Andrew White - Page 8

'Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters' marks a return to truly exciting form, performed by this year's Aniello Award-winning emerging theatre, a thrilling evening devoted to stage combat.  If you are a big fan of action on the screen, on your hand-held, wherever, this is just the dream spectacle  you need to get your summer off to a roaring start.

Ambassador Theater, with their production of Polish poet Tadeusz Rózewicz's masterpiece The Trap, introduces Washington audiences to a theatrical genius of Samuel Beckett's stature. The Trap traces key elements in Franz Kafka's life, and Rózewicz's masterstroke is to weave the much darker future-the rise of Nazism, the death of Kafka's sisters' in the Holocaust, and the long Soviet occupation-with the troubled 'present' of Kafka's time.

For over one hundred years Alfred Jarry has set the gold standard for profanity, riotous provocation and just plain weirdness. Putting on a play about him is daunting but Richard Heinrich of Spooky Action Theater has taken on this heady task. 'Jarry Inside Out' offers us an evening that is likely to leave some exhilarated, others exhausted, but everyone intrigued.

Aura Curiatlas, and its current program 'Dream Logic' is dedicated to the idea that with a simple stage, simpler costumes and a sound cue or two, you can create magic.  Their evening of 10 dance vignettes is fascinating exploration of dance, physics, romance, with a healthy dose of cheap slapstick.  The daring physicality and creativity of the company is a reminder for those techno-geeks out there that the stage, still, truly belongs to the performing artist.

Under the direction of Joel David Santner (who will shortly be moving to California for film school, a great loss to the DC area) the company has proven yet again that when viewed with fresh eyes, the early First Quarto version of 'Hamlet' is a limitless source of inspiration for artists and audiences alike.  Although the company pulls its aesthetic punches by inviting a few guys to join the cast (including Marcus Kyd in the title role), the performance is of a dependable, high quality that makes this a rare, intimate view of the Bard's work.

Well, well, well - Lady Mary, meet Frederick Lonsdale, whose classic comedy of marriage and manners, 'On Approval,' is receiving a spirited revival at the Washington Stage Guild. It seems that the Roaring 20's was indeed a time for women to take a more active role in the selection of their mates ...

Indian playwright Girish Karnad's play 'The Fire and the Rain' is now receiving a spectacular North American premiere at Constellation Theatre.  In the grand tradition of Greek tragedy, Karnad has taken a chapter from the Mahabharata's long saga and given it his own personal stamp.  And as directed by Allison Arkell Stockman you are guaranteed a fascinating spectacle that, although complex, can be truly rewarding.

Teatre de La Abadia 's company has developed a priceless ensemble, steeped in Commedia but with their own unique house style. They fill the theatre, literally, with life and sound, and the addition of musicians and sound-effects men to enhance the action makes their work truly enjoyable.

Walking into a Max Major show when you know nothing about him is like stumbling into the city's hottest party hours after it started-but feeling like the host was waiting just for you. Although ostensibly an evening of magic and mind-reading, the most fun part of a Max Major event is the way he draws everyone in and makes them feel like they're a part of the show. As he tells audiences with his new show, Think Again, it's not about magic, it's about potential-the audience's potential as well as his own.

Set in the 10-island archipelago of Cape Verde, Contos em Viagem is a tapestry of stories woven from a broad range of writers native to this former Portugese colony. The stories chosen here, and performed passionately by Carla Galvão, are taken from the lives of women in the islands, among them kids recalling the creepiness of a death in the family and, most memorably for me, a teenage girl begging her mother to go to a dance, with predictable results. The performance style here is part theatre, and part storytelling, live music and a touch of ritual thrown in.

Flying V, a young company that has earned a devoted following with their whimsical originality, returns triumphantly with another episode in their 'Pirate Laureate' series. Our story is set once again in the fictional realm of Ephrata, where poetry kicks tail, the pen is mightier than the sword and the hottest duels feature poets at ten paces, scribbling furiously or improvising on the spot.

'King Hedley II,' in Timothy Douglas' riveting and thrilling production now at Arena Stage, portrays life in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the early 1980's. The six-character play is a symphony of rage, despair, hope, regret, love and determination. Douglas has staged Wilson's play in the round with a spare, concrete-inflected set. The production has a deliberate, ritualistic tone, with the actors assembling in silence and remaining visible throughout the performance.

Taffety Punk's current production of The Tempest demonstrates how Shakespeare's work is infinitely elastic in terms of creativity and casting. Riot Grrrls, a faction of Taffety Punk Theatre Company dedicated to all-female productions of the Bard's works, has come up with a low-tech, low-cost, intimate staging that is as finely tuned as anything you'd pay big bucks for uptown.

Creative Cauldron has embarked on its own five-year plan, fittingly entitled 'Bold New Works for Intimate Stages.' Matt Conner and lyricist Stephen Gregory Smith have created and directed a new musical based on Henry James' classic macabre tale, 'The Turn of the Screw. ' The performances here are terrific, beginning with Susan Derry as the governess Miss Giddens.

Filled with laughs and anarchic asides, as well as a healthy dose of audience participation, Theatre J has an unqualified hit in Aaron Posner's Life Sucks [Or the Present Ridiculous]. Here we have Posner's thoroughly irreverent, Jewish take on Uncle Vanya, Russian playwright Anton Chekov's classic tale of unrequited love and unfulfilled lives. Forget the theatre history lecture, however; this is pure slapstick at Chekhov's expense and nothing to be intimidated by in the least.

Director Ethan McSweeny clearly knows his way around the play, and offers mature Washington audiences a visually rich, complex Tempest that has its share of magical moments, but which at its core is unvarnished by sentiment. And Geraint Wyn Davies gives us a Prospero who is a temperamental, gravelly, flesh-and-blood nobleman, more Hemingway than Santa Claus.

Theatre J's production of 'The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures' comes complete with quirks and brainy asides that can leave audiences miles behind, grasping for meaning. This being an epic affair, eventually we simply give up and let the characters live their lives, untouched and untouchable. But that's when the magic starts.

Happiness was a huge hit at the Fall Fringe festival last year, and richly deserves this full revival; not only is Maher's ear for verse spot-on, you simply cannot ask for a better cast.

The Castleton Festival, a longtime fixture on the classical music scene located a comfortable hour and a half from Washington, DC, recently celebrated Debussy's playful side with a full performance of his piece for piano, La Boite a Joujoux ('The Toy Box'). Pianist Orion Weiss, working with Director Hinrich Horstkotte of the Salzburg Marionette Theatre, was inspired to bring the music, scenario and images to life through a puppet show that incorporated all the toys from the original.

If you are a Shakespeare connoisseur who knows the plays and who thrills at new stagings of familiar material, by all means get thee to the Lansburgh Theatre to see Michael Attenborough's fascinating production of As You Like It. With a rock-solid cast, and a Spartan stage design that throws their great work into high relief, you will be in for a rich experience indeed.