D. R. Lewis

By Dillon Lewis

This article was originally published in DCTRENDING here.

If Bravo had been spinning off franchises in the 12th century BC, one can only imagine that “Phone rings, door chimes, in comes… Company?” That refrain is one of Stephen Sondheim’s greatest earworms (second only perhaps to “Bobby, Bobby baby, Bobby bubi, Robby,” etc. in the same song). And, in the touring production of Marianne Elliott’s inventive reimagining of the beloved musical, playing at the Kennedy Center through March 31, it presents more like a cautious question than a confident declaration.

Written by George Furth, with music and lyrics by Sondheim, Company is a musical meditation on matrimonial commitment. Premiering in 1970, Company originally centered on bachelor Bobby as he navigated romances with three wildly different women and friendships with five very quirky married couples. Directed by legendary impresario Harold Prince on its initial outing, Company was among the first “concept musicals,” dissecting a topic without much concern for a plot driven by linear narrative. Responsible for such standards as “Being Alive” and “The Ladies Who Lunch,” it is now widely regarded as a masterpiece in the American musical canon. 

This production, helmed by British director Elliott, boldly reimagines Bobbie (Britney Coleman) as a chic 35-year-old career woman navigating the modern world. Having premiered in London’s West End in 2018, Elliott’s adaptation initiated a transfer to New York, preparing for a scheduled opening just days after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world and, with it, Broadway. When it finally opened in December 2021, audiences were thrilled to be returning to theaters after the long pause and still reeling from Sondheim’s death the month prior. To take in such a daring reinvention of the show that had marked the start of Sondheim’s most productive working period was to sit in celebration of a man who continually reinvented the form. The experience was nothing short of catharsis. This critic gleefully returned a second time.

But the touring production, while maintaining the bones of Elliott’s London and New York mountings, has lost some muscle. One can’t shake the pervasive “hand-me-down” feeling as the tightness of Elliott’s vision. Resisting previous requests to reconceptualize Bobby as a gay man or woman, Sondheim finally relented when Elliott approached him with her concept (which includes other swaps beyond Bobbie, including the introduction of a gay couple). Unfortunately, the touring production makes a weak case that Company can withstand such reimagining and poorly stewards both the original material and Elliott’s concept.

The exception is in the song “Tick Tock,” which has been brilliantly reimagined by Elliott and choreographer Liam Steel and makes the sturdiest assertion that a gender-swapped Company can pack a comparable punch. The staging is so tight, especially compared with the rest of the production, that it gives the impression of being the precipitating reason for doing the show in the first place. From the first moments of the production, we hear a ticking clock (replacing the show’s more traditional busy signal), working double duty as both a reminder of Bobbie’s birthday and, by the time “Tick Tock” rolls around, a pervasive symbol of her “biological clock”. As she imagines the rest of her life with each of the three men she is dating, she generally winds up in the same spot at the end of the respective romances: by the completion of the number, all of the pseudo-Bobbies who mime the life ahead stare at Coleman’s Bobbie, as if to ask, “Are we doing this or not?”

Sondheim’s work is known for its specificity, reflecting one of his own oft-espoused creative mantras: God is in the details. In retrofitting George Furth’s airtight book to accommodate both the gender shift and resetting into a modern era, Elliott has inadvertently accentuated its aging wrinkles. While they may have gone less noticed in the Broadway production, they land with a thud on the Kennedy Center stage. For the most part, the cast attempts to conceal such textual blemishes by turning the characters into caricatures. Erring on the side of farce, they play it for laughs, mostly to the opposite effect. And even with large gestures and uncomfortable pauses for anticipated audience reaction, the performances get lost in the Kennedy Center’s cavernous Opera House (which, incidentally, perfectly matches Bobby’s scarlet garments by Bunny Christie, who designed both the sets and costumes).

Even so, a handful of excellent performances can break through to delightful results. As Andy, a hunky, but air-headed flight attendant with whom Bobbie enjoys a roll in the hay, Jacob Dickey is sublime. They rely almost entirely on their instinctive comic timing, avoiding any bouts of in-flight turbulence. As Jamie, Matt Rodin easily maneuvers through one of musical theater’s most notoriously difficult patter songs, “Getting Married Today,” balancing skillful pacing with convincing acting. Portraying the erratic gay groom suddenly stricken with cold feet, he is heartbreaking in exclaiming, “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.” And doubling as Susan (delightful) and Jamie’s wedding officiant (hilarious), Marina Kondo brightens the stage whenever she appears.

Unfortunately, Bobbie so often fades into the background of this production that when Britney Coleman steps forward to sing several solo turns, they feel less like indicators of emotional transformation-in-progress and more like reminders that, hey, it’s actually Bobbie’s show. Coleman acts valiantly through the songs in particular, and when she sings “Someone is Waiting” and “Marry Me a Little,” it is evident that she has dissected every note and lyric of the song to achieve full understanding. She has clearly done the hard work of a consummate professional, but against so many unwieldy, larger-than-life ensemble performances, she hardly stands a chance. But in “Barcelona,” a quiet post-coital cat-and-mouse duet, Coleman and Dickey together deliver one of the evening’s most memorable moments.

Christie’s set hinges on the use of large cubes that evoke the claustrophobia of tiny, whitewash-and-chrome New York apartments. They move in near-constant rotation, reconfiguring into different, distinct abodes. She has hidden 35’s throughout the set like Easter eggs, appearing in artworks and transoms, underscoring the sense that Bobbie’s birthday (and all that it means for her opportunities to start a family) is always hanging overhead. Christie’s cubes are accented by Neil Austin’s neon-tinged lighting design which, even while colorful, amplifies the sense of sterility in Christie’s set. Keith Caggiano’s sound design proved challenging in the Opera House, where balance issues left some performers completely unamplified and impossible to hear over the orchestra.

In “Another Hundred People,” Sondheim’s biting send-up of the endless inflows and outflows of people (and romantic partners) to and from New York City, the cast dutifully wheels out large cutouts of the letters in the show’s title. They rearrange them several times, only twice forming coherent words (or acronyms, in any case): “COMPANY” and “NYC”. The remainder of the rearrangements are mismatched jumbles, leaving audiences to make sense of the staging while the exquisite score plays behind, out of focus. For this Company, it’s hard to imagine a better metaphor.

By Dillon Lewis

This article was originally published in DCTRENDING here.

If Bravo had been spinning off franchises in the 12th century BC, one can only imagine that Penelope would be the wine-soaked breakout star of the Real Housewives of Ithaca. Known to classicists as Odysseus’ faithful, languishing queen in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Penelope takes on a darker edge in a new musical bearing her name by composer and lyricist Alex Bechtel and co-book writers Bechtel, Grace McLean, and Eva Steinmetz. A pseudo-cabaret that asks audiences to consider the story from her point of view, Penelope runs at Arlington’s Signature Theatre through April 21. 

As the lights rise on Penelope, the audience finds the titular heroine (Jessica Phillips) sitting at a piano, waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from the Trojan War after 20 years away. Having angered Poseidon, Odysseus’ journey home has been marred by tempests and monsters, leaving Penelope wondering when, if ever, he will sail back to her. Despite the advances of dozens of eager suitors who have camped out in her foyer, she remains steadfast in her faithfulness to him. But frustrated in his absence, Penelope turns to alcohol, precipitating a cabaret-style performance that reveals the depths of her dedicated despair.

Musically, Penelope bursts with romantic elegance and engrossing tedium. Composed and orchestrated by Bechtel, the score utilizes lovely, string-heavy interludes to color the soundscape and transition between key songs and sequences. In “Prayer,” Penelope chronicles her daily religious ritual, hoping to curry enough favor with Athena to bring Odysseus home. The song soon transitions to a stirring recitation of another of Penelope’s rituals: weaving beautiful images on her loom each day, only to unravel them each night to keep her suitors at bay. As Penelope, Phillips is spellbinding in “The Pilgrim Song,” pondering what her life may have become with just a few different decisions. And channeling Joni Mitchell in “I Do,” a song recounting their wedding and early love, Phillips is simply transcendent. 

But as Penelope’s score soars, its book and direction often stumble in deference. In a slow start, Penelope rises from the piano only to wander the stage as the five instrumental musicians slowly take their places. In fact, under Steinmetz’s direction, Penelope spends much of the show wandering around the small stage, snugly bordered by the audience on three sides in Signature’s cozy ARK space. At times, Phillips appears stranded center stage while the music plays, leaving one wondering: is this a character at an anguishing standstill or an actor with nowhere to go?

And therein lies Penelope’s biggest challenge. At a brief 70 minutes, the writers struggle to stretch the compelling parts of its story enough to fill even that amount of time. The book is front-loaded with lengthy, meandering exposition, ranging from the whereabouts of Penelope’s husband to the floorplan of her cliffside manse, before transitioning into a veritable meditation. And while other sequences of spoken text come and go more organically, often with the benefit of Bechtel’s underscoring, one can’t shake the hunch that the musical’s best songs were composed first, with the remainder of the material devised around them.

Mixed messages and fleeting directorial choices certainly don’t help. Early in the show, Penelope pours a hefty cocktail and proclaims, “If we’re going to talk about the Trojan War, I need a drink.” But despite large gulps, Penelope’s journey into drunkenness is short-lived, at least in Phillips’ performance. Rather than grow progressively more drunk, she appears increasingly sober so that by the time she finally excises a big bottle of booze from the stage in what is meant to be an empowering rejection, it appears more like spring cleaning. 

Penelope does so only half-heartedly at other opportunities to assert herself as a person independent of her husband. When the band, under the direction of Ben Moss, channels their inner Athena (complete with confetti in a delightful turn), they refer to her as, “Penelope, wife of Odysseus,” employing increasingly suggestive adjectives to accentuate his unseen manliness. Penelope hilariously and refreshingly rejects their naming of her in relation to her husband, but is soon back to singing longingly for his return. And again, in “Resolution,” she appears to flirt with the idea of abandoning her waiting and beginning anew, but, in line with the source material, does not. Anguishing standstill or nowhere to go?

The ARK’s compact playing area could prove a challenge for any performer, but Phillips makes the most of the space, maneuvering around the small stage and working hard to engage the audience. She is an excellent interpreter of Bechtel’s music and does what she can with the uneven book. Statuesque in a silky green blouse, blue trousers, and sandals (by costume designer Danielle Preston), she appears to be the ancient Greek embodiment of “The Ladies Who Lunch.”

Scenic designer Paige Hathaway makes dual use of the theater’s back wall, installing curvy, textured boards to evoke both the hills of Ithaca and the rolling waves that Penelope prays will bring Odysseus home. Working in conjunction with lighting designer Jesse Belsky, the plaster panels are illuminated with contrasting colors, adding dimension and mimicking the moody hues of sunrise and sunset. Eric Norris’ sound design keeps Phillips front and center but at times begs for more percussion from both the drums and piano to accentuate the sharp edges of her yearning.

A new theatrical work, Penelope does not yet feel like it’s reached its ideal form. While an easy comparison could be made to Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, Bechtel’s approach to this story with Steinmetz and McLean fundamentally differs in their rejection of plot-driven structure. Accordingly, Penelope makes her most compelling case through sung ruminations on love and longing. Conceived first as a concept album, perhaps the heart of Penelope is best served in that medium. The Housewives are unscripted, but they still have story editors.

By Dillon Lewis 

This article was originally published in the The DC Line here.

In an oft-quoted 1780 letter to Abigail Adams, then-Envoy to France John Adams declared, “I must study Politicks and War, that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy … in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” Adams’ attitude was emblematic of a new American ethos bent on building a better life for their progeny.

But in Love, Love, Love, playing through March 3 at Studio Theatre, British playwright Mike Bartlett dares to ask what happens when a prosperous generation fails to secure that life for their children, perhaps for the first time in modern history. Nevermind the play’s roots in the U.K. – the hard truths of blissful Boomer ignorance feel right at home on American soil, where those born between 1946 and 1964 possess half of the nation’s wealth. Despite this immense concentration of resources, Bartlett persuasively makes the case that the sorry state of =affairs for younger generations can be chalked up to the hedonistic entitlement of their parents, a corrupted carryover of free love and rebellion of the 1960s.

In a dingy London flat in 1967, long-haired Oxford student Kenneth (Max Gordon Moore) lounges on his brother’s couch, awestruck by a broadcast of Our World, the pioneering live multinational multi-satellite television program that saw the debut of The Beatles’ classic “All You Need Is Love.” Frustrated at his brother’s laziness, billboard installer Henry (Hunter Hoffman) admonishes Kenneth as a “layabout” who garners more cash through a government-funded scholarship than their working-class father earns at his job. Upon her arrival, Henry’s date Sandra (Liza J. Bennett), a 19-year-old Oxford student and second-wave feminist, is instantly taken with Kenneth’s progressive views and lack of concern about the future. After sending Henry out to pick up dinner, she and Kenneth begin an indulgent yearslong love affair that is marked by decadence, destruction and, eventually, divorce.

But Bartlett argues that old habits are hard to break, even among young iconoclasts. Kenneth and Sandra’s radical independence undergoes a two-decade transformation into boredom-driven infidelity and self-centered flippancy during the first of two intermissions. Having moved out of London to suburban Reading, their tastes — and attitudes — have changed with both the times and their economic prosperity. An old record player is replaced by a large stereo; plain walls painted mushy-pea green give way to chic wood paneling with abstract art; and cheap Irish whiskey cut with ginger ale is tossed in favor of French red wine. Most strikingly, bold patterns and casual clothing are swapped for chic business attire and private school uniforms worn by their two teenage children, Jamie (Max Jackson) and Rose (Madeline Seidman). And despite every indication that their kids are deteriorating faster than the likelihood of a Beatles reunion, Sandra assures herself that her broken family is superior to the loud, less affluent family who lives next door — she and Kenneth, after all, yell at each other only inside the house.

After two acts fueled by Kenneth and Sandra’s ruthless narcissism, Bartlett focuses the final act on taking a hammer to the elaborate facade they have erected of a successful family — despite the intervening decades they have spent as exes. Returning home for her Uncle Henry’s funeral, Rose — now approaching her middle years — seizes the opportunity to usher in a comeuppance of her parents, who are enjoying cozy retirements in their spacious homes. She makes a shocking ask: that her affluent parents buy her a home in London, relieving her of the financial struggle that accompanies the music career her parents encouraged her to pursue. Balking at her request, Sandra and Kenneth assert their strong work ethic as the driver of their prosperity, highlighting the advantages they provided to their daughter while ignoring the privileges they themselves enjoyed. Rose admonishes them for their selfishness, blaming them for her face-in-phone brother’s failure to launch and decrying their generation’s tendency toward accumulation. They consider her request and its accompanying criticism only briefly and not very seriously. And in a striking final moment, they ponder what they may instead do with the rest of their lives and their money, blissfully dancing to “All You Need Is Love” in the shadows of accumulated wealth and the frowns of their damaged children.

Directed by Artistic Director David Muse, Love, Love, Love is a bold choice for Studio Theatre. Aside from the obvious indicators of gentrification and a widening wealth gap that can be seen just outside of the theater’s 14th Street doors, regional theaters throughout the United States have long relied on the very age group Bartlett appears to be chiding. As theaters across the U.S. have grappled with identifying a sustainable audience model, ticket prices have continued to rise, putting an evening at the theater further out of economic reach for many would-be theatergoers of Rose’s and Jamie’s generation. But, if the theater is meant to inspire conversations and hold a mirror to its audience, then the selection of Love, Love, Love pays off immensely. Audiences may very well feel the tension in the room shifting, even as the bad behavior of Bartlett’s Boomer proxies becomes more and more outlandish.

It is in that behavior that Bartlett and Muse may sacrifice a portion of their audience. Though Sandra and Kenneth’s entitlement is often deeply funny, the play never fully transcends into the kind of encompassing satire that would allow Kenneth and Sandra to become sufficient stand-ins for their generation. By the end of the first act, Sandra and Kenneth are so singularly unlikable that audiences may not recognize themselves in the characters, let alone be primed for the kind of introspection that Bartlett practically begs for in the third act. Thankfully, the two subsequent acts are likely strong enough to solicit sufficient investment from a majority of the audience.

Without a doubt, Muse has assembled a first-rate cast to deliver the play. Though the accents may be spotty, the driving energy is not. Bennett is especially effective as Sandra, taking to heart the character’s pseudo-self-deprecating comment about her own chattiness. In all of Sandra’s conversational facets, whether they be flirtatious, brash or defensive, Bennett is an unstoppable force — even at Sandra’s most insufferable moments, Bennett is nothing short of engaging. Seidman’s performance is similarly engrossing. Always on the verge of tears, Seidman’s emotional Rose offers an earnestness and understanding of the larger world that neither of her parents is able to achieve. Her plea for assistance is not one of entitlement, as her parents would have you believe. It is of existential dispair. 

Muse has also engaged a talented corps of designers. Set designer Alexander Woodward leverages Studio’s Victor Shargai stage to underscore Bartlett’s critique of wealth hoarding. Beginning with an untidy, claustrophobic apartment, the size and chicness of Sandra and Kennth’s home grows in correlation with their affluence, culminating in a massive living room with two doors that open to a terrace. Notably, the ceiling continues to rise, lifting farther out of reach, accordingly. Costume designer Montana Levi Blanco nails the shifting fashion and economic landscapes the characters traverse. Lighting designer Cha See’s subtle but strong work is most effective in the play’s final moments. And sound designer Matthew M. Nielson’s use of period music as touchstones for each of the play’s three acts does well in setting both the time and mood of the onstage action.

That Bartlett chose to make “All You Need Is Love” the play’s functional theme song is a cheeky delight. While it certainly helps American audiences acclimate to the British ambiance, its self-reliant lyrics and assertion about the paramount importance of love more importantly offer an ironic throughline among such abundance. Bartlett asserts that a generation who proclaimed to need one thing has taken everything. In borrowing from the revolutionary spirit that was once a hallmark of those he takes to task, Bartlett is neither polite nor delicate in his critiques. But like finding himself at the bottom of a pyramid scheme, Bartlett asks an existential question on behalf of his generation: What’s left for us? Maybe love isn’t all you need.

One thing is clear: the kids are not OK, Boomer.

By D.R. Lewis  

This article was originally published in The DC Line, here.

From the moment one walks into the Atlas Performing Arts Center for Dominique Morisseau’s Confederates, it is clear that the audience is about to be transported. In this new production by Mosaic Theater Company, sparse patches of artificial grass lead from the theater’s entrance, to the bleacher-style seating that surrounds the stage, and into scenic designer Nadir Bey’s massive set. A wooden platform consisting of a modern-day college professor’s office and the rustic accouterments of a 19th-century plantation cabin dominates the stage, surrounded by a field of puffy cotton shrubs. The set evokes not only a strong sense of two places but also a contrast between a distinct past and present — a clear signal that the narrative will traverse time during the play’s 90 minutes.

The sharp imagery doesn’t end with the abundant bulbs of pillowy cotton. College professor Sandra (Nikkole Salter) soon steps onstage to welcome the audience and detail her credentials as a Black academic. She says she has long been unafraid to confront depictions of slavery and summons an early photograph of an enslaved woman nursing a white child. The striking image is amplified when Sandra reveals that an unidentified individual has taped a printed copy of it to her office door, with Sandra’s face photoshopped over that of the woman. As she sets out to determine who did this, she simultaneously faces the scorn of her students as well as colleagues on various counts: Malik (Joel Ashur), a Black male student who insists she favors women; Candice (Caro Dubberly), a white student who works for Sandra and struggles to hide her passive racism behind her well-meaning progressivism; and Jade (Tamieka Chavis), an untenured professor who feels Sandra hasn’t done enough to help her Black colleagues obtain the same level of professional success.

Juxtaposed with Sandra’s scenes are those set on a Southern plantation during the Civil War. They center on Sara (Deidre Staples), an enslaved woman far more clever than many who live on the same plantation, including her enslaver’s daughter, Missy Sue (Dubberly); Sara’s brother Abner (Ashur); and potential comrade Luanne (Chavis). Unable to conceive a child, Sara makes a home for herself in a cabin on the plantation, watching after her brother and others. When Missy Sue returns from the North, where her philandering husband has abandoned her, she adopts newfound abolitionist values and a lust for her old “friend.” Sara decides to capitalize on the moment and seize her freedom by whatever means necessary.

In chronicling the experiences of these two women, Morisseau digs into the compounding pressures and contradictory expectations that some segments of society place upon Black women, who must also navigate ever-shifting racial and gender dynamics. For instance, Sandra is accused of coddling her white students yet also giving more of her time to Malik than others. And when Sandra faces quiet social backlash for wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt to class, Jade accuses her of not being supportive enough of Black students and colleagues. Despite being exceptionally talented, educated, intelligent and successful, Sandra is met at all turns by others’ broken expectations of her — though none recognize her humanity enough to ask about her personal struggles, which include a failed marriage and difficulty conceiving a child. 

Likewise, Sara spends most of her life performing manual labor despite her intellect and wit. As a child she was beaten for learning more quickly than Missy Sue how to read, and for asking to sleep in the plantation house. And although she is braver and more resourceful than her brother Abner, she is left behind when he joins the military. 

Both Sara and Sandra are objectified for their race by the white women who purport to admire them, challenged professionally by women who have a similar social standing, and disrespected by the men who rely on them. In parallel scenes, Morisseau seems to assert that the social working dynamics on college campuses, or the professional expectations put on Black women today, aren’t so different from those of the plantations. Bey’s set underscores this notion, building Sara’s cabin and Sandra’s office on top of a single cotton field. Morisseau adds wide strokes of satire amid dialogue that shifts from cutting to sincere — not to lighten the moment, but instead to illustrate the absurdities these women face. That Morisseau is able to effectively critique racial and gender politics in such a short amount of time is testament to her skill as a playwright.

Even so, the production suffers from some dramatic imbalances. Morisseau successfully injects a certain amount of shock value into the play through her writing, particularly in Sara’s scenes, such as when she sews shut her brother’s accidental self-inflicted knife wound on his backside or capitalizes on Missy Sue’s advances to flip the dynamic and assert her own power. Nonetheless, over-the-top performance choices at times tilt the production a bit too far, causing emotional whiplash and confusion when reverting back to the realism of Sandra’s scenes. Though many of those choices inspire audience laughter, they ultimately pull focus from Sara and Sandra.

Director Stori Ayers makes deft use of Bey’s set, at first firmly rooting her leading women in their respective sides of the platform before allowing each of them to step into the other’s space. Ultimately, the interwovenness of their experiences, notwithstanding the distance between their respective eras and circumstances, is fully realized when Ayers satisfyingly brings Sara and Sandra together into one space — and as close as they can come to the audience — during the most moving moments of Morisseau’s play. Ayers’ production is also supported by Deja Collins’ stirring projections; John D. Alexander’s lighting design, which uses blues and purples to create an appropriately moody scene; and Moyenda Kulemeka’s distinctive period costumes. Meanwhile, sound designer David Lamont Wilson’s smooth insertion of musical clips, ranging from the Confederate anthem “Dixie” to Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” adds emotional weight to the play’s transitions.

Whereas Salter’s slow-burning Sandra builds to her breaking point, Staples’ Sara is spirited from the outset. Staples, in particular, has a remarkable command of the stage. Her mature, moving portrayal of Sara echoes her excellent work as the younger, socially conscious Carmen in James Ijames’ Good Bones at Studio Theatre earlier this year. And Chavis, despite being a last-minute addition to the cast and using a script for the performance this reviewer saw, is excellent in both of her roles, especially Luanne. 

Confederates is strong evidence of why Morisseau is regarded as one of the leading dramatists of our time. One could rattle off the well-deserved honors that have been bestowed upon her — they include a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship — but the proof is in the writing. In addition to exercising a keen sense of storytelling economy, Morisseau is able to effectively balance hefty arguments with precise character specificity. Bolstered by a creative team that steps up to meet the challenge, Mosaic’s production of Confederates is a worthwhile journey for Washington theatergoers.