Category: Theater

Five players offer a 70-minute rollicking reduction of the Shakespeare classic, with two rotating casts (I saw the “Capulet” cast). All characters save the lovers (including would-be lover Paris) are in half masks (designed by Tara Cariaso of Waxing Moon Masks). Ben Lauer’s Jerry Lewis-infused Nurse is a hoot; Bri Houtman’s Juliet hits all sorts of levels in the balcony scene. There was a sweet impromptu moment of audience interaction when a little boy in the audience vocally noted that a bit of schtick was being reused; Natalie Cutcher responded directly to him with a “Right? I know!”

The inevitable deaths are handled tenderly. When Mercutio dies, his mask is left onstage while the actor exits. There’s a nifty moment in the tomb when Juliet awakes and Romeo dies with a kiss: the pair deftly exchange places on the bier. Of course, this is a comedy, so when the corpses are needed for the summing up, scarecrows are used, all the better for tossing about to explain who killed who and why.

All the important bits of text that we remember from high school remain in place, including that weird Queen Mab passage.

• A Commedia Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, directed by Kathryn Zoerb, Faction of Fools, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, Washington

Kelli O’Hara once again dons a 1950s shirtwaist silhouette in a role that quickly turns dark. From her opening song, “Story of the Atlantic Cable,” she owns this show—she is electrifying. Brian d’Arcy James partners her effectively in this somewhat unusual, intriguing score for only three voices (the ensemble is non-singing). I counted at least four instruments of the xylophone-metallophone ilk—great choices by the orchestrators!

The show hews fairly closely to the plot of the 1962 film, written by JP Miller from his Playhouse 90 teleplay. (No credit for Miller? Is the film out of copyright?)

There are a couple of anachronisms in the sound design (beeps in a hospital corridor, for one) that perhaps will be ironed out by the official opening of this remarkable show.

• Days of Wine and Roses: The Musical, music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, book by Craig Lucas, orchestrations by Adam Guettel and Jamie Lawrence, directed by Michael Greif, Studio 54, New York

Kristen Arnesen and her father are of Norwegian descent in this play. My Minneapolis landlord (Mr. Anensen) told me that sen indicates Danish rather than Norwegian heritage, but what do we know?

A pop rock retelling of the stories of Persephone and Hades (in part) and of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a campy faubourg of a steampunk New Orleans (a few blocks over from the setting of Rent), with catchy, engaging tunes. In this post-opening cast, there’s a minor pop star (Betty Who) to introduce members of the band; a nice unamplified coda serves as an encore.

Not everyone in the audience had read Eurydice’s story in high school, to judge from the scattered gasps heard at a critical moment—which nonetheless felt a teeny bit unmotivated: Orpheus has a song about doubt, but the song wraps up and then he makes a bad choice.

Phillip Boykin as Hades makes the strongest impression among this cast, seductive and menacing in “Hey, Little Songbird.” In the band, Brian Drye on trombone and glockenspiel shows off his chops.

• Hadestown, music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin, Walter Kerr Theatre, New York

A scrumptious, nutritious first act, distinctively Sondheim, and a sumptuous second act by Ives (who would want to leave such a beautiful room, as designed by David Zinn?), both of them capturing the spirit and many of the specific elements of Buñuel’s source material. There are open flames and punctured water pipes, but fortunately no cellos are sacrificed.

A meta moment in the first act entails the most effective use of bringing up the house lights that I’ve seen in many a year, a trick that is otherwise worn out. The Bistro à la Mode is reminiscent of The Philadelphia, a similarly cursed eatery imagined by Ives. A three-quarter circular bench that flies in is a simple effect, if the resources are available, but it left me envious nevertheless.

Outstanding in the cast is Dennis O’Hare in a number of roles, including the “enabler” who sings the frequently noted patter song about the lack o’ latte, all bananapants jumping intervals, and the imperious majordomo Windsor who is not what he seems. Jeremy Shamos has a sweet acrobatic move to catch a falling smartphone.

• Here We Are, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by David Ives, inspired by the films of Luis Buñuel, orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick, directed by Joe Mantello, The Shed, New York

Three long escalators to reach the performance space in The Shed left me feeling a bit like I was headed for the 400 level in the Capitals’ arena.

I will be making a point of recognizing orchestrators, having read Darryn King’s profile of Jonathan Tunick.

Girl from the North Country suffers from a surfeit of quirky, irascible, and damaged characters, and nearly as many subplots. In its favor, it’s good to hear songs (many we know, some we don’t) by Bob Dylan (if only, sometimes, as snippets) in new styles (hard rock, blues, gospel-ish) and arrangements. The reworking of “I Want You” as a duet is very fine. But in most cases, the songs are disconnected from the stories: rarely does someone, following the Rodgers and Hammerstein paradigm, sing to explain themselves, or to advance the plot, or because they just can’t help it. The medley opening the second act is particularly puzzling: why are we hearing these particular songs?

That said, Jill Van Velzer does well with “Sweetheart Like You,” giving us a good belt; Jay Russell as the unctuous Mr. Perry and Jeremy Webb as “Bible salesman” Reverend Marlowe are chewy antagonists. There are a couple of rousing 11:00 numbers, “Duquesne Whistle” and a few stanzas of “Hurricane” with an interpolation from “All Along the Watchtower.” And we appreciate that the show doesn’t take applause breaks; but by the same token, the pace of dialog in most of the book scenes is unnecessarily breakneck. Give us a chance to care about these people.

• Girl from the North Country, written and directed by Conor McPherson, music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, orchestrated and arranged by Simon Hale, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

Public Obscenities makes use of some familiar tropes: a young man returns to the country of his heritage, images hidden away are revealed, someone who refuses a calling ascends to it, things that are thought of as authentic are perhaps not so. Chowdhury’s unique spin is that the locale is half a world away, in Kolkata, and big chunks of the dialogue are in Bangla.

Our traveler is Choton (the energetic Abrar Haque), who is accompanied by his boyfriend Raheem (Jakeem Dante Powell). While Choton gads about, interviewing citizens about language and marginalized communities in pursuit of an ill-conceived dissertation research project, Raheem quietly (perhaps too quietly) stays closer to Choton’s family home, making tender portraits with a disused twin-lens reflex camera. We’re reminded that the TLR can achieve intimate results because the photographer can maintain eye contact with the subject—or the subject might be unaware that a photograph is being made—as masters of the technology like Vivian Maier showed. Unfortunately, locked-down Rakeem, the character who accepts his calling, never really shows us what’s going on with him, which is perhaps a fault of writing, direction (Chowdhury directs his own script), or acting.

Golam Sarwar Harun, as Jitesh, one of Choton’s uncles, comes off best. Speaking little English, Jitesh quietly deals with the flurry of activity that has appeared in his house; he is encouraged to sing a lovely song that had Bangla-speakers in the audience audibly marking time with him.

Peiyi Wong’s effective unit set (Choton’s family home, well-lived-in right down to the slightly wobbly ceiling fan) accommodates subtitle projections; flavorful sound design by Tei Blow is there when we need it.

• Public Obscenities, written and directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Woolly Mammoth Theater Company with co-presenter Theater for a New Audience, Washington

Sarah Ruhl’s reduction of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid time-travel novel of 1928, picks out key episodes and characters from the life of the titular 300-year-old would-be writer. Plucky Orlando (the adaptable Mary Myers) is ringed by a chorus of four, each of them playing an important personage in Orlando’s journey from inchoate man to established woman. Most remarkable among them is Alan Naylor’s comic turn as Queen Elizabeth (now QE II, of course), a screeching parrot in a red wig of a color unknown to both nature and the laboratory.

Ruhl’s text cleaves close to Woolf’s, so for instance we hear the memorable image “Birds froze in mid-air and fell like stones to the ground” of the Little Ice Age section. That strategy can sometimes work against the momentum of the play, as when the chorus is reduced to simple narration (albeit physicalized) of the transitions of Orlando’s world.

Costume designer Kitt Crescenzo has put all four chorus members (male and female) into modified farthingales, an effective choice, and Sasha’s furs are quietly sumptuous. Orlando’s womanly headgear of the 19th and 20th centuries was a bit unstable at Sunday’s performance.

• Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, adapted by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Nick Martin, Constellation Theatre Company, Washington