Roger Catlin - Page 8

Just as African-American artists have sought to reclaim the racist imagery of the past to confront contemporary viewers, the entryway to the Theater Alliance's performance of 'Day of Absence' at the Anacostia Playhouse is decorated with oversized posters advertising blackface minstrel shows.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh long wanted to name her 2017 work about the social interworkings of young women in Ghana simply 'School Girls.' But it wasn't until she added the subtitle, 'African Mean Girls Play,' that she fully nailed what she was doing.

'Life is a Dream' sounds as if it would be a carefree, happy-go-lucky kind of story.

Pull up a bar stool. The Irish barkeep has a little story to tell you. The saga of 'The Smuggler,' a new prize-winning play by Ronán Noone, couldn't have a more authentic setting than the gently curved eight-seat wooden bar in the speakeasy-like Allegory Bar at the Eaton Hotel downtown. That's where the Irish arts collective Solas Nua has ingeniously set the one man play.

At the outset of Mosaic Theatre's fifth season opener, 'Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine,' the biggest problem facing its central character is the lack of a celebrity for a big Manhattan benefit she's throwing. A high powered PR agent, she throws out a bunch of names cavalierly, and belittles her assistant, who is responsible for getting it all done.

It was rare that a Democrat became governor of red-state Texas in the 1990s; rarer still that she was a woman.

Gerry is the kind of guy who arrives at a party like an explosion, talks a mile a minute, has an opinion about everything, exudes outrageous hilarity and hardly lets anyone else get a word in. With him around, why even cast other characters at the party?

Running a small opera company requires innovation enough, but Washington's Urban Arias goes further, by commissioning new works, or finding pieces that are little known or rarely performed and infusing them with reliable company talent that can electrify their purposely small audiences.

There's a transcendent moment in 'Twisted Melodies,' the one-man Donny Hathaway show by Kelvin Roston Jr. at Mosaic Theater Company, in which the audience and performer are one, singing and clapping to 'The Ghetto,' under his direction, and getting a groove on.

Elderly assisted living can be a shared room prison, so the set for David Lindsay-Abaire play 'Ripcord' at the Keegan Theatre has the tidy room explode a coupe of times into some unexpected scenes, from a haunted house to the blue skies that give the comic play its title.

Rare as it is to hear Handel's opera 'Serse' at all - it was scarcely performed at all for 200 years following its 1738 debut - it's even more unusual to hear it melded to the poetry of Rumi, the Sufi mystic who predated the composer by half a millennium.

Taffety Punk, the insurrectionist yet classically trained company now in its 15th year does what it does best in a pair of striking Greek adaptations by Anne Carson, presented in one invigorating sitting.

There's a glorious sound coming from Arena Stage. From out of the mists of time, in monochromatic colors as if from a tintype, comes the sublime harmonizing of 13 voices, giving an idea of the transporting power of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

It's easy to see why 'Tosca' is one of the most popular works in opera.Its very musical style, broken free from the strict opera house rules before it, allows it to breathe. Singers are not urgently singing every moment. The supertitles person can take a break as it goes dark from time to time. Still, there is drama to burn in the story of an opera singer in the midst of a divided Italy in 1800.

At a time when Motown Records just marked its 60th anniversary with a lavish TV special, and with 'Ain't Too Proud: The Temptations Musicals' getting a raft of Tony Nominations, following the Broadway success of 'Motown the Musical' and 'Dreamgirls,' based on the Supremes, any fan of the sound would certainly anticipate a new creation called 'Pride & Joy: The Marvin Gaye Musical.'

A child injures another in a playground confrontation. The parents of each meet to discuss. It's a parenting moment so universal that the familiar premise in Yasmina Reza's 'God of Carnage' was originally written in French and first presented in London. It was a Tony-winner on Broadway a decade ago in a production with James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden.

Constellation Theatre is closing its season of love stories with a big one from the East. Thankfully 'The White Snake' is not about the 80s English metal band. Instead, it's an ancient, oft-told Chinese folk tale, which was breezily interpreted by Mary Zimmerman originally for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2014. It's brought to lyrical life in a production directed by Allison Arkell Stockman that combines puppetry, movement and a beguiling, underlying musical performance.

Funny how a few years can change a play, not because of the play itself, but because of social shifts around it.