Barbara Johnson - Page 4

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Most of us are familiar with the slogans of the bleak, dystopian society George Orwell constructed in his novel 1984. The inventive production of 1984 at Shakespeare Theatre Company takes these phrases and makes them more relevant than ever to a contemporary Washington, DC, audience.

The premise of THE LION is simple and honest: one actor accompanying himself on guitar as he tells his story. The stage is spare, with painted walls, a radiator, a couple of chairs, and six guitars (one electric with an amplifier). It starts out innocently enough as writer and performer Benjamin Scheuer walks onstage in this touring production, dressed in a crisp blue suit and tie, rocker coif hairsprayed in place. As if playing an acoustic set in a small New York City concert venue, Scheuer launches into the opening song, 'Cookie-Tin Banjo,' with a charming smile, singing, 'My father has an old guitar and he plays me folk songs.' Thus begins his detailed coming-of-age story, which he tells in song as he cycles through each guitar.

From the first darkly comic scene, Spooky Action Theater's COLLABORATORS plunges its audience into a tension between hilarity and terror. As the play unfolds, there is laughter at the absurdity of the situation and simultaneous dread over what will happen next. A revisionist account of Mikhail Bulgakov's writing of a play about dictator Joseph Stalin in 1930s Moscow, COLLABORATORS is inspired by fact but considers what could have happened behind the scenes.

The second installment in Creative Cauldron's 'Bold New Works for Intimate Stages' initiative, the new musical MONSTERS OF THE VILLA DIODATI transports audiences to a famous gathering of 19th-century writers on Lake Geneva during a dark and stormy summer. This atmospheric production reveals the origin story of two legendary Gothic monsters, John Polidori's The Vampyre and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, while exploring their creators' own inner monsters.