Washington, D.C. Spotlight: March 2005

The winds of March bring with them Irish playwright Brian Friel’s 2002 work, Afterplay, at Studio Theatre. But isn’t Studio right in the middle of its “Russian season,” you might ask? Well, yes it is, but Friel gives new life to two favorite Russian characters created by Anton Chekhov, conjuring up a meeting in a Moscow café between Sonya of Uncle Vanya, played here by Nancy Robinette, and Andrey of Three Sisters, played by Edward Gero, “twenty years later.” Founding Artistic Director Joy Zinoman, who is directing, saw the play at London’s West End and immediately wanted it for the Russian series.

“The thought of every play being written by a contemporary Russian playwright didn’t give me the variety I really wanted,” she reflected between rehearsals. “This is Russian themes and Russian characters, but it also has another sensibility about it, so I really went after it in a big way. This is a great responsibility.”

The two-person play may be set in a café, but Zinoman had other ideas after a trip last year to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she was intrigued by a glass gazebo. She asked designer Debra Booth to create something similar for this production, resulting in what the director calls a “spectacular, sparkling” set composed of 450 panes of glass.

Friel, who has written popular translations of Chekhov’s plays, gives us two lonely characters who ache with regret and loss in a performance-based piece. Both Gero and Robinette have appeared in Chekhov plays directed by Zinoman and the fact that they are now discussing characters and events they have previously played, gives the production “tremendous resonance,” Zinoman said. The two popular actors were rehearsing Afterplay while simultaneously appearing together in Folger Theatre’s acclaimed version of Romeo and Juliet, which led to an odd moment onstage during the final weekend of the Shakespeare play’s run. In the opening of Afterplay, Gero’s Andrey quietly comes up from behind Robinette’s Sonya and says, “Hello again.” Approaching Robinette during one of the final scenes in Romeo and Juliet, Gero inadvertently said, “Hello, again,” giving the actress several uncomfortable moments as she fought to quell laughter and maintain the proper tragic composure.

Afterplay opens March 9 and will run until at least April 17. Friel had been expected to attend the opening, but illness caused him to cancel travel plans. If the play is extended, the longer run might allow him a chance to see it.

Round House Theatre begins the month with a world premiere production that takes audiences back to April 20, 1999, the dark day horror struck a high school in Littleton, Colorado and made the name Columbine infamous. Columbinus, conceived and directed by local writer/director P.J. Paparelli (who just directed Folger’s Romeo and Juliet) and written by his United States Theatre Project artistic collective, is based on interviews with high school students in a variety of locations, transcripts of the Columbine emergency calls, police records, and other public files related to the shootings. It is intended to explore the roots of the type of severe disconnection felt by some teenagers that exploded into violence at Columbine.

“The first act of the play is an ‘Anytown, USA’ kind of thing,” explained the theater’s Tim Swoape. “It’s a fictional high school with eight different students then. The second act is specifically about the events of April 20, 1999 and the Colorado shootings. In the first act, you see the disconnection, the isolation of students. Toward the end of that act, Eric and Dylan, the Columbine shooters, emerge from the crowd.”

The second act makes extensive use of multimedia imagery and music. The language is raw and there is violence, so the play carries a warning that theatergoers under 18 should be accompanied by an adult guardian, not so much to protect their tender sensibilities, says Swoape, but more to foster dialogue between parents and their children. Columbinus runs March 2 through April 3 at Round House’s Silver Spring stage.

Also new to Washington area audiences is Ten Unknowns, Jon Robin Baitz’s art-world drama about the 60-year clash between abstract expressionists and figurative painters, leading to a collision of art, fame, and integrity. The play receives its area debut March 15 through April 24 at Signature Theatre under the direction of the new associate artistic director Rick DesRochers.

Several days later, Ford’s Theatre opens the D.C. premiere of the musical retelling of Huckleberry Finn, called Big River, the recent Tony Award nominee for best musical revival. With music and lyrics by Roger Miller and a book William Hauptman adapted from the Mark Twain novel, Big River incorporates signing for the Deaf with speaking and singing performances. A non-speaking actor portrays Huck Finn and a speaking actor, Tony nominee Michael McElroy, plays runaway slave Jim in a re-examination of the pair’s groundbreaking friendship. The co-production with Deaf West Theatre runs March 18 to May 1.

Arena Stage has scheduled one of the more disturbing plays of the 2001-02 Broadway season March 4 through April 17. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, Edward Albee’s look at a couple whose battle with the consequences of adultery takes a totally unexpected turn, is thought provoking but with funny moments.

In other notable March openings:

• The Kennedy Center and the Shakespeare Theatre present a production especially created for young and family audiences of As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Recommended for ages 11 and up, it runs March 4-20 at the Kennedy Center’s Theater Lab. The Kennedy Center also has a “new production” of the classic World War II comedy Mister Roberts playing in the Eisenhower Theater March 12 through April 3, part of their series A New America: The 1940s and the Arts.
• The Washington Stage Guild reaches back to an even earlier time for the comedy You Never Can Tell, an early play from George Bernard Shaw, running March 3 through April 3. The Washington Shakespeare Company is pleased to bring a failure to its Alexandria warehouse stage, Tennessee Williams’ little-seen The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. The study of a reclusive wealthy writer in her villa on Capri, it lasted only two months on Broadway in 1963, but the troupe is hoping for a healthy run here, March 3 through April 2.
• Arlington’s The American Century Theater reaches back for one of their successes, reprising their 1997 production of Moby Dick Rehearsed, Orson Welles’ 1955 play in which a director challenges his Shakespeare troupe to improvise a stage production of the famous whaling novel. Jack Marshall again directs most of the original cast members March 24 through April 30. The Shakespeare Theatre stages The Tempest March 22 through May 22, as Shakespeare conjures up an angry, revenge-seeking sorcerer who manipulates both spirits and humans. Theater J hopes to manipulate ears and hearts alike with Betty Rules, as the female rock trio Betty returns to their hometown March 3 through April 3 with a “self-actualized dramatization” of their 17-year career. Theater Alliance is featuring much softer, new-age stylings in music with The Spitfire Grill, the story of a troubled young woman’s search for a new life, March 10 to April 10.

• March won’t be going out like a lamb as Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife opens at the National Theatre on the 29th for a two-week run. Directed by Moises Kaufman and winner of a box load of awards including the Tony for Best Play last year, this production features Jefferson Mays playing 35 characters, most notably an East Berlin transvestite called Charlotte von Mahlsdorf who survived both the Nazis and then the communists.