworked version of 3 Mo’ Divas! (July 12-August 13). Three powerhouse performers make their way through some of the best music ever written for the female voice. The show is so demanding that Arena has cast a total of six performers — including Broadway’s Gretha Boston and Vivian Reed — to handle the music, which ranges from Puccini to Cole Porter, and with stops along the way for Gershwin, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and The Supremes.

DC gets its very own Fringe Festival! The Capital Fringe Festival (July 20 – July 30) offers 100 artists/groups staging more than 400 performances in over 30 venues in just 11 days. Both local and visiting performers will showcase their work in theater, dance, music and whatever else they can think of, as they take over downtown theaters and galleries, along with what the event sponsors says are “lobbies, vacant storefronts, and outdoor areas.”

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, which started out in New York’s Fringe Festival and then went on to success off-Broadway, is at Stage 4 of Studio Theatre for a Secondstage production (July 12-August 6). Bert V. Royal’s quite unauthorized parody of the “Peanuts” cartoon gang after puberty hits them is often hilarious and occasionally even shocking.

Less fringy, perhaps, and definitely more suburban is this year’s version of the annual Potomac Theatre Festival out at the Olney Theatre Center for the Performing Arts. “The Ibsen Experiment” includes productions of An Enemy of the People (July 27-August 27) and Hedda Gabler (through July 23). Also in this year’s program are Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (New Mainstage, July 5-July 30), No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming (Historic Stage, through July 23) and An Experiment with an Air Pump (Historic Stage, July 5-July 23). All five shows will be staged during Festival Week (July 16 – 23).

At Gala Hispanic Theatre, the world premiere musical Caribeana (July 13-July 30) features the rapso group 3canal leading a collective of artists from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and here in what is called a “musical reconciliation” of cultures.

More familiar, is the music of Kander and Ebb, which can be heard when a touring company of Chicago (July 11-July 16) pays a brief visit to Wolftrap in Vienna, Virginia. TV and stage star Gregory Harrison serves up the requisite razzle-dazzle as lawyer Billy Flynn in this beloved show about two prohibition-era women who use murder as a stepping-stone into show biz.

For the younger set, there’s The Borrowers (July 5-August 13) at Bethesda’s Imagination Stage. It’s an adaptation of the much-loved book about people who live beneath the floor and “borrow” all those things you seem to be looking for.