Review: CHARLOTTESVILLE at Capital Fringe Festival

 Based on many, many interviews with residents of Charlottesville, court transcripts and news reports, the very timely and relevant show Charlottesville was presented with theatrical integrity and complex layers/themes as part of the 2023 Capital Fringe Festival.

This very absorbing production has been produced in earlier versions so this ambitious effort might be viewed as yet another interesting exploration into the themes, presentation style and the theatrical style of this highly relevant material.

Though the production centers around the March on Charlottesville Charlottesville/Unite the Right Rally that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11-12, 2017, the many events leading up to the Rally and the reverberating repercussions of this assault on democracy and civil rights are portrayed throughout 74 absorbing and thought-provoking minutes.  

Counter-protestors, students, residents of Charlottesville and alt-right groups are all represented via the “one -person show” concept in which the very talented performer Priyanka Shetty enacts all the many characters. Performer Shetty fluidly transitions from character to character with mesmerizing skill and aplomb but, indeed, the amount of characters performer Shetty had to portray must be a physical and emotional endurance test –there are so many transitions to make and quick changes of mood and nuance. 

Performer Shetty portrays all of the numerous real-life characters/personas so vividly ---especially the portrayal of a student who is justifiably worried about her acceptance in the Charlottesville university community, the portrayal of a grieving mother whose daughter was killed and a very apt portrayal of then President Trump’s comments on these traumatic and horrendous events. Performer Shetty also evoked such characters as Richard, the Dean of students, Julie, a Mexican and Ken, a Graduate Student.

Performer Priyanka Shetty also wrote this probing play with its panoply of various real-life characters, and it is obvious that this must have been no easy feat with the many transcripts, interviews and news reports that must have been researched to collate them into one coherent unified production/play. Performer Shetty wisely included the Skokie, Illinois March and the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capital Building as precursors to this hate-filled inciting March and Rally. Writer Shetty has also been updating and expanding the treatment and the timeframe of the play to include transcripts from the civil trial.

There is some attrition rate in too many characters and not enough time for them all to be absorbed resulting in some confusion over transitions.  Unless the audience has a very detailed knowledge of the real-life events beforehand, some of the verbatim information conveyed should be delineated even more clearly.  Though this production had a nice functional set, it would have been helpful to have had visual projections or montages on a screen upstage so that the audience could grab hold of the events in a theatrically broader context.

Charlottesville, Virginia takes on the persona of almost being a character in the play itself ----somewhat akin to the way in which Laramie, Wyoming became a distinct focal point of the play The Laramie Project. Emotions and political tensions run high throughout the play as the source material certainly evokes strong reactions.

Direction by A. Lorraine Robinson is strong and Robinson’s directorial choices obviously pack an emotional and intellectual wallop. 

The music also stands out in my “mind’s-eye” as particularly memorable and distinctive.  The program lists Heather Mease as the Composer. The music had an almost eerie, surreal, and dystopian ambience at times. 

The tradition of one-person shows has a long and varied history harkening back to James Whitmore in Will Rogers’ USA, Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight and Julie Harris in The Belle of Amherst.  However, these shows just portrayed one person –as challenging as that may be. In this production, performer Priyanka Shetty must evoke many characters/people. This challenge is much more the equivalent of what Lily Tomlin had to do in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and what Ann Deavere Smith had to do in Fires in the Mirror------thus, performer Priyanka Shetty has a very challenging job here and, indeed, she delivers a splendid showcase of etching in the nuanced characterizations of these very real people.

The August 11- 12, 2017 Unite the Right Rally and the March on Charlottesville, Virginia is an event that should not be forgotten. This powerful and intelligently written one-person show will continue to inform and remind the world of the dangers of white supremacy, antisemitism, nativism, and fascism.

With some tweaking of the set to fill in historical details and some tightening up of some of the time transitions and pacing, this very ambitious production should prove to be a durable mainstay of the theatrical canon. 

RUNNING TIME:  74 minutes with no intermission 

Charlottesville was presented on July 14, 15, and 16, 2023 at the Edlavitch DCJCC: Theater J –located at 1529 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Charlottesville was presented as part of the 2023 Capital Fringe Festival which runs from July 12 to the 23, 2023. For information on the 2023 Capital Fringe Festival go to:  https://www.capitalfringe.org/ 

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