Laughing and feeling our way to ‘The Mountaintop,’ at Round House Theatre

Posted on October 25, 2023

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

I’ve always wanted to sit with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the mountaintop to gaze at the stars, to drink the Milky Way, and to pray silently to our ancestors. The mystery of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner world has always been of great interest to me. Dr. King was a thoughtful writer. As much skill as he had on stages, in pulpits, in front of cameras, and on streets, he could command a page. His work lives with me like a ghost, gently haunting me to read more and better and then drown in his poetics. So much of his legacy is co-opted, repackaged, and sold by big corporations. They rework his image until he is more cotton candy than fire blazed to sundown towns.

Katori Hall’s play The Mountaintop (now playing at Round House Theatre) is a reminder, a wake-up call to all who think they know or knew King. She asks us to think, look, and listen again. She spars with our imagination. Her words land like Ali vs. Foreman. We’ve got to go deeper; no, we must go higher!

In The Mountaintop,  we find King, played by Ro Boddie, in his hotel room in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel the night before his assassination. He’s alone working on his speech, but only briefly before the arrival of a woman who, at first, seems to be merely a hotel staff member navigating her first day bringing King the coffee he requested from room service. An assumed brief encounter turns into a heartfelt, intimate conversation. Camae (Carrie Mae), as her character pronounces it, played by Renea S. Brown, is utterly hilarious. She’s quick-witted, outspoken, edgy, and lyrically weaves curse words together to tickle your insides. King’s character finds himself in awe of her beauty, her light, and the way she shows up authentically. He unsuspectingly lets his guard down, discards his God-like persona, and allows her to see him vulnerable.

Throughout the brilliantly woven dialogue, Hall suggestively allows us to feel the looming darkness as King keeps describing not feeling well. Camae is never alarmed by his remarks as they share cigarettes and secrets throughout the night. King is frightened of the loud thundering noise from the storm, and Camae is his unexpected comfort. At a critical moment, King’s paranoia raises its head, suspecting her of being a spook, resisting the calling to see her more deeply, more spiritually, out of fear, out of what he knows has been whispering his childhood name, Michael.

King and Camae both take command of the stage, supported by the set design of the hotel room, thanks to Paige Hathaway. The actors are both keenly aware of their mannerisms and the space they occupy. There’s something special about their performance. They share chemistry, trust each other, and know where the other ends and begins. Brown and Boddie are evenly matched in talent and build off each other with each line. The actors have great respect and seriousness for their roles. Boddie as King is powerful yet gentle. He makes King human. He brings him down to his details, to what makes a man, to the heart of what it means to be a person. Both actors are brilliant and deserve our witnessing, celebration, and acknowledgment for giving their all to this production.

TOP: Renea S. Brown (Camae) and Ro Boddie (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.); ABOVE: Ro Boddie (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) and Renea S. Brown (Camae) in ‘The Mountaintop.’ Photos by Margot Schulman Photography.

After the climax, there is a sweet, honest moment between Camae and King, arguably where the play could have ended. Instead, Hall shifts us to a montage of Blackness, a dreamlike passing of the baton by King. This part of the production seems disjointed and whimsically too hopeful. What if Delicia Turner Sonnenberg’s directing deviated from Hall’s ending into something more cunning, daring, and shocking? I love celebrating our Blackness, but I’m interested in narratives that allow minds to travel to an abstract end. I wanted the audience to be responsible for reflecting and contending with going further into our inner world. Finding joy when the darkness King felt is still alive feels forced. I have to ask Hall, who did you write this ending for? America is still America. Yet, as I wrestle with Hall’s creative choices, which are inspiration from her mother, I cannot help but be thankful for her talent. She’s undeniably one of the best storytellers we have now. From the stage to television, she skillfully entertains and seduces our intellect.

The Mountaintop is mandatory viewing!

Deconstructing Deceit: A Review of Zadie Smith’s ‘The Fraud’

Posted on October 23, 2023

by Samantha Neugebauer

This article was originally published in DCTRENDING, here.

D.C. readers gathered inside Sidwell Friends School’s oak-paneled meeting room, last month, to hear author Zadie Smith read from her latest novel, The Fraud. In his welcome address, Brad Graham, co-owner of Politics and Prose, joked that the crowd was a “well-behaved” group – neither an officious ringtone nor a whispery side conversation punctured the moments proceeding Smith’s entrance. But the audience’s attentiveness was unsurprising, given the acclaimed novelist and essayist’s unique position in today’s literary pantheon. 

On the one hand, Smith continues to represent what’s ‘new’ in Anglosphere publishing, i.e., hers is the work of a biracial writer with working-class roots and a Cambridge education. On the other hand, Smith has staked herself in with the ‘old’ guard of novelists and readers who cling to the battered ideals of creative imagination and “interpersonal voyeurism,” best expressed in her 2019 The New York Review of Books essay “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction.” Consequently, Smith has become somewhat of a role model for readers who are tired of being treated like children who cannot understand complexity. Fans nod their heads in affirmation when Smith insists (as she often does) that adults can hold multiple ideas simultaneously. At the same time, Smith lives within the Republic of Letters, she is not above questioning fiction’s raison d’etre. Altogether, her intelligent prose, personal/professional humility, restless curiosity,  and measured communication style make her our most trustworthy literary stateswoman today. 

Smith began that evening by reading three chapters from The Fraud, a historical novel set in Victorian England and Jamaica. Stylistically, The Fraud’s chapters are short in keeping with the serialized writing style of the Victorian era that Smith wanted to emulate. The book centers around the Tichborne case, a real, bizarre legal battle involving ‘the Claimant,’ a cockney-speaking butcher from Australia professing to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the would-be inheritor of a large fortune and title, and Andrew Bogel, a servant of the Tichbornes and formerly enslaved person from a Jamaican plantation, who supports the Claimant. The trail enthralled and divided English society in the 1860s and 1870s (think of how the O.J. trial gripped America in the 1990s). The enthralled includes Eliza Touchet, a well-read Scottish housekeeper and cousin-by-marriage of the novelist William Ainsworth, and Sarah, Ainsworth’s young, lower-class wife and Claimant supporter. 

Eliza, though a real person, is the quintessential Smith protagonist. In Smith’s rendering, Eliza is thoughtful, observant, funny, and more curious than condemnatory of bad behavior: “As much as Eliza hated awful people, she also could never resist them.” This line recalls the narrator of Smith’s 2018 story “Now More than Ever,” who confesses, “I instinctively sympathize with the guilty. That’s my guilty secret.” While sympathy and fascination aren’t exactly synonyms, it’s hard to tell the two apart with Eliza. For instance, when attending a pro-Claimant event, Eliza is fascinated by Sarah’s reception amongst other supporters, who Eliza describes as “farmers and hod-carriers and men with faces black with soot…[and] women with no respectable for whom she knew names…also clerks and schoolteachers, dissenters of all stripes…” Amongst them, Eliza admits, “It was almost touching to see the new Mrs. Ainsworth is so despised, so welcomed in her conversation and opinions, and so much a fount of knowledge.” The scene, and others like it, hold obvious echoes of the many pieces written by liberal journalists entering a Trump rally or red-state diner to talk with his supporters. Subtly, readers are asked to examine where our own fascination and sympathy meet and end. 

Yet, our Trump-esque Claimant is only one fraud among many. In her discussion with moderator Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Smith revealed the fraud of the title is, in fact, “the relationship between England and Jamaica.” Smith insisted that fraudulent people always exist: “That’s just how people behave.” She is most interested in the mass deceptions made by nation-states and by those who write history. She recalled how she was taught all about the American slave trade during her schooling in England but nothing about the English slave trade in Jamaica. In part, The Fraud was written “to rescue that history” and to find answers to the question, “How do enormous injustices end?” In her research for the novel, Smith discovered that by obscuring this history, a “double silence” or a “double loss” occurred; the first being, of course, the loss of the history of British slavery, and the second being the loss of the collective, cross-cultural opposition to it. 

When Perkins-Valdez asked Smith about the difference between “British amnesia and American amnesia” regarding history, Smith claimed –and in doing so, seemed to ruffle some feathers in the room – that “American amnesia” was not nearly as bad as that of the British. The comment brought to mind a similar exchange between Smith and Keli Goff at the NYU Washington, DC Salon Series in 2016. Groff had asked Smith why “serious writing in America” was still perceived as predominantly white and male, and Smith responded by saying that “in America, she didn’t actually see it that way…on the book side (not within publishing housing), it is pretty diverse…while in England, it is a different matter. In England, Black writing is struggling still.” There are, Smith continues, Black, upper-class diaspora writers in England, but there aren’t many Black British working-class writers. 

The Fraud is also a book about the fraudulence and indulgences of novelists. Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and William Thackeray, among others, make appearances. Also, Eliza (“a woman always partly phantasmagoric”) yearns to be a novelist. These ghosts of novelists-past provide some of the most humorous and hypocritical moments in the book: “I do not mean to dampen this jolly occasion, said Thackeray, immediately doing so…” They also provide criticisms that cut through their time into today: “What we foolishly call ‘the literary scene’  – a vulgar, ludicrous phrase to begin with – is really just ‘butter me and I’ll butter you,’ in the name of friendship’” (also Thackeray). 

The literary scene, or rather how to enter it, came up during the evening’s Q&A as well. In a voice churning with hope and self-deprecation, a young writer mentioned that she was now older than Smith was when she’d published her first novel at 25, and essentially, what could she do about that? Could she still make it? Is there still time? Smith, for her part, seemed to know where the question was headed as soon as the woman started, and she answered by saying that she “hates to think she was a depressing fact in young people’s lives.” There are, she insisted, many examples of great writers who started publishing later. Toni Morrison and Tessa Hadley come to mind. 

The Fraud, too, features novelists rising, falling, and getting started at different points in their lifetimes and posthumously. During the 1800s, for instance, William Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard outsold Oliver Twist, but who (except Smith) has Jack Sheppard on their shelf today? Or any of Ainsworth’s other forty novels, all successful at their time? None of this is very reassuring, perhaps, for those who seek posterity. Present time itself might be the greatest fraud of all, The Fraud tells us. Some of us ask too much of it, and others not enough. We’re obsessed with the present, we’re dismayed by the present, and yet, we feel superior over the past’s people without really knowing them. By extending her signature compassion backward to some of the past’s people, Smith and The Fraud may very well live into the future and compel readers to think beyond this present moment, too. 

Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker

Posted on October 20, 2023

by Haley Huchler

This article was originally published in Washington Independent Review of Books, here.

“Mary Lasker had never looked through a microscope, performed surgery, or spoken from the floor of the Capitol,” writes Judith L. Pearson. “She simply had an unbridled belief in possibility.” Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker Pearson illuminates the accomplishments of her subject, a woman who arguably did more than any other individual to improve the health of Americans throughout the 20th century. The main source material for the book is an oral history Lasker gave to Columbia University in 1962, recording it on the condition that it not be made public until after her death. Pearson uses Lasker’s words to great effect in this artfully crafted biography.

The daughter of an Irish immigrant and a Midwestern banker, Mary Woodard grew up in Watertown, Wisconsin. While a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she fell ill with the Spanish flu, one in a long line of childhood illnesses she endured. These early experiences with sickness fueled her lifelong interest in medical research.

After recovering, Mary headed east to pursue her passion for art at Radcliffe College, the only school then offering a major in art history. She soon wound up working at a gallery in New York City. It was there she met her first husband, and together they enjoyed a lavish life of art collecting and international travel until the stock-market crash of 1929 destroyed everything, including their relationship. It was her second marriage, to Albert Lasker, that would spark her crusade into public health. (Although Mary is the heroine of this story, Albert was a devoted and passionate partner in her efforts. His death from colon cancer in 1952 only heightened her dedication to the cause.)

The Laskers were a well-connected pair. Albert, from his sickbed, received hand-painted get-well cards from Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali; Mary attended balls with Britain’s royal family and Winston Churchill on the eve of the Second World War. With their money and connections, they held the world in the palm of their hands. But what they most wanted to do with their considerable resources was improve the health and longevity of fellow Americans.

The couple’s interest in campaigning for a cause formed early in their marriage. The Laskers spent their honeymoon at the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and they later became involved in supporting the Birth Control Federation of America (it was Albert who suggested it be renamed Planned Parenthood). In December 1942, the pair founded the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation to promote better health through education and research. A decade later, after Albert’s death, Mary persisted in the effort, rallying for more dollars to be spent on heart disease and cancer research each year.

Pearson’s clear and concise writing serves the narrative well. Her attention to detail is stunning, with reconstructed conversations so intimate, you might wonder if she was a fly on the wall at Mary’s meetings with President Eisenhower or lunches with Lady Bird Johnson. While the second half of the book gets mildly bogged down with the minutiae surrounding various bills and partisan debates, it does offer important insight into the difficulties of making large, meaningful changes via public policy. Despite working toward a goal almost everyone supported — fewer deaths from disease — Mary faced immense challenges as she proceeded through the ungreased gears of Congress.

There’s no single resounding moment in the story when she finally achieves all she ever dreamed of. Rather, there’s an accumulation of tiny shifts — which she helped create — that spurred real change. Today, Americans are much more likely to recover from major illnesses like cancer and heart disease than they were 70 years ago. After reading this eye-opening account of Mary Lasker’s life, you’ll know whom they should thank.

Maynard Jackson returns to the political stage in ‘Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard’ at Ford’s Theatre

Posted on October 13, 2023

By D. R. Lewis

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

Standing at nearly 6 feet 4 inches, Atlanta Mayor Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. was a formidable presence in national Democratic politics, both in spirit and stature, for three decades. Now, in Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard, a new play from the Ford’s Theatre Legacy Commission program, playwright Pearl Cleage draws on her experience as Jackson’s speechwriter and friend to contextualize his political legacy through the voices of the people who first sent him to City Hall in 1973.

Something Moving invites audiences into an Atlanta high-school-turned-community-arts-center, where nine local actors have gathered to rehearse a play that tells the story of Maynard Jackson 50 years after his election as the city’s first Black mayor. Under the direction of a pseudo-narrator called The Witness, the actors assume their roles as citizens remembering Jackson’s political rise — first as a candidate for United States Senate against a segregationist incumbent and eventually as a three-term mayor — and in doing so examine the social progress since Jackson first entered politics. They recount his success in harnessing the voting power of the city’s Black residents following the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the symbol of hope he quickly became.

“Is this a history play?” asks one of the actors, who are referred to as numbered “Citizens.” “Every play is a history play,” replies The Witness. But Something Moving does not emulate many other histories by fixating on the specific dates and details of Jackson’s political career. Cleage instead focuses on the personal aspects of politics — the way that Jackson made his constituents feel, the social shift he represented, and the widespread feelings of optimism that his election inspired across the South. She adds context by detailing the pre- and post-Civil War legacy of Atlanta as the capital of a former confederate state, as seen through the experiences of its inhabitants. Among the Atlanta residents the various Citizens portray are a Black housekeeper who has worked for the same white family for 20 years, a lesbian couple who live on the site of a former Civil War battlefield, a gay man who encountered Jackson when the mayor visited the historic Sweet Gum Head drag bar, and a young man Jackson met while spending a weekend living among constituents in the Bankhead Courts public housing complex.

It is in these moments of heightened, focused storytelling that the play is at its strongest. By fully developing individual characters and the world they inhabit, Cleage draws the audience in and successfully underscores Jackson’s impact on individual lives. She is then able to effectively convey the oppressive social pressures that many of Jackson’s constituents were living under, why he represented the promise of relief and change, and the ways in which many of those pressures persist today. But, generally, those compelling moments come too late in the play, which spends a great deal of time at the outset explaining the mechanics of its storytelling, perhaps at the expense of a greater breadth of storytelling. The play falls victim to its own structure, with form overwhelming the content.

From her entrance, The Witness (a very charismatic Billie Krishawn) asserts herself as a dramatic device. Breaking the fourth wall, she immediately points out that the audience is in a theater watching a performance and that the people onstage are portraying performers themselves (clearly a nod to the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which is a phrase that is repeatedly uttered in reference to Atlanta). But in a play that insists on connection between people and wishes to underscore the power of the individual (as implied by its subtitle, A Meditation on Maynard), The Witness’ commitment to referring to her characters only as numbered citizens and to present herself as a dramatic convention are not conducive to the play’s desired impact.

While the full title promises both the momentum of a political ascent and the careful consideration of a meditation, the play struggles to commit to either. Just as it deliberately avoids digging into the particulars of Jackson’s policy accomplishments, it quickly brushes over his constituents’ criticisms, focusing instead on the symbolism of his election and the magnetism of the man. Regardless, Cleage delivers a heartfelt love letter to her friend and former boss, and the affection and respect she holds for Jackson is both obvious and touching. Audiences will walk away from this production having learned more about an overlooked political icon and feeling encouraged to consider the impact that local heroes can have on their home communities as well as the national stage.

Cleage’s play is bolstered by a strong cast and production team. Under the direction of Seema Sueko, the apt ensemble buoys the material with standout performances by Kim Bey, Alina Collins Maldonado and Constance Swain. Ivania Stack’s costumes embrace modern fashion, but also nod to 1970s trends. Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s lighting appropriately evokes the industrial brightness of an aging community center, but in conjunction with Shawn Duan’s projection design can turn on a dime to transport the audience to a range of settings. But Milagros Ponce de León’s set may be the most effectual element of all. Utilizing the stage’s deep apron, the angled sides of her hyper-realistic set extend toward the audience like arms reaching for a welcoming hug.

Notwithstanding its limitations, Something Moving is a fitting selection for Ford’s Theatre. It’s not just that the flags festooning Abraham Lincoln’s box serve as a seamless yet noticeable buffer between this landmark of American history and Ponce de León’s municipal set, nor that the theater sits mere blocks from the centers of our federal government in a city that, at the time of Jackson’s election, had a population that was more than 70% Black. Equally important, Ford’s Theatre serves as an educational center, welcoming countless students from across the United States each year to engage them in both American history and the performing arts. Cleage’s play unabashedly joins in those efforts. For some students, it will be the first play they see. For far more, it will likely be their first introduction to a man who dedicated himself to building a better community. Through Cleage’s curation of historical stories and voices that are not so different from those of her modern audience, Maynard Jackson’s legacy endures.

Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard by Pearl Cleage runs through Oct. 15 at Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. Directed by Seema Sueko. Approximately 90 minutes and performed without an intermission. Tickets are available at fords.org or by calling the box office at 888-616-0270.

At Woolly Mammoth, a play about the war in Ukraine ⁠— and so much more

Posted on October 3, 2023

By Jakob Cansler

This article was originally published in the DC Line here.

Eleven years ago, celebrated Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova won Russia’s highest theater prize. That play was one of 25 she has produced in Moscow.

Today, though, none of her plays are performed there, or anywhere in Russia for that matter. 

Denisova fled Moscow for Poland shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; since then, she has focused her work on the war, having written and staged four new plays. The world premiere of one of them, My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion, runs through Oct. 8 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in a co-production with Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, where the show will be produced early next year.

Denisova specializes in political theater that combines documentary with fantasy, and My Mama certainly fits that bill, with the script inspired by ⁠— and, in some sections, taken verbatim from ⁠— conversations the playwright had with her mother, Olga. 

At 82, Olga decided to stay in Kyiv, where she has lived her whole life, amid Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine, including her city. That puts Olga on the frontlines of the war, both literally and in Denisova’s imagination.

At one point in the play, Olga tells her daughter that Russian soldiers are making their way to the “decision-maker.” 

“Apparently my mama regards herself as the decision-maker,” Sasha, played by Suli Holum in the show, says in response. In the increasingly fantastical scenarios that follow, Olga strategizes with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flies a fighter jet and converses with other world leaders. 

The play “is a combination of a document and of a fantastic world,” Yury Urnov, the show’s director, said in an interview. “So the biggest ⁠— in a good way ⁠— challenge was how to give space to both of these, ⁠⁠the real reality and fantastic reality on stage and how they can coexist.”

The two extremes also make for a play that is tonally complex, as over-the-top comedic sequences segue into moments depicting the harsh realities of war. In one section, a lighthearted moment of song and dance is cut off by a nighttime air raid.

Denisova, Urnov and the rest of the creative team had to find a way to strike the right balance among all of these different elements. The result is a production that features a rotating set piece, a soundtrack that ranges from classical music to disco, approximately 100 custom-made projections, actor Lindsay Smiling playing a dozen characters, and deepfakes of the leaders of France and Germany.

Fitting all of that into a 90-minute play, and to make it cohesive, is challenging enough, but My Mama also had to be translated from Denisova’s native Russian.

“We had like a group of five people⁠ — bilingual and American⁠, and Sasha, certainly ⁠— in presence who were pretty much going line by line through this play and and trying to make it work in English,” Urnov said. “It’s not just about the words, it’s about the contexts. It’s about the associations that resonate with English-speaking audiences.”

For the creative team, the drive to overcome these challenges wasn’t just an artistic responsibility. A play like this comes with political and social responsibilities, too, which raises the stakes. 

More than a year and a half after Russia invaded Ukraine, during which time U.S. news coverage of the war has waned, My Mama serves as an explicit reminder of the toll Russia’s invasion has taken on Ukrainians. For Urnov, who was born and raised in Russia, the responsibility also feels personal.

“We are at a place where Putin’s regime is doing everything to normalize [the war]. There is a danger in the normalization of that,” he said. “We’re opening in DC. I think that’s the place where it needs to open. I hope people who can⁠ — who are politicians and the people who affect politicians’ decisions — will come and see it.”

And yet, to say that My Mama is simply a play about the war in Ukraine would be a mischaracterization. Much of it focuses on Olga’s life and her relationship with her daughter. Their dynamic is complicated, sometimes even antagonistic — and it shifts amid the war and after Olga decides to stay in Kyiv.

“At the heart of the play, really, is a mother’s love — not only for her child, but for her country,” said actor Holly Twyford, who plays Olga. “And she says I’m not going anywhere. And don’t you dare come here. And that is very powerful. I think it’s very powerful.”

After all, what most American media covers of the war is strategic, logistical or political⁠ — offensives and counteroffensives, bombing reports, document leaks, summits, aid deals. What is lost in that kind of reporting is the story of what it’s like for the Ukrainians on the ground, which is exactly what My Mama conveys.

As Twyford describes it, the play has both a “micro human element and very macro human element,” telling the story of Ukraine and the war through one woman’s thoughts and experiences. 

“It will absolutely make you laugh, but it also won’t make you forget the reality of the situation. And I think that’s, I don’t know, that’s kind of the definition of hope, isn’t it?”

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s ‘Evita’ offers fresh look at the rise of Eva Perón

Posted on September 27, 2023

By D. R. Lewis

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

Sammi Cannold’s Evita begins and ends with the same striking image: an angelic white gown floating over rolling fields of white flowers. The metaphor isn’t difficult to discern as the world continues to grapple with the legacies of Eva Perón’s meteoric rise to become first lady of Argentina in the 1940s and the subsequent Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice megahit that has kept her firmly in the international consciousness long after her death. But in this fresh production, running through Oct. 15 at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall and produced in association with American Repertory Theater, director Cannold forces a closer, neon-tinged look at the myth-making of Eva Perón and the alchemy required to become a populist icon.

After originating as a concept album in 1976, Rice and Lloyd Webber’s Evita premiered in London’s West End in 1978 ahead of a 1979 Broadway transfer. Telling the story of Eva’s early life, relationship with eventual Argentine President Juan Perón, reign as first lady and death at age 33, Evita was among the first “British Invasion” musicals and rock-style scores to hit Broadway. Now, having enjoyed countless revivals, productions and tours around the globe, plus a 1996 film starring Madonna, Evita could be easily treated as a period piece and a relic of a bygone era. Even its iconic anthem, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” has been covered by the likes of Sinéad O’Connor, Donna Summer, Olivia Newton-John, and the cast of Glee.

But in the wake of a new American populism, Cannold invites her audience to take another look at Evita and interrogate the unpredictable events and mythologizing that allow an individual to capture (and hold on tightly to) a nation’s attention. Eva Perón may have been a singular sensation, but she also benefited from the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time with the right people and having the good sense to seize her moment. “Now, Eva Perón had every disadvantage you need if you’re gonna succeed” is a striking lyric that comes early in the musical, but sets the tone for the relentless social climbing and wily opportunism that catapulted her to the Casa Rosada. We watch as an impoverished young Eva (a strong Shereen Pimentel) attaches herself to a philandering lounge singer in order to get to Buenos Aires, leverages her beauty and agency to reap social advantages from well-positioned men, launches her career as an actress and radio star, and eventually introduces herself to Juan Perón (a sincere Caesar Samayoa), whose own star is rising. Eva carefully curates the narrative of her own ascent, never relinquishing her pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps origin story and doubling down on her assertion that she is the “savior” of the Argentine poor. Her self-aggrandizing is foiled only by cynical narrator Che (an effective Omar Lopez-Cepero), who refreshingly fades in and out of the action to relate unsavory details of the Perón regime that Eva would rather not share.

Soon after securing her place as Juan Perón’s partner, Eva expels his mistress from the household in a scene where Cannold’s handiwork can be seen most clearly. Where past productions have lazily utilized “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” as an illustration of Eva’s viciousness, Cannold instead conjures a depth and magic that afford Eva a moment to quietly consider the fantastic series of events that accelerated her rise. Mimicking the staging of an earlier sequence where Eva interacts with a carousel of men to her increasing benefit, she now looks on as the cast-off young woman maneuvers through a similar sequence with the same men, but fails to acquire the same social advances as Eva. In this brief, breathtaking moment, the audience sees Eva recognize the fragile nature of her opportunity and make the firm decision to run full speed ahead to secure her spot at the top. Nevermind that the road ahead will be full of contradictions, greed, corruption and unrest. 

Eva soon ignores the ideals she once held and the working class from which she rose in favor of desperate grasps at respect from the Buenos Aires elite she purports to abhor. Still, as she becomes more separated from the harsh realities of the country’s poor, potentially embezzles money under the guise of charitable giving and faces her own mortality within the walls of the presidential palace, she sings the old familiar tunes and becomes increasingly possessive of those who she could once reliably call “my people.” In her final moments, Pimentel’s Eva strains to maintain her grasp on life as much as her grasp on power, which have become one and the same. When the requiem that starts the show returns to complete it, one can’t help but wonder whether the public displays of mourning are entirely sincere, or simply the logical consequence of Eva’s myth-making.

The production’s designers borrow heavily from the gilded nature of Eva’s reign to great effect. As the show begins, single beams of lush white flowers covering the stage ascend to the rafters, revealing Jason Sherwood’s dark, utilitarian set whose five arches serve as portals for movement and windows into the Perón administration’s abuses. Emily Maltby and Valeria Solomonoff’s embellished choreography most often culminates in an unexpected political transaction or surprising power shift. Alejo Vietti’s gray but detailed costumes serve to blend the ensemble into monotonous groups — as Eva herself often refers to them, such as “the middle classes,” “a clutch of stuffed cuckoos,” or simply, again, “my people” — rather than to distinguish individuals. The uniformity is offset only by Eva’s white garments and flashes of deep red from Che’s undershirt. When combined with Bradley King’s excellent neon lighting, which frames the stage and scant structures of Eva’s world, you cannot escape the sense that you are watching a person write, stage and perform the story of her own life within a proscenium that she thinks she alone can see. Even so, in a first act that begs for a percussive electricity to match Eva’s hunger, a muted, electronic soundscape steals a bit of the bite.

Stories of politics and those who peddle power will always hold a special place in the hearts of Washington audiences and Evita, one of several co-productions slated for this season, is a strong start for Shakespeare Theatre Company. With Cannold’s fresh take, which serves more to reframe than reconceive the material, audiences have all the more reason to grapple with the persistent question of whether musicals like Evita (and Broadway’s current Imelda Marcos disco musical, Here Lies Love) work to glorify the legacies of complicated figures, or serve as cautionary tales of political ascension. Regardless of which side one may land, perhaps by interrogating the populists of the past, we can better understand those who wish to harness that same power today. Don’t worry, Eva. We won’t cry for them, either.

Comedy delivers a punch in ‘Monumental Travesties’ at Mosaic Theater

Posted on September 19, 2023

By Daarel Burnette II

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

What should we do with all the cultural vestiges of America’s racist past?

Today, the clothing, language, and statues that were created to assemble and glue together a system that subjugated Black people litter our day-to-day lives in sometimes embarrassing ways.

Do we ignore these cultural vestiges, hold onto them as a haunting reminder of our past, or expunge them as a way to combat contemporary forms of racism?

Monumental Travesties, written by Psalmayene 24 and directed by Reginald L. Douglas, now being shown by Mosaic Theater Company at Atlas Performing Arts Center, aptly tackles this provocative question in a tightly wound comedic plot.

The world-premiere play is delivered with a punch by Louis E. Davis, Jonathan Feuer, and Renee Elizabeth Wilson, standout stars who at times left their majority white spectators visibly squirming.

Louis E. Davis as Chance, Jonathan Feuer as Adam, and Renee Elizabeth Wilson as Brenda in ‘Monumental Travesties.’ Photo by Chris Banks.

Psalmayene 24 centers his plot around Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Memorial, a statue that has been controversial since freed slaves raised money to erect it in 1876.

The statue depicts a larger-than-life Lincoln standing over and “freeing” a mostly naked and kneeling Black man, whose feet are wrapped with a ball and chain.

We learn at the beginning of Monumental Travesties that Chance, played by Davis, has climbed the statue in the middle of the night, sawed off Lincoln’s head, and, being chased by the cops, dumped it in the garden of his white next-door neighbor Adam, played by Feuer.

In most plays about racism, playwrights require their Black characters to grapple with the many ways racism knocks at their confidence, warps their perceptions, tangles up their family lives. White characters are tasked with being a bit less racist.

But in Monumental Travesties, Psalmayene 24 flips this model on its head.

Adam is having a full-blown identity crisis, wracked by what he sees as whiteness destroying the world and feeling compelled to shed his white identity. A recent bout with COVID has apparently depleted his memory.

Chance and Brenda, played by Wilson, are confident with their Black identity, as is evident in the set, designed by Andrew Cohen, which features African print, furniture, and pottery, and Jean-Michel Basquiat art. But their marriage has recently been sexless. Brenda is underemployed and Chance has decided to quit his job to be a full-time radical performance artist. They somehow are able to afford a gentrified home in DC.

In this wonder of a script, Psalmayene 24 gives his characters lines that are poetic and biting and knee-slapping funny. He punches up at the sometimes surprising reactions white people had to George Floyd’s murder and their insistence that we scrub our society of language that looks and feels racist — the same white folks who were then less bullish when it came to changing racist policies.

Davis, Feuer, and Wilson deliver their lines with comedic perfection. They throw their entire bodies into their characters, play off the audience’s shock.

Feuer especially is unafraid to delve into the darker aspects of white identity and delivers some of the play’s most piercing lines.

Costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka found some of the most interesting and appropriate outfits for Chance and Adam. Outfits that scream, “I’m not a racist.” And outfits that scream, “Black people don’t belong here.”

I have a few quibbles: the head of the Lincoln statue was at times treated as if it was heavy; at other times, as if it was light. Davis, whose hair is dyed neon green, performs at a level 10 for most of the play, when sometimes it requires his character to be at a level six. And some of the characters’ time off stage to grab one or two items seemed excessive. Nothing that can’t be ironed out.

At the beginning of the production I attended, Douglas, who serves as Mosaic’s artistic director, said he wants Mosaic to be a “catalyst for change and community building.”

With Monumental Travesties, Mosaic hit the bullseye.