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Resolving Hedda IS whip-smart and hilarious

Posted on March 29, 2019

by John Bavoso

This article was first published by DC Theatre Scene and can be read on their site here.

“We’re in a strange relationship with our fiction, you see,” Warren Ellis, the English comic-book writer, novelist, and screenwriter, once wrote. “Sometimes we fear it’s taking us over, sometimes we beg to be taken over by it… and sometimes we want to see what’s inside it.” In Jon Klein’s Resolving Hedda, currently being brought to life in a whip-smart and hilarious production by Washington Stage Guild, one fictional character in particular has most definitely taken over—and she’s taking the audience with her on a wild, bumpy ride.

Klein, currently the head of the MFA Playwriting Program at the Catholic University of America, takes a classic play that he’s taught for decades—Henrik Ibsen’s vaunted Hedda Gabler—and imagines what would happen if a self-aware Hedda tried to change the course of the play’s event from within it. It turns out what happens is that you get a cheeky, anachronistic, self-referential romp that makes for a truly entertaining evening.

This is the point where your reviewer must make a deeply shameful confession—I am, at best, only passingly familiar with the canonical Hedda Gabler. And by “passingly familiar,” I mean that I have neither read the play nor seen it fully produced.

Luckily, this puts me in the ideal position to let you know that having a similar blind spot will not detract from your enjoyment of Resolving Hedda even one iota. The fine folks at Washington Stage Guild have provided a succinct and sufficient synopsis in the program and our protagonist gives us enough of the beats along the way to help us noobs keep up; also, Wikipedia is a thing that exists, for those overachievers who wish to do their homework in advance. Sure, those with a deeper familiarity of the text may find some additional moments of nuanced humor, but it’s certainly not mandatory.

On entering the Undercroft Theatre beneath the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, audience members are greeted by scenic designer’s Tara Lyman-Dobson’s traditional set—all the usual suspects are present and accounted for, including oil paintings, a chaise lounge, and loads of books. Ditto Sígríd Jóhannesdóttir’s 19th century costume design. But that’s pretty much where convention ends.

Even before artistic director Bill Largess has finished his curtain speech, Hedda herself, played here with commanding personality and undeniable charisma by Kelly Karcher, alerts us to the fact that this won’t be any old production of Hedda Gabler. This version of Hedda knows she’s in a play, knows she’s going to die in the end, knows who her murderer is (Ibsen—or Ibsy as she calls him, naturally), and is hell-bent on changing her fate and surviving this night. More than 100 years of following the same script around the world has left Hedda furious, foul-mouthed, and feminist as… well, you know. Karcher is a force of nature in this role as our fed-up guide straining against a nature devised for her by a dead Norwegian.

The rest of the characters, however, have arrived expecting just another night. Hedda’s nerdy husband George (played with slapstick haplessness by Jamie Smithson), beautiful and blonde friend Thea (a hilariously confused Emilie Faith Thompson), meddling Aunt Julia (the delightfully dotty Jewell Robinson), stereotypically evil Judge Brack (a deliciously devious Steve Beall), and earnest Eilert (a brash and haughty Matthew Castleman) are all baffled by the suddenly changed Hedda in their midst. (Poor Bertha is given the night off—too small a role, Hedda explains.) And, as Hedda tries and tries to steer the action in a different direction, the rest of the characters unwittingly thwart her every attempt.

Fans of metatheatricality will adore Klein’s script, and director Steven Carpenter’s impeccable execution of it, complete with anachronism, inside jokes, fourth wall breaks, and audience interaction. This new, feisty Hedda, who tries fiercely to break free from her pre-ordained path, is the self-confident feminist protagonist that will have contemporary audiences cheering. Klein’s Hedda isn’t just representing herself; she’s taking up the torch for all the classical anti-heroines with ICD (Impulse Control Disorder) who are driven by motives that are far less developed than those of their male counterparts.

There’s a well-known notion in the industry that audiences don’t really want to see theatre that’s about theatre—but based on the uproarious laughter and utter investment of the people sitting around me, I’d say that “inside baseball” can still be a home run. While watching Resolving Hedda, you’ll likely find yourself more engaged in a period piece than you’ve ever been before—and glued to your seat until the final defiant moment.

The Seagull from The Wheel

Posted on March 21, 2019

by John Bavoso

This article was first published by DC Theatre and can be found on their site here.

Was Anton Chekhov touched with the gift of prophecy when he wrote the first of his four major plays, The Seagull? Or, even rarer, with self-awareness? The piece, which begins with a disastrous performance of an avant-garde play, was considered an epic failure upon its debut in Petersburg in 1896. The situation was so dire that Chekhov swore off writing plays all together. For all the angst it surely caused its writer at the time, the piece endures as a meditation on the new vs. the old, the nature and purpose of art, and the merits or lack thereof of fame—all fertile ground for the young artists at The Wheel Theatre Company to dig into in a new adaption written and directed by Jack Read.

The Seagull has, of course, been adapted many times before—as The Notebook of Trigorin by Tennessee Williams, and Aaron Posner’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and as musicals, films, and operas. Read’s version, through trimmed down to 100 minutes without an intermission, is fairly true to the original text in terms of the four-act structure, the characters, and many of the jokes. Where the The Wheel puts its own stamp on the classic is the casting and in the form of a prologue and epilogue of Read’s own devising.

A true ensemble piece, The Seagull is nonetheless, at its center, the story of Boris Trigorin (Thomas Shuman), a wildly famous but insecure writer; his lover, Irina Arkadina (Olivia Haller), the aging actress; her son, Konstantin Treplyov (Aron Spellane), an experimental writer; and the object of his affection, the ingénue Nina Zarechnaya (Gracie Eda Baker). In the orbit of this foursome are the estate’s manager, Ilya Shamrayev (Adrian Iglesias), his wife, Polina (Elizabeth Floyd), and his daughter, Masha (Madeline Mooney); Arkadina’s brother, the retired civil servant Sorin (Axandre Oge); Semyon Medvedenko (Amber James), a schoolteacher; and Yevgeny Dorn (Colton Needles), a country doctor and unrepentant ladies’ man.

As previously mentioned, the action begins with a play within a play, written by Konstantin and performed by Nina, which is cut short by the laughter and scorn of Arkadina for her son’s inaccessible and dour work. This act is the jumping off point for multiple love triangles, musing about creation and notoriety, and, against all odds, some very funny jokes.

Read and his team have made some interesting choices to update this classic. The first, that he has cast young actors to play a variety of age ranges without attempting to visually age them in any way. This choice does well to highlight the universality of questions about one’s purpose and identity. It also runs the risk of making Chekhov’s characters sound like petulant, bratty 20-somethings—but Read and his cast steer away from any impulse toward caricature. The choice to cast the male character of Medvedenko as a female actor brought an interesting spin and welcome queerness to the role and the impoverished schoolteacher’s relationship with Masha.

The contemporary costumes—the design for which go uncredited, leaving me to assume they have come out of the cast’s own closets—suit the reimagined characters well without taking the audience out of the story. And Elizabeth Floyd’s props and sets work well with the small space in the DC Arts Center. The Wheel’s production feels rather thrown together in a way that complements the text and subject matter rather than detracting from it.

The real draw here is the performances. Shuman brings to the role of Trigorin an alluring mix of self-confident charm and vulnerability. This is especially the case in a prologue of Read’s own devising that has the fictional writer narrate excerpts from Chekhov’s actual letters about The Seagull, further blurring the lines between the creation of the play and its subject matter. Haller seems to be taking immense pleasure in embodying the haughtiness and cutting tongue of Arkadina—my guest likened her rendition to that of Moira from Schitt’s Creek, and it’s not a parallel I could not argue with.

Spellane brings the right notes of earnestness and thin skin to the role of Konstantine, and shines in an original epilogue, during which the actor conveys so much emotion without uttering a single word. Baker, despite her youth, feels more natural and resonant as the older, world-weary version of Nina than as the young, striving actress. Iglesias, James, and Mooney—whose extra emo Masha wouldn’t be out of place at a My Chemical Romance concert—provide delightful moments of comic relief.

Even in this slimmed-down version of the play, and despite Read’s capable direction, the action drags a bit in middle, especially without an intermission to break things up. At the same time, certain characters suffered slightly in the trimming—Masha, for example, seemed to lose a bit of robustness in the way her story was cut up, leading to a more one-note characterization than the original.

Minor flaws aside, Jack Read and his cast have presented a version of The Seagull that manages to be both timeless and of-the-moment. The seagull is symbolic of something that returns home again and again, and the fact that a production of a 123-year-old play can still be relevant and reveal truths about the world we’re living in today is a testament both to Chekhov and The Wheel’s team of passionate young artists.

Silent, spectacular performance from Dublin’s Fishamble

Posted on March 15, 2019

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

It’s a rare gift for a play to present a despairing character with both lightness and the sincerity he deserves. Silent and its subject, Tino, are by turns funny, bleak, and feverish, but always riveting. One minute into this show, as Tino slowly emerges from beneath a blanket on stage in a kind of haunting, playful dance, you’ll know what you’re in for: a keenly observed, carefully crafted, fluidly executed character study brought to life by a spectacular performer.

A solo play, written and performed by Pat Kinevane and directed by Jim Culleton for Dublin-based theater company Fishamble, Silent is making its DC debut this month at the Atlas Performing Arts Center thanks to Solas Nua, a contemporary Irish arts organization in DC. The play netted a coveted Olivier Award in 2016 and has been staged around the world, but stepping into Atlas’s Lab Theatre II, you’d think it was tailor-made for that space. The all-black theater engulfs the audience in total darkness, and the smartly directed lighting creates a cinematic array of spotlights, alleyway glows, looming shadows, and even disco flashes in one terrifying scene. The small room and low-lying seats allow Kinevane to walk among the audience with ease and strike up conversations as he goes. Tino isn’t soliloquizing; he’s looking us in the eye, telling us a story, and making sure we’re listening.

This direct, down-to-earth communication does nothing to diminish the subject’s flair for the dramatic. Named after Rudolph Valentino by a mother obsessed with silent film, Tino is capable of his namesake’s wild theatrics. Present-day Tino is a homeless man in County Cork, but he inhabits various times, bodies, and personas throughout the show. In one of the play’s running jokes, he dials a mental health line with an absurdist automated menu: “If you have multiple personalities, please press 1, 2, 5, and 6.” Through Tino’s multiplicity—and Kinevane’s genius ability to transform objects, negative space, and himself into absent people—we meet his strict, self-conscious mother, his beloved older brother Pierce, his long-suffering wife Judy, his childhood self, and a cast of fleeting characters.

Tino mostly relays these characters to us in conversational style, but at times he launches into pure performativity. Silentgives us a new take on the play-within-a-play. Over the course of the show, we watch five “films” complete with titles, pre-recorded dialogue booming through the speakers, and Tino acting out every part with dancerly panache. The films center on his brother Pierce’s attempts on his own life. Tino obsesses over Pierce throughout the play, and traces many of his problems—clinical depression, alcoholism—at least in part to his suicide.

It is through this storyline that the theme of silence is most wrenchingly reinforced. Pierce was queer, and harangued for it by other boys and his own mother from a young age. Tino blames himself for never speaking up in his brother’s defense. Even after his death, Pierce’s story remains shrouded in silence; no one at the funeral will say the word suicide, even though, Tino tells us in a fury, “the word was always there, begging to escape, behind the corners of everyone’s downturned mouths!”

Silent film stars made their facial expressions and gestures speak the volumes they could not. Tino uses the medium to turn a story that was muted and swept under the rug in his own life into an epic for all to see.

Pierce and Tino’s relationship is most moving because the play devotes so much time to it. Tino reminisces about what his brother would say in his sleep when the boys bunked in the same childhood room, about finding Pierce’s pornography (Cockatoo Magazine), about how he dressed and who he hung out with. Some other elements of Tino’s story are less convincing. The tale of his wife kicking him out of the house for drunkenness and his distance from his adolescent son feel more like tropes because these moments and figures in his life are never fleshed out. In attempting to present a complete tapestry of Tino’s life, Silent leaves some areas a little threadbare. This never throws off the show’s balancing act, though, because we’re sufficiently invested in Kinevane’s entrancing voice, fitful bursts of madness, and elaborate choreography.

Solas Nua has arranged to make a certain number of tickets available to those experiencing homelessness in DC for every show. Upcoming performances will also feature a series of talkbacks with Kinevane and representatives of local organizations fighting poverty and providing services to DC’s homeless community. These practical conversations on what can be done to alleviate the suffering presented in this play are a crucial follow-up. It’s one thing to walk away from Silent with renewed empathy for marginalized members of our own community, and another to work toward dismantling their marginalization. This production takes experiences we often overlook, and will not let us turn away. Nor will you want to.

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s ‘Richard III’ explores public’s complicity in tyranny

Posted on March 12, 2019

This article was first published in The DC Line here.

How often have you flung up your hands and decried this moment of “political theater” in the United States? Richard III — showing through Sunday at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harman Hall — stands among Shakespeare’s great works of conscience not only in its exposure of power-hungry depravity, but also in demonstrating how the public’s participation is what makes such depravity possible. Fling up your hands no more: You play an essential role in this production.

Director David Muse highlights the play’s “great treatment of complicity,” which makes it an excellent choice for the present day — a point made not only in his production notes but also in “Bookends,” a Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) audience engagement program designed to deepen and democratize the conversation between theater and audience. The pre- and post-show event is held for one performance night of every play the STC stages, beginning with a facilitated dialogue about the historical context of the play and its place in popular imagination, and ending with a cast Q&A.

Samantha Wyre Bellow, senior director of education, and Drew Lichtenberg, literary manager, kicked off the Feb. 13 discussion by emphasizing the vast interpretive possibilities of Shakespeare’s living texts while providing a helpful framework for critically viewing this particular production. Fracturing the lens of centuries past, they encouraged the audience to watch for echoes of our own era in the play — and to be wary of the ways in which, Wyre Bellow argued, “the villain takes us along as accomplices.”

Richard III chronicles the Duke of Gloucester’s murder- and manipulation-paved rise to the crown, and his ultimate demise. A play whose first act sees Richard engineer his brother’s imprisonment and assassination is not about the making of a tyrant so much as the way the world responds to tyranny. We watch as lords ally themselves with the Duke for personal gain, only to lose their heads when their utility expires; attendants do his bidding with blind loyalty, and the public eats up his campaigns of misinformation.

Despite its overt politicism, Richard III is only as cutting as the director’s editorial eye. One of Shakespeare’s early plays — and one of his longest — it is bogged down by references to British history and a parade of minor characters. For the STC’s production, Muse has winnowed away 40 percent of the original text. Though the play remains dense, uneven and occasionally prosaic, Muse’s excerpting helps propel the plot.This serves his overarching goal of clarity, as does his gift to the audience of a dramatis personae projected in lights above the stage as each character enters. 

This production is contemporary, but avoids the limiting trope of tying Richard to any one moment or figurehead. Costume designer Murell Horton’s clean-cut gray suits and neutral gowns feel austere and timeless. Debra Booth’s chilling set places us in an abattoir of gray, rusting walls and industrial machinery, lit by an enormous operating-room light — anywhere’s underbelly.

In this wintry hell, Matthew Rauch plays the title character as an understated devil. His hasty delivery of Richard’s opening soliloquy establishes a steely and expedient villain with whom we won’t be asked to empathize. Though never plumbing beyond a sociopathic interpretation of the character, Rauch swings an impressive arc. His early magnetism comes from quick-tongued repartee and limitless audacity. His confidence grows along with his body count, but his giddiness diminishes as he adjusts to success. When allies dissipate and his downfall nears, he physically disintegrates before our eyes; inconspicuous in earlier acts, the disability he obsesses over crystallizes as a property of his own fear and self-loathing.

Rauch is surrounded by strong performances of underdeveloped characters. Cara Ricketts is a firebrand Lady Anne, whose deeply ambiguous wooing scene suggests that she is not stupidly seduced by Richard, but is making a calculated move to align herself with political power. Derrick Lee Weeden’s Lord Hastings blusters through his misgivings all the way to the chopping block. More cog than character here, Christopher Michael McFarland’s Buckingham has little personality beyond the obedience he mistakenly thinks will buy Richard’s good graces. As the young princes standing in the way of the Duke’s succession, Charlie Niccolini and Logan Matthew Baker play up their boyishness, demonstrating how two royals might place trust in such an unsettling uncle.

Then there’s the ensemble, who stamp their feet and whet their knives to foreshadow bloodshed. No murder takes place in off-stage secrecy as envisioned in Shakespeare’s text. Instead, the ensemble chants, dances, and encircles the bodies. This dramatization often feels heavy-handed, especially when coupled with the too-sinister score. In moderation, though, it could have been a good device to implicate the whole kingdom — and ultimately the rapt audience — in the villainy afoot.

Throughout the show, center stage is occupied by a misogynistic Richard, yet in this production the women wield the greatest power. Although the Duchess of York (Sandra Shipley) and Queen Elizabeth (Robynn Rodriguez) are played one-note, they are the only ones in Richard’s circle to truly defy him. Lizan Mitchell’s Margaret of Anjou reverberates with the presence of an oracle when issuing her prophetic curses — perhaps delivering too much spectacle, though it’s fitting that the conscience of such a play would feel out of place. 

Importantly, women aren’t limited to providing the play’s moral compass; Sofiya Cheyenne is a compelling Mayor of London who decides to play Richard’s pawn to save her own skin. Evelyn Spahr — a young woman — is cast as the Earl of Richmond, who ultimately defeats Richard and restores order to England. The choice to cast women in these traditionally male roles dominated the discussion in the “Bookends” closing Q&A. “I think there is power in a woman holding power at the end of the show,” Cheyenne commented.

The show ends with a resounding inhalation, ostensibly a breath of hope. It should also serve as a suspenseful pause. History has shown us that the toppling of one Richard does nothing to impede the rise of the next. Real tyrants’ magnetism often draws us in until our own hands are covered in the blood they’ve spilled. At its best, this involving production is not a diversion, but a useful wake-up call.

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Richard III opened Feb. 5 and continues through March 10 at Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW. Tickets cost $44 to $125.

Next Stop: North Korea. John Feffer’s latest looks inside the world’s most secretive society

Posted on March 9, 2019

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

Few foreign lands loom larger in the American imagination than North Korea, despite and because the average outsider knows almost nothing about the country. We’re in the dark by design: the U.S. restricts and currently bans tourist travel, the North Korean Central News Agency emits pure propaganda every day, and our countries’ diplomatic communications are tenuous at best.

Playwright, performer, and foreign policy scholar John Feffer’s new one-man show aims to bring the audience “as close to North Korea as you can get without a visa.” What a tantalizing proposition. It’s also too tall an order for any play devised by one American man, however extensive his expertise may be. Instead of giving me new access and insights into the country, Next Stop: North Korea made me feel the limitations of my understanding more acutely. Not what the playbill advertises, but perhaps the show’s principal achievement.

Feffer made three trips to Pyongyang and surrounding areas when working for the American Friends Service Committee in the late 1990s and 2000s, not long after North Korea’s infamous four-year famine. The plot of the play is framed by his own story: his observations, ethical dilemmas, and frustrated efforts to provide resources to local agriculture collectives and establish a variety of Korean-American exchanges.

Into his personal narrative, he interweaves scenes featuring a cast of locals he encounters along the way. We meet a Juche tower tour guide, a woman who has memorized all of Kate Winslet’s lines in Titanic and speaks impeccable English, but espouses fiercely patriotic rhetoric. There is the minder, a government official who guides Feffer on his tour of North Korea and is assigned to surveil his every move, who performs a peculiarly dissonant rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” as Kim Il Sung’s image is projected behind him. We hear from a driver who has chosen to stay put in North Korea after considering the possibility of opening up a cold noodle shop across the southern border, and a defector who both decries his country’s human rights abuses and feels nostalgic for home.

The most interesting moments in these character vignettes are when they make us question how the performances with which we are presented align with the true feelings of the speakers. The Juche tower guide spews anti-American vitriol and never strays from the strictures of the regime’s party line. However, the Titanic dialogue she chooses to recite to demonstrate her love of the movie suggests we may be overlooking signs of a distress she is afraid to voice: “I feel I’m standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one even looks up.”

How much of the news we get about North Korea is reality, and how much is a show? What do we fail to understand about the country and its people because its government deliberately conceals information from outsiders–and what do we fail to understand simply because of the depth of the cultural gulf between us? In 2017, Evan Osnos was permitted to visit Pyongyang for a New Yorkerstory, one of very few journalists invited for an official tour including interviews with government officials. Reflecting on what it means to report on a carefully constructed tour of an authoritarian country, Osnos wrote, “the experience is less akin to normal foreign correspondence than to theatre criticism…Proving it to be theatre is beside the point; we already know that. It is difficult and important enough just to describe the show with fidelity and detail.”

Feffer’s play gives us detail: He describes the sights, sounds, and textures of the mausoleum housing Kim Il Sung’s embalmed body. He contrasts the gritty rice and bony chicken he shares with farmers in the countryside with the spread at a banquet the government requires him to attend. As for fidelity, it’s a fairer standard for journalism than for art. Mostly, Feffer sticks to the facts in depicting his own experiences, occasionally rearranging the timeline of conversations and encounters to suit narrative flow. Some of the other characters, he said in a talk-back following the performance, are modeled closely on individuals he has met or interviewed, while others were more imaginatively constructed.

Feffer has written the characters’ monologues with distinctive voices and performs them with impressively varied energies, from the jittery Juche Tower guide to the rigid minder to the easygoing driver. However, it is important for the audience to remember that the show does not “[introduce us] to four North Koreans,” as Feffer suggests in his preview, but to four characters reconstituted from Feffer’s memory of the limited portion of the North Korean population he was able to meet, individuals who were no doubt performing the versions of themselves that were safest for them to enact in his presence.

This performative layering, this distance, is the natural limitation of an American-made play about North Korea. It’s also fascinating in its own right. As long as we approach Next Stop: North Korea as a spark for more nuanced questions about Korea and the U.S. relationship to the country, not as a key to understanding its people, this is a useful and timely production.

Next Stop: North Korea also features nightly talk-backs with Feffer and different Korea experts. The show I attended included Dr. Immanuel Kim, a professor at George Washington University whose latest book looks at the honest depiction of social issues in North Korean literature.


Joe Calarco’s Separate Rooms: From a young man’s death come the two biggest questions of life

Posted on February 27, 2019

by John Bavoso

This article was first published on DC Theatre Scene and can be found on their site here.

Morrie Schwartz, the sociology professor and subject of Mitch Albom’s bestselling book, Tuesdays with Morrie, once said, “Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on—in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”

Leave it to a playwright like Joe Calarco to take a sentiment like this literally and put it up on the stage. The result is 4615 Theatre Company’s world premiere production of Separate Rooms, a haunting and sometimes hilarious look at the tiny ripples and huge waves the death of a loved one can send through the lives of those left behind—and a showcase for a supremely talented cast.

Calarco—a prolific playwright and the Director of New Works at Signature Theatre—refers to Separate Rooms as his Big Chill, which began its life years ago as a short play written while the author was living and working in New York. As Calarco grew up, so did the characters, and so did the page length, eventually becoming the 95-minute work that’s been entrusted to 4615 Theatre Company, a relatively young and new-on-the-scene company based in Silver Spring.

The story—or stories, really—revolve around the sudden and violent death of Him (Alex Mills), a young gay man who lived in New York City with his boyfriend, Josh (Stephen Russell Murray), circa 2011. He’s trapped in a void-like afterlife, where he watches his sister, Anna (Jenn Rabbitt Ring), and Josh’s coterie of friends from his Cornell University days grapple with their sudden loss in various rooms of their apartment following his funeral. In addition to this close-knit group, there are unexpected visitors, including Josh’s lusty downstairs neighbor, Simon (Reginald Richard), and The Guest, a mysterious woman (Melissa Carter) who appears to speak mostly in out-of-context movie quotes.

There are, in fact, nine characters in total, which is a lot for a tiny, one-bedroom Manhattan apartment (or even smaller black box in downtown Silver Spring) but director Jordan Friend—who’s also the Founding Artistic Director of 4615 Theatre Company—applies a deft hand in navigating his actors around the cramped space while giving them each moments to shine.

And shine they do, when given the chance. With so many characters to introduce, Calarco naturally had to prioritize the stories of some over others. As Him, Mills acts as our tour guide even as he comes to terms with the rules of his new reality. Mills brings variations of tenderness, sarcasm, bitterness, and longing to his role of the recently deceased, observing the world go on without him and being frustrated by not being to do anything but watch.

Jen Rabbitt Ring’s Anna is a tangled-up knot of stress and grief, the archetypal overworked non-profit executive who’s both tightly wound and completely unraveling. The character could easily devolve into stereotype in less-capable hands, but Ring brings an authenticity and relatability to the role. Similarly, Stephen Russell Murray embodies Josh’s neurotic copyeditor persona perfectly, while injecting convincing sexual energy to a number of his scenes. In too many plays with gay couples, the characters are given little in the way of reason for being attracted to one another than they happen to be gay and in the same play, but the connection between Him and Josh feels genuine (due credit also goes to intimacy director Jonathan Ezra Rubin).

Many of the characters who are given less in the way of backstory are offered other opportunities to dazzle. The perfect example of this is 4615 company member Alani Kravitz as Melissa, who steals the show in every scene she’s in. We may not know much about Melissa as a person, but her boisterous delivery of lines like, “I am often inappropriate!” and her one true flash of anger when her emotional labor is overlooked add up to delight whenever Kravitz steps foot on stage. Similarly, Reginald Richard as Simon, the interloping neighbor out to seduce Josh, had the audience riveted as he delivered a monologue—as much with his eyes as with his voice—about the co-mingling of his spiritual and sexual awakening. And Jenna Berk’s Janie, Josh’s friend who’s fallen out of touch with him, is the last character to be introduced, but creates some of the most indelible moments.

Still, with so many lives to juggle in such a condensed amount of time, it feels like some characters get elided over. The climax of the play, which allows for the introduction of an interesting and paradox-inducing theatrical device, feels rather abrupt and somewhat unearned in the context of everything that comes before it. I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the elimination of a character or two may have allowed Calarco to go deeper rather than wider.

In addition to all the different characters to keep up with, the audience also is bounced around in time. Him, in his void, is able to call up different moments in time and space—essentially rewinding the action—so we can see different perspectives and understand how the characters got to where they are now. It’s a very cinematic device, reminiscent of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Vantage Point. The trick is pulled off with the help of Katie McCreary’s subtle and nuanced lighting design and Jordan Friend’s sound design.

There’s an inherent challenge in having such a large group of people maneuver a very small space while also recreating different rooms within an apartment. Scenic designer Jennifer Hiyama has devised some ingenious puzzle-piece-esque, movable sets, but they seemed to also be a hindrance to the actors—more than one struggled to squeeze between set pieces and at one point a free-standing door had to be caught by an audience member lest it crash down on top of him. Tackling the ambitious feat of creating multiple locations within such a small space is a noble goal, but in this case the set served as more of a distraction than a way of bringing the audience deeper into the story. Hopefully these bumps in the road will get smoothed out as the production goes along.

Technical difficulties aside, Calaraco, Friend, and the stellar cast and crew of Separate Rooms have come together to create a work that’s sexy, entertaining, and wry, but also filled with moments of real depth and universal emotion. When Him asks the audience, “Will I be missed? What was my impact on the world?” I doubt there was a single person watching who hasn’t asked themselves that very same question. Especially in light of recent losses endured by the DC theatre community, Separate Rooms is a play that’s both timely and timeless—and one that’s sure to have a long life beyond this initial production.

John Cameron Mitchell’s Origin of Love Tour

Posted on February 15, 2019

by John Bavoso

This article was first published by DC Theatre Scene and can be read on their site here.

They say you should never meet your heroes, but what about crowd-surfing them? That was what I was thinking the night of February 8, as I helped keep John Cameron Mitchell aloft as he made his way through the orchestra on the hands of adoring Hedwig and the Angry Inch fans. We had gathered to bask in the glow of The Origin of Love, a punk-rock live Behind the Music episode of sorts and a gift to Hedwig heads everywhere.

The evening of songs, storytelling, and sass was the first stop on a national tour, and DC audiences got a tailored experience that few other audiences may have. Mitchell lived for a bit in Falls Church, his grandfather owned a house in Bethesda, and he had even had cousins in the audience. Throw in a few jokes from Hedwig about Melania, and you had a concert experience that was unique and surprisingly personalized.

Mitchell—who was joined on stage by members of his original Broadway band and powerhouse performer Amber Martin—sported a black, white, gray, and red costume that transformed into six different outfits over the course of the night. He also was crowned with Hedwig’s classic wig, this time tinted light gray or white, a sly nod to the fact that Mitchell has been embodying the trans East German rock ‘n’ roll songstress for literally decades at this point.

As Mitchell worked through some of the most beloved numbers from the Hedwig songbook—“The Origin of Love,” Sugar Daddy,” “Wig in a Box,” and “Wicked Little Town” among them—he filled in bits of personal history and trivia to give context to each song. Whether it was a story about meeting songwriter and co-Hedwig creator Stephen Trask on an airplane, or describing his first time taking the stage as Hedwig in a downtown punk rock drag club (and being way too theatre-kid prepared), he spun bits of lore behind one of the most beloved cult musicals ever created. When he explained that he and Stephen originally performed “The Long Grift” on the lawn of the rehab clinic where Jack, Stephen’s bass player and John’s lover, was trying to get sober, there was nary a dry eye in the house.

Ever the magnetic and dynamic performer, Mithell held the crowd in the palm of his manicured hand the entire night, despite moments he described as “more punk rock than Broadway.” Yes, he forgot the lyrics to a couple of songs and had to start “Sugar Daddy” over completely (although my guest had a theory that the band and lights reset so quickly, that that might not have been a totally spontaneous restart), and there was a mic stand he simply could not get to stand up straight, but not a single member of the audience cared—if anything, it only made him more human and relatable.

The night wasn’t only about Hedwig; Martin was given her time to shine with a David Bowie cover and solo performance of the song “Bermuda” from the soundtrack to Mitchell’s 2017 film, How to Talk to Girls at Parties (which, yes, also got me a little misty-eyed, thanks for asking). As part of the encore, he sang a couple of songs from and previewed his new musical, Anthem, a six-hour epic that will be released as a podcast first, and will feature the talents of legends like Glenn Close, Patty Lupone, and Cynthia Erivo.

The Origin of Love was a love letter to Hedwig and John Cameron Mitchell’s gift to fans less than a week before Valentine’s Day. Leaving the theater with a crowd of people filled with such love and joy in their hearts, just blocks away from the White House, was an experience I won’t soon forget and would happily repeat anytime.

The Origin of Love performance was one night only: Friday, February 8, 2019.