Jack L. B. Gohn - Page 11

All of them, then, have one foot in Muslim culture and one in the Western culture Muslim terrorists affect to despise, and that is part of the point author Jon Kern is making about them. Whether they like it or not, they are dual citizens. What enrages them is also a part of them, and it means that in waging war on Americans, they are also waging war on themselves.

H2O will leave you dealing not only with your feelings about the characters, but also reconsidering art, life, and The Meaning of It All.

If George Bernard Shaw had taken it into his head to write a sequel to Arthur Miller's The Crucible, with an assist from William Shakespeare, he might have come up with something much like Liz Duffy Adams's A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World.

In The Heights is not standard Maryland dinner theater fare, concerning, as it does, the residents of a largely Dominican and Puerto Rican barrio at the northern end (and highest part) of Manhattan. The lyrics are often in Spanish, often delivered in rap monologue, and largely assume a kind of cultural literacy not common among Maryland dinner theater patrons: knowing, for instance, what it means for someone to say she comes from La Vibora or from Vega Alta (things I had to look up after the fact) or what kind of comestible a mamey might be (ditto), or what it means to yell 'Wepa!' (ditto again). This is probably a good thing; all of us should constantly be looking to broaden our horizons, especially in our theatergoing. At the same time, as much help as possible should be extended to make the proceedings as comprehensible as possible for us Anglo newbies. And sadly, barring a half-page insert of explanation in the program, that kind of help was in scant evidence in Toby's new production.

This was an undergraduate audience, clearly, and they were rapt and engaged. Yet it was a knowing engagement. By that, I do not mean that the kids came in knowing the tunes and humming along, in fact it was obvious from the laughs and the gasps when funny or shocking things occurred that a large part of the contingent on hand had no idea what was coming. What I mean is, the viewers got it, they understood it on both intellectual and instinctive levels, agreed and approved; the raucous curtain calls demonstrated this, and the audience's identification with what they were seeing.

A first-rate production of a second-rate show. The astonishing cast delivers song after song that sails out of the park.

We have not only laughed our heads off, not only witnessed the fulfillment, however temporary, of transgressive bachelor-in-paradise fantasies, but also been treated to something rarer: a visual reimmersion in the colors and sights of the most carefree part of an era: the coordinated uniforms and flight bags, the electric blue paint on the wall, the miniskirts, the smoking-jacket-and-ascot, not to mention the final payoff: a curtain-call that will remind viewers of the way singing groups used to present on television before rock videos and MTV.

The star in question is the in her own words "deliciously disgraceful" actress and celebrity Tallulah Bankhead, channeled, in a very interesting bit of casting, by Stefanie Powers. Stefanie Powers was actually herself part of the event being dramatized, having co-starred with Bankhead in the very movie in question, and given that Powers has of late distinguished herself as another faded and dotty star, namely Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, she is an utter natural for the role.

What really puts the show across, however, is the songs. The wealth of black pop of the mid-70s is on display here, including power-pop ballads (THE FEELING WE ONCE HAD) and disco (EMERALD CITY BALLET), with definite echoes of the Shaft Theme in the TORNADO BALLET. And here this great music is put across by pros.

Fiddler traffics in the safest kind of nostalgia, reminiscences of a world no one would want to return to. It's a lovely flirtation with a way of life that is safely dead. The only real question is whether it is done well. And I'm pleased to say that it's done very well by Toby's.

In every other interpretation of Tom Wingfield that I have ever seen, Tom is always played to show tenderness and solicitude at times for his mother and sister, and a fundamental understanding of their plight, even as he chafes at their dysfunction and lashes out at them. When, at the end, he says he is haunted by his sister even in his flight, this is not just about being unable to spit a bad taste out of his mouth. Yet Matt Lee's Tom gives just that impression.

Here in Baltimore, it seems to be Bus Stop season. It's been less than a month since I reviewed the Spotlighters' community theater production of the William Inge 1955 classic; now it's Center Stage's turn. And of course Center Stage (or is it Centerstage these days?) gives it a full-dress professional staging. The difference is surprisingly great.

The Ephrons seem to have set out to make the point that on some profound level, women's clothes are themselves, and that women's very lives are bound up with their clothes and vice versa. But the case is not well-documented. And little of it bears the stamp of the Ephron wit. But the performances are fine.

The flaws I've mentioned are real, but are far from detracting altogether from the enjoyment Bus Stop has to offer. Inge not only speaks up for crazy love, but for rustics who in their own ways are crazy like foxes in their pursuit of it. Crazy like a fox is usually good, especially when presented by as fine an ensemble as The Spotlighters have assembled here.

On the evidence of the book, and as echoed in the show, Alice Walker finds permanence and monogamy rarer than more fluid arrangements. I mentioned forgiveness, and it plays large here; the characters find, in various ways, that they must accept that their loved ones love them back only with divided hearts.

Almost everyone in this world is married or willing to go out on public dates with women to camouflage his real social life. Few of them can visualize, even to themselves, what it would be like to regard the gay halves of their lives as normal, continuous, and public. It is both touching and interesting to watch.

A show that gets liberal audiences to cheer for someone who at first blush would seem like a future Ann Romney is doing something pretty canny.

For a dark heist play, like a dark heist movie, to work, you need to populate it with hard male actors. Those are the rules. You need reservoir dogs, not reservoir show dogs.

The portrayal of Edna by Lawrence B. Munsey is outstanding; more than any other Edna I've seen, Munsey brings out the femininity and vulnerability of the character without sacrificing her drag queen strut at appropriate moments.

I was intrigued as soon as I heard that Director Eve Muson was bringing the show to a professional company. My sense was that Muson felt she could build a better product on the same platform of stars, costume and set. She was right. The end product is a modern historical tragedy that obviously speaks directly to contemporary racial and gender issues but also past them to the human condition, as all great tragedy does.