Skip to main content
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 romantic or realistic?  Or is it both. 
The show is just in time for Valentine’s Day for anyone who has a memory of lost love.  

Washington Stage Guild, Washington DC, to Feb. 16, 2020

Popular posts from this blog

  Once is here again!   The Brooklyn Gallery Players reach into the treasure chest of great musicals to bring Once alive and on stage in Brooklyn (until to December 17, 2023). Director Mark Gallagher , and Music Directors David Fletcher and Brendon McCray have crafted a vibrant production, seamlessly integrating the 15 member cast in roles  as both actors and musicians. Set in Dublin, the  formula for the poignant love triangle  is simple. Patrick Newhart  plays Guy, an Irish musician who has given up  on love as he sings the award winning classic  Falling.  Newhart mastered the bombastic busking guitar style and performed each of his songs with intensity and passion Sophie Smith-Brody  is Girl,  a Czech woman  who will inspire him to try again both in  love and with music. Smith-Brody performed each of her disparate songs with aplomb,  from the opening classical piece to her plaintive solos – If You Want Me and The Hill.  The performance starts  with an “ impromptu”  p
               TINA - THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL  at The National Theatre              In the 1970s, I  had spent weeks climbing around ruins in Peru.  I heard music of the Andes all over.  I  was  finally at  Machu Picchu to spend the night so I could get up early  and climb to see the sunrise from the top of the ruins.   As I got to steps by the gatekeepe,  I could hear his boom box blaring across the Andes “I Wanna Take You Higher”  by Tina Turner.   You don’t have to go climbing the Andes to hear her songs — Tina-The Tina Turner Musical  isright here  at the National Theatre, Washington DC,  until  Oct. 23, 2022.    The show has broken all records with the awards it has received since in premiered in April 2018 in London.  No one questions that Tina is a musical legend but  for this show  accolades to  the stars Naomi Rodgers and Zurin Villanueva who alternate in the  spectacular role.   At every performance there will be people  who remember seeing Tina “back when” and
  Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando — sparkling wit and ageless wisdom —   at   Constellation Theatre — gone but not forgotten In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando A Biography ,  the eponymous hero undergoes many changes over the centuries— from roles in society and relationships to sex change.  Since the time travel gender bending work was published in 1928, this his/her story has continued to undergone adaptions to its original form, from analytical scholarly critiques to crowd pleasing  movies and stage plays.  Constellation Theatre Company continued  the tradition with its amazing presentation of Sarah Ruhl’s narrative play Orlando .    Five actors  take on dozens of roles as characters or in the  chorus to keep the story at its rapid pace,  condensing events spanning almost five centuries into 100 minutes.   Orlando (Mary Myers) is  ever the aristocrat whether as a page in the court of  Queen Elizabeth I (Alan Naylor)  or involved with a mysterious Russian princess (Edmee - Marie Faal) or pursued