Sharpenicity

BANDSTAND The story behind Bandstand has both the nostalgic and the heartbreak of the years when soldiers, marines and sailers returned from the battlefields of World War II in the 1940s to rebuild their lives to “Just Like It Was Before”.   Everyone in this is a star, starting with the couple.   Zack Zaromatidis plays Donny Novitski   and Jennifer Elizabeth Smith as Julia Trojan who share a tragedy that  will bring them together through music.   Roxy York as her mother and the guys  in the band keep cracking one liners as well as share their own wisdom and heartbreaks.   If the audience at the National Theatre had been the ones that were in the 1945 audience to vote for The Donny Nova Band to be winners of a national competition,   their applause alone would have put them over the top immediately.   For from being just another nostalgic piece,   the music and the dancing in Bandstand are first class winners. At National Theatre, Washington DC, March 5 to 12, 2020

TIMON OF ATHENS Timon of Athens is one of those longtime “underrated”   plays by Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, one that everyone comments they have never seen before. Simon Godwin’s directs this stunning production of a tale worth telling, most befitting of our money driven time. There are two sides to every coin, and in this parable that revolves around money there are two sides to Timon, the main character.   In a dream world, Timon lavishes gold and gifts to buy friendships and fun.   One day the money’s gone and so are all the friends that money can buy.   Trading her golden bejeweled costumes, Timon dons rags, retreating from bright lights, to living in a dark cave.   Kathryn Hunter (the first British woman to play King Lear, as  well as other classical male roles)   stars as Timon. Hunter brings out the humanity in this strong yet vulnerable character who goes from happy party girl to crazed homeless misanthrope. Having seen Timon of Athens  before, with a mal

THE AMEN CORNER Mia Ellis has many roles to fill in Shakespeare Theatre’s production of James Baldwin’s  The Amen Corner.   She is Reverend Margaret, the inspired pastor of a struggling congregation in Harlem. She is the wife of Luke (Chike Johnson), a shabby musician husband who re-enters her life ten years later as he is dying.  She is mother to David (Antonio Michael Woodard),  their teenage son who is struggling with how to live his own life. There are moments when Margaret is like Greek tragic figure with her entrenched flaw of her righteousness that she has been set apart by God.As one so chosen   who does God’s will in all circumstances. she looms like an Old Testament prophet, her message flowing   in   her passionate sermons from her pulpit through the congregation, inspiring spectacular singing and dancing.   She maintains her position in divisive meetings with the church elders in her kitchen on how they should conduct their lives and make employment choices.   Exchang

THE 39 STEPS A  production of The 39 Steps calls for a cast of 150.  While this is way beyond what would fit on Constellation Theatre’s stage, four actors  take it on. Drew Kopas is the exciting, handsome, unflappable Richard Hannay,   the quintessential Hitchcock male hero. Patricia Hurley takes on several seductive roles —Annabella, Margaret and Pamela—all of whom Richard will fall madly for.   Christorpher Walker and Gwen Grastorf are all the rest of dozens of roles too numerous to list, leaving no job unfilled— from milkman, train conductor,vaudeville performers, lingerie salesmen, innkeepers, police officers, airplane pilots,—and never missing a change of wig or mustache to be somebody else. Together they move the story and the scenery as quick as you  can blink in this fast paced thriller. A classic is always a classic, whether it is the original beloved 1935 film  or the updated comic composite of   Hitchcock films in this staged play.   Constellation Theatre’s ama

EXQUISITE AGONY  Exquisita Agonía  Nilo Cruz’s operatic play   at GALA, Exquisite Agony, starts with questions that Cruz had about heart transplant patients. “Does a recipient inherit traits of the donor? Does their taste and other senses change? How does a body react when a new element becomes a part of it?”   Inspired by musicians, Cruz created a story about an opera singer who wants to meet the transplant patient who received the heart of her dead husband, a famous conductor.   Luz Nicolás is glamorous and dramatic, as Millie swirling between reality and fantasy. Through the intercession of Doctor Castillo played by Ariel Texidó she meets the recipient, Amér played by Joel Hernández Lara.   The first thing she wants to do is hug him so she can be near “the heart” of her deceased husband.   The line between what is possibly real and what is her imaginary life is fragile.   At a dinner for Amér to meet her two children   Tommy played by Andrés Talero and   Romy by   Cathe

SILENT SKY The number of stars is often used in reviews to rank shows.   Silent Sky at Fords Theatre is worth a sky full.   Like the stars in the sky,  this wonderful show is truly filled with wonder. Wonder  -  for the history of Henrietta Leavitt and the Harvard “computers” who mapped the universe using glass plates taken of the night sky. Wonder -  for this star filled production.  Laura C. Harris is Henrietta, brilliant and dedicated as an astronomer, who made her star shattering discoveries when  women were not allowed to peer through nighttime telescopes.   Nora Achrati is Annie Cannon and Holly Twyford is Willama Fleming, both who set records in their observations on which   later astronomical discoveries have been based.   Henrietta is determined to follow her passion despite the pleadings of  her sister Margaret Leavitt, played by Emily Kester.  Jonathan David Marin is Peter Shaw, a  composite character of  male attitudes about women at the time.  He falls in

BLOOMSDAY The Washington premiere of Bloomsday   at Washington Stage Guild is a treasury of wit and wisdom. A man returns to Dublin after 35 years to revisit his youthful missed connection with a woman who was his tour guide through the path James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom’s wanders in Ulysses .   Moving between the past and present,  they retrace their steps in their memories.   Playwright Steven Dietz  has said that “we carry all ages inside us…our past looks out from the same eyes as our present.” So true is this and so well handled by the four actors, who flow believably  between the present and past as their old selves encounter their younger selves.  Steven Carpenter is Robert, the older man, who advises his disbelieving younger self, Robbie, played by  Josh Adams.   Megan  Anderson is Cait, her older self, who tells about her life to her younger self. Caithleen, played by Danielle Scott.  At  the end, Robert and Cait  meet as they have arranged on Bloomsday.  Is it romanti

The Merry Wives at Windsor     It takes a village to bring down a man as big as Falstaff and the  The Merry Wives at Windsor, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford are just the two to lead them. Described as one of Shakespeare’s lesser plays, it’s centerpiece figure Falstaff  has become one of his greatest characters.  a fact that is emphasized by his girth matching his giant ego.  Brian Mani totally fills the role to lead actors and audience in the  raucous show re-worked with  70s music, costumes and jokes!    Most convincing is that we the audience are in on the plot. While actors move through the audience is nothing new, all that was missing in this one was asking for volunteers to come up on stage and join in with Mistress Page (Linda Bard)  and Mistress Ford  (Ami Brabson)  on their sofa to help concoct a plan to teach Falstaff a lesson. There is fun with puns.  There are even puns within puns with the meshing of 1970s sitcoms with the bard’s bawdiness. If actions speak

SHELTERED   Sheltered now on stage atTheater J, seems so real.  That is because it is. Inspired by the true story of an American Jewish couple who rescued  Austrian Jewish children in 1939 and placed them with American families,  the playwright Alix Sobler explores possible emotions and conflicts that might have gone on  behind the scenes of their daring humanitarian effort Act 1. Leonard Kirsch (David Schlumpf) and  his wife Evelyn (Erin Weaver) invite  the Blooms, Martin (Alexander Strain) and Roberta (Kimberly Gilbert) to dinner at their lovely home in Providence, RI.  They have not seen each other in a long time, but the Kirsches need a 40th family to agree to sponsor a child. What is revealed over the evening  are strong emotions  — not only of vastly differing viewpoints on involvement of the events in Europe, but also of the violence within their domestic life.   The living room has now been reconfigured for Act 2 as a hotel room in Vienna.   The Kirsches  are con

JERSEY BOYS JERSEY BOYS is music history!  Not only is it the story about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, those four boys from New Jersey who became rock and roll icons, but this musical set records as one of the longest running Broadway shows with its 11 year run from 2005 to 2017. Bringing this legend to life at the National Theater are Jon Hacker who leads as Frankie Valli with Eric Chambliss as Bob Gaudio (who also wrote the musical), Corey Greenan as Tommy DeVito   and Michael Milton as Nick Massi. At the performance I saw at the National Theater, most of the audience was probably not born when Valli made his first recordings in the 1950s.  This did not stop anyone from swaying, cheering and clapping at some of the greatest sounds of American popular music ever. One great moment in the show is when the group make the charts with selling 3 million records.   Today a YouTube of one of their songs has multi millions of viewers. Valli himself is continuing to p

PETER  PAN AND WENDY The best reviews of Peter Pan and Wendy at the Shakespeare Theatre Company are not in the media but in the minds of the children.  Their squeals of delight and amazement are clear that this is one fantastic show.    I doubt that any of the under five year old set seated around me understood the meaning of the words or the social issues this updated version of a complicated classic  re-presents. But they will remember the magic of live theater.    This up-dated Peter Pan, is a show as much for adults as for kids and not because it is a nostalgic (or not) reworking of a second childhood experience when we first encountered Peter, Wendy, the Lost Boys of Never Never Land, Captain Hook, Tiger Lily and Tinkerbell, and the beloved Nana.   For this Peter Pan is not a re-setting of the story in a modern scenery with clothes to match (and in this one some wear clothes are appropriate   J. M.   Barrie’s time period) but rather that as the characters are addressing

THE WOMAN IN BLACK The Woman in Black is really scary. Luring you into the tale is Arthur Kipps who experienced an unspeakable horror and an actor who will help him present the story on stage.   They seem like such nice men too and the first act seems to mull around how they are going to handle the emotions of fear through the techniques of acting and the mechanics of   theater. Such details can be distracting to the story.   Restlessness feeds impatiences to get on with it.   So does the belief that this will be really scary.   After all they have shown us the tricks that produce the theatrics of sound and light to enhance their performance. We have all read horror tales from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King.   We are used to ghosts and devils, vampires and aliens.   All of this knowledge sets us up to dare the play to scare us. And then it does.   At the most unexpected moment.   It felt like I was in an electric chair as all the molecules in my body shook.   It was sev