Andrew White - Page 2

As the Summer draws to a hot close, and school days loom on the near horizon, it’s good to know that some childish antics will survive well into the Fall.  The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, has pulled out the stops with Shakespeare’s zany take on the battle of the sexes, Much Ado About Nothing. 

Although the results are a bit chaotic—truth be known, this is a sprawling epic of a show which could use some trimming—the timeliness of its topic and its glorious performances make “The Overview Effect”, by rights, a major attraction for theatre goers this July.  A mix of straight drama and rock-musical-fantasy, “The Overview Effect” reaches for the stars while contemplating some of the more pressing issues surounding space exploration.

Jeffrey Lieber’s Fever Dreams (of Animals on the Verge of Extinction) is a study in tragedy of an all-too-human scale; infidelity, secrecy, lies used to cover for passion, more lies used to cover the consequences of that passion, all so intricately constructed that the heart-breaking reality, when it finally dawns on us, strikes like a streak of lightning.

Dael Orlandersmith reigns supreme in the Studio 112 space at CATF, telling the story of Virgil, a native of the Bronx.  Curated and written with care, and based on Orlandersmith’s interviews and research, the humanity of the piece shines brilliantly. 

Rivera's 'Your Name Means Dream' creates a spectacle of actors at the top of their game, with a script that gives both Anne O'Sullivan and Sara Koviak ample opportunity to shine—and to shine a light on the mysteries of the human heart and the human-generated machine.

Chisa Hutchinson's latest offering, “Redeemed,” is as vitally important a piece as the Festival has to offer this year.  Rooted in the often-distorted dialogue this country continues to have about race, Hutchinson uses the play to address the under-explored question of what it really might take for true reconciliation and redemption.

For years, I have had the incredible privilege and pleasure of reviewing shows, every July, at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. But I have a small confession to make:  the plays are good, sure, but I’m really in it for the Afternoon Tea at Shepherdstown’s treasured pub, the Devonshire Arms. The triple-tier of delights the Arms offers will leave you with what my sainted grandmother would call “a sufficiency” to last the rest of the weekend. 

The genius of “Dissonances” is the way that it reveals, and then gently dismantles, those walls we erect around ourselves, those unconscious fears that prevent us from really communicating and empathizing with people different from ourselves.  Both Duncan and Sandel create human beings we recognize instantly—their virtues intact, their flaws visible but never damning. 

Audiences rarely have the opportunity to navigate between the Scylla of relationships and the Charybdis of a wreck at sea, and 4615 Theatre’s effort here, with both paper backs and Life Jacket, is not to be missed.

The Washington Stage Guild's current production of Shaw's Major Barbara runs rings around a whole world of ideas, metaphysical, physical, you name it, with Emelie Faith Thompson positively shining in her turn as the title character

Simon Goodwin's new production of Much Ado About Nothing pulls out all the stops. Visually joyful, with antics and sight-gags galore, this is just the break from election anxiety this town needs. We've been waiting a long time for this one (COVID delayed the premiere by a bit, as you can imagine), and boy was the wait worth it!

Best Medicine Rep Theater is offering a lovely remedy for the post-Summer Blues, with their production of Crystal V. Rhodes' 'The Trip.' Yvonne Paretzky has assembled a crack cast, and directed them to a briskly-paced evening of entertainment.

Jo Williamson's one-woman show, 'Mary,' is by turns a desultory affair, a tale of a high school English teacher with a varied career pattern, and a variety of relationships with men. 

Inspired by Jordan Peele's blockbuster horror film 'Get Out,' Hutchinson has crafted a Dickensian morality play with 'Whitelisted,' set in a predictably bland, hoity-toity, newly-renovated white lady's apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

With Victor Lesniewski's cyber-drama 'The Fifth Domain,' CATF steps boldly into a genre that is in its relative infancy. Focused on the world of code, on computer hacking, and on the shadowy world of international cyber-espionage, Lesniewski contemplates the darkest potential behind the infernal machines that now rule our lives.

Sarah Ellen Stephens delivers a passionate, nuanced performance as Amina, a black Cleveland police officer whose relationship with a fellow, white officer is dealt a huge blow when a late-night confrontation with a suspect leads to a shooting, under murky circumstances. Playwright Kevin Artigue does an admirable job of laying out the complexities, leaving enough room for all of us to contemplate how easily even the best of intentions can implode.

Jessi D. Hill's production of 'Ushuaia Blue' offers us a performance piece that is part tone poem, part personal tragedy, part environmental meditation. Shifting with ease from one time and place, and from one frame of mind, to another, the cast offers us a glimpse of how our understanding of global climate change needs to expand-beyond the microscopes and bathyscaphes, beyond the labs, beyond those cute penguins, and out onto the ever-more-endangered ice of Antarctica.

Jacqueline Goldfinger's 'Babel' was written in, and for, a different time and a different nation. Although designed as a comedy, watching its action unfold in the Marinoff Theatre at this year's Contemporary American Theatre Festival, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, it's striking how the end of Roe vs. Wade, and the already-engaged battle over women's bodies nationwide, can force an entirely different reckoning from the audience.

Terence Anthony's offering at this year's Contemporary American Theater Festival, 'The House of the Negro Insane,' will sweep you up in a tornado of emotions and deliver a few gut-punches as well, with riveting characters whose challenges make our own problems look as trivial as that fly landing on your picnic blanket. A polished piece of playwriting, this piece-now finally launched, after the long COVID hiatus-should find its place on stages across the country.

'The Joy that Carries You' is a touching and touchingly thoughtful journey, one which many might recognize in their own. But Secka and Stoller also make this a celebration of the relationships which until (only) very recently were taboo. Thank goodness we're no longer at the stage where seeing two women choosing each other as life-partners is a shock; we can now see them as human beings. But we also know that relationships like this are still fraught with a unique form of anxiety, between the women themselves but especially with their families.