Jack L. B. Gohn - Page 13

The Spotlighters' performance space is an interesting and often frustrating challenge - a theater-in-the-round (or really in the square) with four columns supporting the ceiling and interfering with sight-lines. But it is actually an excellent space for a chamber musical. The singers can be extremely close to each other, playing off each other rather than each other's amplified voices, as well as right on top of the audience, and when, as here, they're on pitch and on fire, even the most trivial musical fluff can get pretty intense.

The ground rules each year: three short one-act plays in which the parts for college-age actresses predominate, with female antagonists and female protagonists. My hat is tipped to a fine part of a cutting-edge program.

There is always a reason a warhorse gets to become a warhorse. Here, the fun stems from some reversals, a couple of sucker-punches to the expectations of both the characters and the audience, and the ebb and flow of the alliances and enmities around the jury-table. There are five logical set-pieces as well, each devoted to one evidentiary question. For each, further discussion reveals surprising aspects. These traits explain why the play continues to draw audiences the world over, for all the old-fashioned drawbacks.

Contrast that with the loving attention to the stamps. Playwright Rebeck tells us all about the stamps, educates us, in fact, as the play goes on. And the pinnacle of the play, as a dramatic experience, is the moment Sterling gets to see them, after an enormous buildup. The payoff is worth it. Sterling gasps, staggers, a tough man momentarily reduced to helpless wonderment. To like effect is the moment shortly afterwards where the suitcase full of money intended to buy the stamps is unzipped; the bundles of cash literally glow, and Jackie hovers above them, almost inhaling the smell of the money. These objects, then, are presented with so much elaboration that the chiaroscuro handling of the characters is all the more puzzling.

These songs were great pop art that stirred up deep emotions and were taken seriously by their initial listeners.

Director Michael Carleton has envisioned Richard as the prototype of the amoral modern politician who will stop at nothing to achieve power. While professing the purest and most altruistic of motives, he holds no allegiance but to himself; he is the master of media and manipulator of appearances. To drive the point home, Carleton has Richard's famous opening monologue delivered in part as if it were a victory speech after a political campaign, shows some of the events being broadcast on CNN, and invests much of the proceedings with a Georgetown-y air. And by golly, he's right. The effect is not much different from that of Fair Game, the movie about l'affaire Valerie Plame now playing in the local bijou.

The chaos around the microphones completely belies the smoothness of the product going out over the airwaves. Welles, standing on a podium, presides over the process with a cocky young man's assurance that this madness will work.

But there are deeper and more troubling dimensions to Norman: an irritability that hints of the total dessication of soul, a wildness that mingles a strong self-defeating quality with a degree of menace. You can never tell what Norman will do next, which makes him fascinating to watch.

Baltimore theatergoers may be pardoned for not being familiar - yet - with the Atlas District in North East Washington, but this emerging arts-and-entertainment area, focused on about four blocks of H Street, is well worth getting to know. The core is the Atlas Performing Arts Center, an Art Deco movie house that was impeccably redeveloped in 2006 after 30 years as a derelict. And surely there could hardly be a better way of making the Atlas' acquaintance than seeing the Washington Savoyards' revival of the 1879 Gilbert and Sullivan hit, The Pirates of Penzance playing there now.

So there it is: great show, great performers, hot new company. Go see.

Potter directs Sweeney (Edward J. Peters) in such fashion that he seldom becomes such a ghoul he ceases to be human. Freddy Kreuger has a back story, but he's not a tragic hero because of it; Sweeney is.

A tasteful performance Shaw afficionados will love does raise the question whether the passé quality of the ideas sets practical limits to the play's appeal

Great performances, challenging issues, iffy sound. If you know the show, great. If you're a newbie, come, but bone up on the lyrics first.

And the Critics Fare Almost As Badly As The Corpses!

Part character-driven drama, part intellectual whodunit, Proof depends upon a heroine who is both engaging and enigmatic. Julia Heynen delivers.

Tiffany Walker Porta presents a Patsy Cline who can deliver a knockout broken-heart ballad perhaps closer to the diva's live performances than her records.

Lesley Malin and Michael P. Sullivan nail the maturity, wit, sad wisdom, and rueful self-awareness of Shakespeare's immortal 'merry warriors'

When you get past the inconsistencies in the book, this Flaherty and Ahrens musical which evokes the Commedia dell'arte is lavish, tuneful, well-acted, and well-sung

Southern Belle pokes fun at Tennessee Williams' old-fashioned metaphorical approach to discussing homosexuality. An Actor's Nightmare suggests you can accumulate lethal bad karma in your theater-obsessed dreams. Go. You'll laugh all evening.