As you seek out your next theater evening, here’s a question for you: what could be comic about grief over the death of a loved one? Can there be smiles rather than just tears? Well, in a rapid reply, Ann Randolph’s sanguine Loveland currently at Arena Stage, has an abundance of remarkable, sometimes absurdist, comic flair. Audiences can thank the loopy, ultimately charming character Frannie Potts, created by Randolph, who is dealing with the death of her mother.

“Death, dying and loss are such taboos in our society,” noted Randolph in the Arena Stage media release. “Yet, as painful as they are, these experiences often have a ridiculous and deeply funny side.”

To observe Randolph’s solo, ultimately uplifting performance as Potts, a young woman on a mission to make sure all is right at her mother’s funeral, is to witness a personal essay by a compelling story-teller. We are witnesses at a special kind of upbeat wake; the mourners remembering with great cheer the joyful life of the deceased.

Randolph is an award-winning playwright and performer. Her previous off-Broadway solo show, Squeeze Box was produced by Mel Brooks and the late Anne Bancroft. Loveland played for two years in San Francisco where it won numerous awards and also played to sold-out houses in Los Angeles. This is the show’s East Coast premiere.

Directed by Joshua Townshend-Zellner, Loveland takes place in an unlikely setting; the closed-off, tight-fitting world of an economy class cabin on a cross-continent plane trip from Southern California to Ohio. On the plane Frannie interacts with her plane mates, all deftly played by Randolph, channeling memories of her beloved, chain-smoking, hard-drinking, wheelchair bound mother. She also fantasizes about having an encounter with the plane’s Captain (voiced with feeling by the unseen Wayne Wilderson).

Randolph plays Frannie as honest and emotionally open, to a fault. She talks without a pause button. Socially awkward, she doesn’t want to live a “yes, but” stilted life. She speaks with a loud, nervous laughter. At first we think her not just inappropriate, but obnoxious as she dances suggestively down the main aisle of an airplane or provides that once she was summarily escorted out of a Whole Foods for moaning too loudly while getting a massage.

We also witness off-the-wall devilish moments as Frannie remembers and then sings scatological lyrics directly to folk stuck in an assisted living facility while accompanying herself on a portable harmonium. Her facial gestures to accompany songs about a car alarm and a airplane’s flushing toilet are priceless.

Frannie also talks more seriously; of wanting to learn that there is “beauty to be found in loss.” She gives us heart-felt life lessons in the power of music to bring emotion as she responds to Mozart’s Requiem or sings her mother’s favorite church hymn, “Softly and Tenderly” with its refrain, “Come home, come home, You who are weary, come home.”

On the plane trip, Frannie pays very close attention to her carry-on baggage stowed in an overhead bin. Its contents contain a very precious cargo. Unfortunately, flying over Loveland Pass in Colorado, there is turbulence. The worst that could happen does. The overhead bin opens. Her small suitcase opens up, the contents flying about the plane’s cabin. It is at this moment that the Loveland takes a tender turn with the unexpected kindness of strangers who just a breath before were painted in the most unpleasant ways. It is a palpable group hug of humanity for Frannie that we feel and take part in.

The Loveland set consists of little more that our imagination to go with a wooden chair at the center of the Kogod Cradle with a light turquoise colored bag from which she pulls out various props and the portable hormonium at audience left on a stand. That is more than enough for the imagination to take hold.

Loveland is one of six projects selected for the 2013-14 Kogod Cradle Series, designed to support the development of new and emerging American theater. Loveland is part of Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute.

Reacting to loss is such a very personal thing. Loveland is the way that playwright and performer Ann Randolph has reacted. Loveland may not be for everyone. On the night your reviewer attended laughter came in waves came from different sections of the audience as different scenes played out. Some audience members responded with strong bright laughter at the over-the-top memories related to sexual innuendo. Others sucked in their breath at moments when dealing with death and dying were at the forefront.

At the final curtain of the 75 minute, intermission-free Loveland, there were church bells chiming and “Softly and Tenderly” being sung as Frannie ended her memory play for her beloved mother. The audience was clearly touched. They stood and applauded with a soft vigor.

Note: Following each Loveland performance, Ann Randolph leads a mini writing workshop to explore the power of expressed personal grief.

Photo Gallery

Photos by Teresa Wood

Cast

• Frannie Potts and Others: Ann Randolph
• Voice of Captain Wheeler: Wayne Wilderson

Design and Production Team

• Written by Ann Randolph
• Directed by Joshua Townshend-Zeliner
• Lighting Designer: Andres Holder
• Dramaturg: Jocelyn Clarke
• Light Board Operator: Scott Folsom
• Sound Engineer: Adam Johnson

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

• The Shoplifters, September – October 2014
• Our War, October- November 2014
• Fiddler on the Roof, October 2014 – January 2015
• Five Guys Named Moe, November – December 2014
• Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, January – February 2015
• King Hedley II, February – March 2015
• The Originalist, March – April 2015
• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, April – May 2015
• The Blood Quilt, April – June 2015

Arena Stage provided these descriptions of the shows:

• The Shoplifters (World premiere comedy). Written and Directed by Morris Panych. Meet Alma, a career shoplifter who prefers the “five-finger discount” over some lousy senior citizen deal, whose elaborate life of petty crime is halted by an overzealous rookie security guard and his affable mentor who’s seen it all. With an expertly drawn cast of oddball characters, The Shoplifters is full of surprises and sparks with a surprisingly high-stakes battle of wills over increasingly thought-provoking issues. Don’t miss Morris Panych’s biting, world premiere comedy about society’s haves and have-nots and how much they might actually have in common.
• Our War (National Civil War Project theatrical event) Directed by Anita Maynard-Losh. An esteemed collection of some of America’s finest playwrights, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award and Olivier Award, has been assembled to create a dynamic new theatrical event reflecting on the repercussions of the U.S. Civil War. Through a rich tapestry of short monologues, a core ensemble of gifted actors, accompanied by notable Washingtonians, give voice to far-reaching questions about the war, its aftermath and its reverberations in our lives today. Our War, commissioned by Arena Stage for the National Civil War Project, uses the power of live theater to bring new understanding to the shades of Blue and Gray that define one of the most significant periods of American history.
• Fiddler on the Roof Directed by Molly Smith. Celebrate the 50th anniversary of an American classic! More than just a poor milkman, Tevye is a humble Jewish father who finds his devotion to God severely tested by his headstrong daughters who want to be their own matchmakers and the increasingly ruthless government forcing him from his land. With a jubilant and masterful score including “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “Tradition,” Fiddler on the Roof is a celebration of family, community and life’s unexpected miracles, large and small.
• Five Guys Named Moe Directed by Robert O’Hara. Need to chase the blues away? Pull up a seat at the Funky Butt Club to celebrate the fresh, feel-good music of “The King of the Jukebox” Louis Jordan. Suffering from a severe case of the blues, a young man gets the surprise of his life when “the greatest band around” pops out of his radio to cure what ails him. With joyful swing and bouncing be-bop tunes like “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” and “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,” you’ll be leaping out of your seat and dancing in the aisles with Big Moe, Four-Eyed Moe, Eat Moe, No Moe and Little Moe, better known as Five Guys Named Moe!
• Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery (World premiere adaptation) Directed by Gary Griffin. Get your deerstalker cap on — the play’s afoot! From the Tony Award-winning mastermind of mayhem, Ken Ludwig (Lend Me a Tenor), comes a fast-paced comedy about everyone’s favorite detective solving his most notorious case. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson must crack the mystery of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” before a family curse dooms its newest heir. Watch as our intrepid investigators try to escape a dizzying web of clues, silly accents, disguises and deceit as five actors deftly portray more than 25 characters. Does a wild hellhound prowl the moors of Devonshire? Can our heroes discover the truth in time? Join the fun and see how far from elementary the truth can be.
• King Hedley II Directed by Timothy Douglas. King Hedley has returned, but to reign for how long? With an angry scar down the length of his face and seven years of prison haunting him, King has a chance to lock away his past and achieve an entrepreneurial dream. But Pittsburgh’s Hill District is an unforgiving place, and the return of Elmore, a scheming conman armed with a derringer and family secrets, could strike a fatal blow to King’s second coming. The eighth installment of August Wilson’s acclaimed play cycle examining Black America, King Hedley II is one of his most stirring and ferocious explorations of fate, honor and the daily struggles of American life.
• The Originalist (World premiere political drama) Directed by Molly Smith. Four-time Helen Hayes Award winner Edward Gero (Red) returns to Arena Stage as one of America’s most brilliant and polarizing figures: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. When a bright, liberal, Harvard Law School graduate embarks on a nerve-wracking clerkship with Justice Scalia she discovers him to be both an infuriating sparring partner and an unexpected mentor. How will their relationship affect one of the most incendiary cases ever to reach the nation’s highest court? From Charles MacArthur Award winner John Strand (Lovers and Executioners) comes this daring new work about passionate people risking heart and soul to defend their version of the truth.
• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Directed by Aaron Posner. Winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play (and the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama League and the Drama Desk), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a “sunny new play about gloomy people” (New York Times). Siblings Vanya and Sonia live out their days in an endless, bleak tableau in Bucks County, PA. All seems numbingly mundane until in sweeps hurricane Masha, their fading movie star sister, with her shiny new boy toy and a big announcement. Satirizing characters and themes from Chekov’s classics, Christopher Durang’s latest madcap masterpiece serves up family drama with comic savagery and poses the question: if you could choose your family, would you necessarily choose your family?
• The Blood Quilt (World premiere family comedy-drama) Inaugural resident playwright Katori Hall (The Mountaintop) is once again “fearlessly redefining theater” (Washington Post) with this funny and fierce world premiere. Welcome to the Jernigan Gals’ Quilting Corner. Gathering at their childhood island home off the coast of Georgia, four disconnected sisters meet to create a family quilt to honor their recently deceased mother. When their reunion turns into a reading of their mother’s will, everyone must grapple with a troubling inheritance. Stitched with history and ritual, laughter and tears, will their “blood quilt” bind the family together or tear them apart forever? 

More information may be found at the Arena Stage web site. Schedule is subject to change due to performance rights conflicts or other issues. Specific dates of performances and auditions are yet to be announced.

The scene greeting theatergoers entering Arena Stage’s Fichandler space for Mother Courage and Her Children is dominated by a gray pit dug out below normal stage level, bringing to mind Wilfred Owen’s “profound dark tunnel, long since scooped through granites which titanic wars had groined.” Bertolt Brecht’s play is set during the 17th Century’s Thirty Years’ War, Europe’s most widespread and devastating conflict before World War I, the causes and course of which were even more byzantine than that “Great War” the centennial of which we mark this year. Brecht wrote in 1939, on the eve of the greater war that outdid all its predecessors. Director Molly Smith’s vision for the show and her coordination of its many elements into a powerful and moving whole do enormous credit to her ability and to her commitment to the project.

Brecht depicts the reality of Thirty Years’ War, and war in general, through the life of an itinerant merchant, Mother Courage (Kathleen Turner), who with her three grown children attempt to scratch out a living selling sundry goods to whatever army happens to be nearby. Turner’s Mother Courage is a force of nature, fiercely protective of her children, insistent on making enough money to survive, indomitable through the ever-changing fortunes of war, never finding a home. What she desires above all, and fights for with all her impressive strength, is to keep her family safe and together. But the war is always stronger.

By turns brave, profane, foolish, angry, demeaning her children even as she loves them, humorous, tender, conniving, and making herself go on even in the face of the darkest grief and the bone-weariness of endless war, Mother Courage is one of the most towering of theatrical roles. In a superb performance, Turner commands the stage and makes clear that she belongs in the company of Diana Rigg, Meryl Streep, Glenda Jackson and others who have made the part their own. Turner’s low, powerful voice and spot-on physicality carry all her character’s varying emotions. Mother Courage being a play with music, Turner is also called upon to sing in a majority of composer/musical supervisor James Sugg’s eleven songs. She acquits herself well, above all in the quiet, desperately sad “Lullaby.”

Speaking of the music, Suggs successfully takes a page from shows like John Doyle’s revivals of Sweeney Todd and Company by having the actors play the instruments that accompany the singers. Besides working musically, the on-stage instrumental ensemble adds to the very theatrical atmosphere of many of the numbers, such as the almost violently sexual tango “Each Night in May,” performed athletically by Meg Gillentine as camp follower Yvette, and the Cook’s (Jack Willis) lively, cynical “Solomon’s Song” (a very close relative of a number in The Threepenny Opera). Adapting the Brechtian tradition of breaking through the “fourth wall” can be a challenge in a presentation in the round, but Willis, rapidly touring the perimeter of the stage, delivers the song directly to the audience in each of the house’s quadrants.

The Cook ultimately develops an affectionate relationship with Mother Courage, and offers her the possibility of stable home away from the war, but attaches a condition she cannot accept. By this time, the Cook had bested his competitor for Mother Courage’s attention, a Chaplain of highly variable ideology and allegiance, played for humor and irony by Rick Foucheux. Building on the fact that the Thirty Years’ War involved religious as well as nationalistic enmities, Foucheux’s Chaplain riffs on the theme of belief as a prop for war (“A God Who Was a Man”).

Each of Mother Courage’s children is a strikingly drawn, memorable character. Kattrin (Erin Weaver) is unable to speak, traumatized by her exposure to war, and tender-hearted to children. She hides under blankets yet sees everything, perhaps more clearly than any other character. In the end, she acts heroically, the play’s only character to do so. Given that she has no spoken lines, Weaver performs entirely with her face and body, and she does so evocatively, leaving no doubt about what her character is thinking and feeling. Eilif (Nicholas Rodriguez), a strapping young man who becomes a lover of war and violence, discovers that what wins him acclaim in combat condemns him during a brief, uncharacteristic outbreak of peace. The rather dim Swiss Cheese (Nehal Joshi) finds that a basic honesty mixed with too-tentative criminality is not a recipe for wartime survival.

Mother Courage is a strong ensemble show, and the ten ensemble members, in addition to their participation in David Leong’s frequent, varied, and well-designed movement pieces, join in most of the musical numbers (as singers, instrumentalists, or both) and play a multitude of soldiers and other smaller roles. They are the key to the circus-like feel of many of the musical scenes that are vital to director Smith’s concept. Their level of energy and attention to the details of their differing characters are consistently high. There are no weak links.

In the midst of the central gray pit, Todd Rosenthal’s set features a large, barren tree stump — the sort of thing one might see in a photograph of the blasted landscape of a World War I no-man’s land — which the actors use as a seat, a chopping block, a platform for speeches, etc. Over the set is a large catwalk (built below the basic theater infrastructure) that actors reach on a long stairway that descends to stage level in various scenes. It is used especially dramatically in the climactic scene in which Kattrin tries to warn townspeople of an impending attack. It is also the location from which, in a nicely unexpected effect, rain falls on a couple of men playing a table game under umbrellas.

The iconic stage piece in any production of this play is Mother Courage’s cart, full of the wares she tries to sell, which she and her children pull from place to place. It is the closest thing they have to a home but, like the characters, it is blown from one place to another by the war. Arena’s well-designed cart is unlike what one sees in many productions: it is a four-wheeled, rather than two-wheeled, vehicle, and it has pneumatic tires. This underlines an important point about the Arena’s physical production. Notwithstanding the script’s references to 17th century events, the production is not placed in the 17th century. Like costume designer’s Joseph P. Salasovich’s military uniforms, the production seems to live somewhere in the 20th century, though the costumes are not specific, for example, to either World War I, World War II, or one of that century’s many other bloody conflicts. The costuming is full of well-conceived and well-executed details, like the red boots (originally Yvette’s) that Kattrin admires in the first act and is revealed to have worn for her courageous act at the end of act 2.

Once the house lights go down, the show begins with a surround-sound thunder of artillery and a flash of bright, audience-level lights, getting the story’s wars underway. Throughout the production, sound designer Roc Lee’s and lighting designer Nancy Schertler’s work create a constant sense of the war just over the horizon or directly affecting the characters. One of the most telling of Schertler’s choices is the use of very quick, abrupt transitions from one light cue to the next, reflecting the unexpected, often arbitrary changes in the war itself and characters’ fortunes. This approach also helps delineate plot scenes from the explicitly theatrical musical numbers (and some of the longer, more didactic speeches) directed squarely to the audience. While bright white light is used frequently, shadow and color provide contrast in some scenes, especially a pale orange light covering the stage in a few scenes that gives the actors’ faces an eerily pallid look.

It is hard for me to watch this show without thinking of the great World War I poets. Like Owen, Brecht is deeply concerned with the pity of war. Like Siegfried Sassoon, he has a keen sense of war’s bitter ironies. Unlike these poets, who served in the war and saw things principally from the soldier’s point of view, Brecht focuses more on the strength and dogged courage, helplessness, and sometimes corruption of civilians in the path of the war, which brings with it the terror that has overrun country after country in the 20th and 21st centuries as well as the 17th. When top-of-the-line acting and spectacularly good technical theater combine to bring Brecht’s vision to life with the power and immediacy of Arena’s production, it isn’t at all hard to move to the foreground of one’s mind the lives of the inevitable counterparts of Mother Courage and her children in places like present-day Syria.

Director’s Note

We live in an ironic age.

Trust in our elected officials on Capitol Hill is at 10%, the confidence in our banks and financial systems are at an all-time low, deep suspicions abound about our religious systems and America is in the middle of her own Thirty Years War. Brecht was writing during 1939, after World War I and in the run up to World War II, after he had fled Germany because of his fears of Hitler. Financial systems were crashing worldwide, rampant racism included Jews, blacks, homosexuals, romas (or gypsies), and communists, and the disparity between the rich and the poor was a chasm.

No wonder his play has such resonance for our world today.

Mother Courage and Her Children is the greatest anti-war play ever written. This translation by David Hare is superb — terse, juicy and full of humor. Brecht was interested in waking the audience out of their slumber through the use of opposing viewpoints, contradictions of material, and direct interventions through songs that disrupt the action of the play. He believed in story above all else and developed ideas around epic construction, alienation and opposition that transformed the landscape of theater.

His ideas are essentially modern about dynamically opposing scenes where the audience needs to think and feel and question from moment to moment — from his use of bright blinding light to the creation of a character like Mother Courage — he forces us to examine our politics at the same time our hearts and minds are engaged. He loved tumbling pantomime, music, dance, masks and text next to each other. There is nothing seamless or inevitable about his storytelling and it is actually closer to contemporary film than theater in the 19Thirtys.

Brecht was writing about Europe’s thirty year war — from the 1910s-1940s — through the lens of the Thirty Years War during the 1600s. We see his play through America’s thirty year war, beginning with Iran in 1978 and continuing through the hot wars and the present day.

While the connection to this moment in American history is clear, why now at Arena Stage? We have a focus on American voices and American artists. When a great American artist, like Kathleen Turner, is passionate about an important role, even if it comes from outside the American repertoire, that passion drives the choice. Kathleen and I have been looking for the right project to do together ever since Red Hot Patriot. It was a meaningful moment when I asked her if this was the right moment to take on Mother Courage. I can think of no one more powerful to play this role.

Brecht believed in deep entertainment and thought the ultimate purpose of theater is pleasure. I can’t argue with that.

Photo Gallery

Kathleen Turner as Mother Courage and the cast	Meg Gillentine as Yvette and Dan Istrate
Nicholas Rodriguez (center) and the cast	Nehal Joshi as Swiss Cheese, Erin Weaver as Kattrin, Kathleen Turner as Mother Courage and Nicholas Rodriguez as Eilif
Kathleen Turner as Mother Courage	Kathleen Turner (center) as Mother Courage and the cast
Kathleen Turner as Mother Courage and Jack Willis as the Cook

Photos by Teresa Wood

Cast

• Mother Courage: Kathleen Turner
• Kattrin: Erin Weaver
• Eilif/Soldier: Nicholas Rodriguez
• Swiss Cheese: Nehal Joshi
• The Cook: Jack Willis
• The Chaplain: Rick Foucheux
• Yvette: Meg Gillentine
• Soldier/Ensemble: Monalisa Arias
• Peasant Wife/Ensemble/Dance Captain: Lise Bruneau
• Soldier/Ensemble: Jed Feder
• The Voice/Ensemble: Rayanne Gonzales
• Recruiting Officer/Ensemble: Jacobi Howard
• Sergent/Ensemble: Dan Istrate
• Music Coordinator/Ensemble: Nathan Charles Koci
• Commander-in-Chief/Ensemble: James Knoicek
• Man with Patch/Ensemble: Jesse Terrill
• Old Colonel/Ensemble: John Leslie Wolfe

Production Staff

• Molly Smith: Director
• James Sugg: Composer/Music Supervision
• Mark Bly: Dramaturg
• Todd Rosenthal: Set Designer
• David Leong: Movement
• Scott Schreck: Technical Director
• Chuck Fox: Properties Director
• Joseph P. Salasovich: Costume Designer
• Nancy Schertler: Lighting Designer
• Timothy M. Thompson: Sound Designer
• Anne Nesmith: Wig Designer
• Vincent Hill: Assistant Wig Designer
• Susan R. White: Stage Manager
• Kurt Hall: Stage Manager
• Marne Anderson: Assistant Stage Manager
• Christopher V. Lewton: Master Electrician
• T. Tyler Stumpf: Costume Shop Manager
• Lauren Cucarola: Assistant Costume Shop Manager
• Brad Willcuts: Assistant Movement
• Ryan Touhey: Copyist
• Valerie Accetta: Movement Rehearsal Accompanist
• Kristen Harris: Production Assistant
• Leigh Robinette: Senior Stage Management Fellow
• Sean Malarkey, James P. Mulhern III: Show Carpenters
• Marion Hampton Dube, Trevor Riley: Props
• Michael Brown: Light Board Operator
• Nicki Rosecrans: Assistant to the Lighting Designer
• Joshua Ingle, Curtis Jones, Kelsey Swanson, John Walters: Followspot Operators
• Aaron Allen: Sound Engineer
• Brad Porter: Second Audio
• Emily Grace Blackstone, Alice Hawfield: Wardrobe Supervisors
• Dan Iwaniec, Ivania Stack: Costume Crafts Artisans
• Maria Edmundson: Directing Assistant
• Raymond Zilberberg: Assistant to the Director
• Andrew R. Ammerman, Linda A. Baumann, Fruzsina Harsanyi, Vicki J. Hicks, Terry R. Peel, David E. Shiffrin: Board Interns

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Written and performed by Daniel Beaty, The Tallest Tree in the Forest is one of the most ambitious and complex examples of the first-person biographical show, a genre pioneered by Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight and including successful pieces about Emily Dickinson (The Belle of Amherst) and Harry Truman (Give ‘Em Hell, Harry). Beaty’s subject is the great 20th century African-American singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson. Beaty gives a powerful, passionate performance as a ferociously intelligent, immensely talented, intensely driven man who attained wide fame and influence but whose career was wrecked by the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1940s and 50s. Given that many, especially younger, people today may not be familiar with Robeson, the production is a welcome introduction to this man who refused to allow his life, his causes, and his art to be separate from one another.

One of the most remarkable facets of Robeson’s talent was his voice, a deep bass that sustained its power and clarity even in quiet passages and could convey sweetness and gentleness as effectively as anger and passion. Beaty, a classically trained singer, sings 13 of the songs that Robeson performed in his career, from the famous (“Old Man River”) to the almost unknown (“Zog Nit Kaynmal,” a song of resistance from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that, for me, was the musical highlight of the evening). Beaty’s excellent voice does not sound precisely like Robeson’s, having a higher baritone edge, but Beaty succeeds at the important task of conveying his subject’s approach to interpreting his material and how Robeson felt about what he sang.

An important way in which The Tallest Tree in the Forest is more complex than Mark Twain Tonight or other biographical shows of its type is Beaty’s use of a variety of voices other than that of Robeson himself to tell the story. Beaty portrays Robeson’s wife, Eslanda (“Essie”), Harry Truman, J. Edgar Hoover, and a bevy of reporters, among others, as they interact with Robeson. He switches back and forth rapidly between characters, changing physicality as well as voice to match. Often, especially in scenes with Essie, he engages in back and forth conversations, playing both people in the exchange. Beaty pulls off the multiple characterizations with considerable comic and dramatic impact.

Beaty’s handling of the play’s female characters is problematic, however. Essie — a brilliant anthropologist, author, and activist in her own right — is portrayed, especially in the first act, as fussy, bossy, snobbish, and elitist, with a highly annoying voice, almost to the point of caricature. The portrayal mellows in the second act, however. Beaty gives Mary McLeod Bethune, herself an important activist and a leading educator in the segregation era, an even more grating persona. What isn’t clear is whether the historical Robeson perceived these or other women in this way — and, if so, whether the perception was accurate — or whether their presentation in the play is a matter of Beaty’s imagination of how Robeson might have responded to such people.

In boiling anyone’s life down to a two-hour play, an author must be selective in determining what to include and exclude. Some key episodes, such as Robeson’s work for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and his depression and harsh treatment in mental hospitals in the early 1960s, are omitted. However, Beaty hits the main points: Robeson’s talent, his success, his unstinting opposition to racial and economic injustice, and his attachment to the Soviet Union, which played into the hands of those who sought to end his career. The play wisely does not excuse Robeson’s prolonged advocacy for the Soviet Union, which continued even after general knowledge of Stalin’s crimes and the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolt had alienated most former supporters, but it goes far to make his views understandable in an era when American racism seemed intractable and Russia presented the appearance of equality. If Robeson was, as the play suggests, a tragic hero (the “tallest tree” cut down), then this was his tragic flaw.

The play’s complexity extends to the technical production, highlighted by the use of projections (designed by John Narun) on the set’s back and side walls illustrating various episodes in Robeson’s life (e.g., Welsh miners marching for higher wages; the Peekskill riots, in which an anti-communist mob attacked Robeson, Woody Gutherie, Pete Seegar, and other performers and audience members following an outdoor concert). The lighting design (David Lander) is itself very detailed, especially for a one-person show, and provides one of the evening’s most dramatic moments when, in combination with projected photos of lynchings, a series of large silhouettes of hanged men take over the walls of the set. Kenny J. Seymour leads a piano/woodwinds/cello trio that effectively accompanies Beaty’s songs.

The first words of Beaty’s script are from the original 1927 lyrics to “Old Man River:” “Niggers all work on de Mississippi, Niggers all work while de white folks play…,” leaving no doubt that Robeson’s life was about combating the racism depicted in those lines. As briefly pointed out in the second act, Robeson made significant changes to several lyrics in later concert performances of the song. Among others, “Get a little drunk and you lands in jail” became “you show a little grit, and you lands in jail.” “Ah gits weary / An’ sick of tryin’; / Ah’m tired of livin’ / An skeered of dyin’,” became “But I keeps laffin’/ Instead of cryin’ / I must keep fightin’; / Until I’m dyin’, …” That fight, the same spirit that animated the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, was the theme of Robeson’s life, to which Beaty does justice in The Tallest Tree in the Forest.

Photo Gallery

Daniel Beaty as Paul Robeson

Photos by Don Ipock

Cast

• Paul Robeson: Daniel Beaty

Musicians

• Music Director/Conductor/Piano: Kenny J. Seymour
• Clarinet/Flute/Musical Contactor: Rita Eggert
• Cello: Aron Rider

Production Staff

• Artistic Director: Molly Smith
• Executive Producer: Edgar Dobie
• Director: Moises Kaufman
• Music Director/Incidental Music and Arrangements: Kenny J. Seymour
• Set Designer: Derek McLane
• Costume Designer: Clint Ramos
• Lighting Designer: David Lander
• Sound Designer: Lindsay Jones
• Projection Designer: John Narun
• Production Stage Manager: Craig Campbell
• Assistant Stage Manager: Michael D. Ward
• Dramaturg: Carlyn Aquiline
• Assistant Set Designer: Shoko Kambara
• Assistant Sound Designer: Anthony Mattana
• Directing Assistant: Amber Emory
• Props: Justin Titley
• Light Board Operator: Paul Villalovoz
• Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Nicki Rosecrans
• Spot Operator: Rachele Carey
• Sound Engineers: Aaron Allen, Adam Johnson
• Projection Programmer: Rock Lee
• Wardrobe Supervisor: Gerri Ford

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

In her comments at a post-show reception opening night, Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith described Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner as a conversation in a living or dining room that, she hoped, would inspire such conversations among audience members. Except that the characters in Todd Kreidler’s adaptation of William Rose’s Ocsar-winning screenplay for the 1967 movie often do not so much have conversations as hurl well-crafted speeches at one another, more in the style of the podium than of the living room. Directed by David Esbjornson, the production’s strong cast nevertheless gives the play a powerful emotional impact.

The plot involves a fast-moving courtship between Joanna Drayton (Bethany Anne Lind) and Dr. John Wade Prentice (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), whose full name and title Joanna repeats as though in lights. Dr. Prentice is a wunderkind research physician who, as one review of the movie remarked, seems at age 37 just a step removed from the Nobel Prize. But there is a “situation:” he is black and Joanna is white, a match that her affluent, liberal parents, Matt and Christina Drayton (Tom Key and Tess Malis Kincaid), who always taught her to treat people as individuals, never anticipated. The first act is largely a comedy of discomfiture, as the parents and others react with dropped jaws, silences, and strained politeness to this startling development.

In the movie, these roles were played by Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, and Katherine Hepburn, respectively, and Arena’s actors deserve credit for avoiding any whiff of an attempt at replicating the film performances. Warner’s Prentice, in addition to being smart, polite, and sensitive to the feelings of others, is able to show a touch of insecurity in his nervousness about telling his parents that his fiancée is white. But he persuasively displays strength in standing up to his father and prospective father-in-law when it counts.

Key’s Matt is a tightly wound, angry fellow, brittle when his authority within the family is challenged, almost but not quite to the point of breaking. He is someone who invariably believes that he is rational and right. To bring the story to a happy conclusion, Matt must overcome not only his lingering racial prejudice but also his overweening certainty, and Key shows that this is no easy task for him.

Kincaid’s Christina is a warmer figure, initially nonplussed by her daughter’s sudden decision, but quickly coming to believe that her daughter’s love for John is real and should be honored. A major turning point for Christina is a confrontation with the manager of her art gallery, Hilary St. George (Valerie Leonard), an annoyingly superficial sort whose racist advice to Christina leads to a highly satisfying comeuppance. Christina and Lind’s Joanna, who despite a good deal of girlish giddiness in her characterization also shows some of the family backbone, make a common front against Matt’s stubbornness.

The play’s title refers to an impromptu visit to the Drayton house — instigated by Joanna — by John’s parents (Eugene Lee and Andrea Frye), whose reaction to the marriage parallels that of the Draytons. John’s mother, believing in love, is sympathetic. John’s father, believing that only a lunatic would enter an interracial marriage in a racist world, is apoplectic. The visit becomes the occasion for a series of well-delivered dramatic monologues that dominate Act 2: by Lee about the pain and fear created by racism; by Warner about his need to live his own life as not a black man, but as a man; by Frye on the forgetfulness of men about the passionate connections they have had with their wives; and finally by Key, summarizing the events of the day before announcing his change of heart.

In supporting roles, Michael Russoto and Lynda Gravatt play Monsignor Mike Ryan, a longtime friend of the Draytons, and Matilda (“Tilly”) Binks, the Draytons’ longtime cook/maid. Russoto does what he can with the stock role of the cheerful, kindly Irish priest, dispensing wisdom and Scotch in equal proportions. In Act 1, Gravatt’s Binks is a grouch who is actively hostile to John, whose motives she instinctively distrusts. In Act 2, her outlook suddenly brightens — the apparent trigger being an old song she and John both know — and she joins the other women in supporting the couple.

In adapting the screenplay for the theater, playwright Kriedler makes a number of changes. Some are a matter of updating language, as in the replacement of “Negro” with “black.” The film has a number of locales (e.g., an airport, taxi, art gallery). The one-set play takes place entirely in the Drayton’s living/dining room and terrace, serving to emphasize the drawing room comedy-like structure of the play. The play runs about a half hour longer than the movie, as Kriedler adds material for some of the characters and situations. Hilary and Tilly are both longer roles in the stage version than in the movie. Tilly’s Act 2 conversion has no equivalent in the movie, for example. John’s confrontation with his father is longer and more detailed than in the film. More is made of the emotional consequences of parallel losses that the families have suffered (Joanna’s brother died as a child; John’s first wife and child were killed in an accident). While the filmed screenplay feels tighter and more economical, the additions provide depth and help to round out the characters.

While Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner focuses on race relations, gender relations are just as important to the play. Both fathers, used to being the unquestioned leaders and decision makers in their families, are ultimately forced to yield to the power of the women in their lives who are quicker to adapt to change and unwilling to stand for the unreasoning attachment of their husbands to attitudes that are becoming obsolete. In the film, Matt’s final monologue is still delivered from a position of strength, as he stands and talks to the other seated characters, expressing with gravitas and deep emotion his understanding the parallel between John’s love for Joanna and his for Christina. The words of the monologue are almost the same in the play, but Esbjornson and Key give it a more comic interpretation, losing some strength and dignity in the process.

Like many a drawing-room comedy, the plot of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner uses an arbitrary device to provide tension and raise the stakes, in this case John’s unsolicited, wholly incredible, commitment to marry the love of his life only if her parents fully endorse the union within a few hours of meeting him. John and Matt agree to this proposition without consulting or even informing Joanna, an exercise of male privilege if ever there was. In the movie, Joanna barely bats an eye when she hears of this; in the play she at least offers a brief, rather muted, objection. Arena’s recent production of Love in Afghanistan provides an instructive contrast. In that play, Duke, an American entertainer performing in Afghanistan, seeks to protect Roya, a young interpreter he cares about, by getting her father’s consent to marry her, informing her only after the fact. She becomes furious and rejects his offer. Especially given Kreidler’s intent to tell the 1967 story “in a way that was for the 21st century” (Meet The Artists Q&A at page 13 of the program), he might have considered giving Joanna greater agency in the matter.

Also like the characters in Love in Afghanistan, Dr. John Wade Prentice and the Draytons exist on the affluent and best-educated edges of their society. The primary tension comes from Matt’s doubts about the wisdom of his daughter marrying even a brilliant and successful doctor who happens to be black. Were John a bricklayer, we would have a very different story, one that explored class as well as race distinctions.

As one expects from a high-quality professional theater, the technical side of the production is impeccable. Kat Conley’s busily-furnished living room and terrace set is functional and as tastefully restrained as one would expect from the home of a newspaper publisher in the late 1960s. A nice choice, differing from the movie, is that the plants on the terrace are cactus rather than showier flowers. Paul’s Tazewell’s costumes — like the set using primarily muted colors — and Allen Lee Hughes’ lighting design are likewise appropriate and unobtrusive. Sound designer Timothy M. Thompson relies on period popular songs for background, blessedly avoiding “The Glory of Love.”

Appearing in the same year as the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia, which overturned state laws banning interracial marriage, the movie dealt with what was then a loudly debated issue. In addressing this issue, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner paints its themes in broad strokes. Even people who generally fight on the side of the progressive angels may have unexamined prejudices they need to recognize and rethink. Race-based assumptions about individuals’ motives are not limited to members of one race. The content of one’s character truly does matter more than the color of one’s skin. Parents should trust and support the feelings of their well-brought up, successful adult offspring. And love really must ultimately conquer all.

Scarcely anyone would find these statements even remotely controversial nowadays. Yet Smith is right to assert that the racial conversation in America is far from happily concluded, as the racial subtext of personal attacks on President Obama and overt hostility to Latino and Muslim immigrants attest. In business, employment, education, and a variety of other areas, what lawyers call “the continuing effects of past discrimination” persist, and talking about the intersection of the wider social trends with personal lives has continuing value.

Photo Gallery

Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Dr. John Prentice and Bethany Anne Lind as Joanna Drayton	Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Dr. John Prentice and Lynda Gravatt as Matilda Binks
Tess Malis Kincaid as Christina Drayton and Lynda Gravatt as Matilda Binks	Tess Malis Kincaid as Christina Drayton and Tom Key as Matt Drayton
Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Dr. John Prentice and Bethany Anne Lind as Joanna Drayton	Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Dr. John Prentice, Bethany Anne Lind as Joanna Drayton, Tess Malis Kincaid as Christina Drayton and Tom Key as Matt Drayton
Bethany Anne Lind as Joanna Drayton and Lynda Gravatt as Matilda Binks, with Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Dr. John Prentice	Andrea Frye as Mary Prentice, Malcolm Jamal-Warner as Dr. John Prentice and Eugene Lee as John Prentice Sr.

Photos by Teresa Wood

Cast

• Matilda Binks: Lynda Gravatt
• Hilary St. George: Valerie Leonard
• Christina Drayton: Tess Malis Kincaid
• Matt Drayton: Tom Key
• Joanna Drayton: Bethany Anne Lind
• Doctor John Prentice: Malcolm-Jamal Warner
• Monsignor Ryan: Michael Russotto
• John Prentice Sr: Eugene Lee
• Mary Prentice: Andrea Frye

Production Staff

• Playwright: Todd Kreidler
• Director: David Esbjornson
• Set Designer: Kat Conley
• Costume Designer: Paul Tazewell
• Lighting Designer: Allen Lee Hughes
• Wig Designer: Anne Nesmith
• Stage Manager: William E. Cruttenden III
• Assistant Stage Manager: Michael D. Ward
• Dialect/Vocal Coach: Lynn Watson
• New York Casting: David Caparelliotis
• Casting Director: Dan Pruksarnukul
• Dramaturg: Linda Lombardi
• Technical Director: Scott Schreck
• Properties Director: Chuck Fox
• Master Electrician: Christopher V. Lewton
• Sound Designer/Director: Timothy M. Thompson
• Costume Director: Joseph P. Salasovich
• Costume Shop Manager: T. Tyler Stumpf
• Directing Assistant: Ryan Maxwell
• Show Carpenter: James Mulhern
• Props Artisan: Marion Hampton Dube
• Light Board Operator: Scott Folsom
• Assistant to Lighting Designer: Nicki Rosecrans
• Sound Engineer: Aaron Allen
• Wardrobe Supervisor: Emily Grace Blackstone
• Wigs/Hair Supervisor: Vincent Hill
• Overhire Stitchers: Dorothy Barnes Driggers and Natalie M Kurczew
• New York Casting Associate: Lauren Port
• Overhire Painter: Mimi Li

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Not only is Maurice Hines tappin’ thru life at the Arena Stage. He’s also talkin’ and singin’.

And he’s 69 years old — a svelte and supple senior with snake hips and even snake shoulders. He brings the theater to vibrant life with his sunburst smile, his ingratiating “let me entertain you” manner and his phenomenal energy.

Hines’ autobiographical revue is big on nostalgia. The talkin’ and singin’ and tappin’ hark back to the 1940s — when Hines’ parents met and married. A collage of 14 on-stage screens displays a changing array of heirloom photographs. They lead us through a life of discipline and triumph. 

Toward the end of the 95-minute show, there’s a segue into the present and future. Hines brings on some local tap dance talent: the dazzling and innovative Manzani brothers, John (21) and Leo (18). And then along come two promising middle-schoolers, Max and Sam Heimowitz.

These two pairs of young brothers evoke a certain poignancy. Hines and his brother Gregory were a performing duo, starting when they were about the same age as Max and Sam. Gregory died 10 years ago of liver cancer. Many of the upstage photo projections feature Maurice and Gregory in snappy costumes. The affectionate tribute evokes both sorrow and celebration.

For comic effect, Hines displays alarm and dismay at a younger generation that masters tradition and but then goes on to new heights. But — naw — dismissive gestures aside, it is clear that Hines is glad to showcase evidence that his beloved art continues on in lively new directions.

Mostly, however, Hines’ beloved art consists in Vegas-style cabaret patter and vocal stylings. The repertoire is a collection of oldies, including “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Come Fly With Me” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” 

The music is immeasurably enhanced by the nine-member all-female Diva Jazz Orchestra. This brassy virtuoso ensemble is great. The leader is a drummer, Dr. Sherrie Maricle. Her solo riff as an astounding display of blurring sticks and flying hands. The show blasts off with a medley of big band standards. This exciting overture lets know that we’re in for a good time.

Hines’ cabaret patter is heavy on name-dropping. The names are accompanied by anecdotes or at least comments. The celebrity list includes — let’s see — Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, Tallulah Bankhead, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr., . . . and more. Many more.

Sometimes the reminiscences amount to a dusty and faded scrapbook. At other times the memories are powerful. When the Hines brothers first played Las Vegas in 1955, the strip was the sort of “whites only” enterprise characteristic of latitudes far to the south. Off by itself was the Moulin Rouge hotel and casino, which pioneered integration. 

Hines tells of an incident involving Bankhead (white) and Bailey (black). Bankhead insisted that Bailey join her in her Vegas hotel’s swimming pool. The white patrons got out of the pool. When Bailey climbed out of the water, the pool was drained. On the projection screens are photos of segregation relics: “Whites Only,” “Colored Waiting Room,” etc. etc.

“We’ve come a long way,” Hines marvels. “A black man in the white house and the Supreme Court overturns DOMA.” This latter new landmark queues an old song: “Get Me To the Church on Time.”

Even a downbeat moment triggers an upbeat song. Which probably explains how, after all these years, Maurice Hines’ goes on “Tappin’ Thru Life.”

Photo Gallery

Maurice Hines	Maurice Hines, with members of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra
Max Heimowitz, John Manzari, Maurice Hines, Leo Manzari and Sam Heimowitz, with members of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra	Maurice Hines
John and Leo Manzari	Maurice Hines
Maurice Hines	Maurice Hines

Photos by Teresa Wood

Cast

• Performers: Maurice Hines, John Manzari, Leo Manzari, Max Heimowitz, Sam Heimowitz

The Diva Jazz Orchestra

• Drummer: Dr. Sherrie Maricle
• Acoustic Bass: Amy Shook
• Piano: Janelle Gill
• Trombone: Jennifer Krupa
• Trumpet: Jami Dauber
• Lead Trumpet: Liesl Whitaker
• Lead Alto Saxophone: Sharel Cassity
• Tenor Saxophone: Camille Thruman
• Baritone Saxophone: Leigh Pilzer

For This Production

• Director: Jeff Calhoun
• Music Director: Dr. Sherrie Maricle
• Set Designer: Tobin Ost
• Lighting Designer: Michael Gilliam
• Sound Designer: Carl Casella
• Projection designer: Darrel Maloney
• Assistant Director: Patti D’Beck
• Assistant Choreographers: John and Leo Manzari
• Stage Manager: Kurt Hall
• Assistant Stage Manager: Marne Anderson
• Script Development and Dramaturg: David Snider
• Casting Director: Dan Pruksarnukul
• Production Manager: Marissa Larose
• Technical Director: Scott Schreck
• Properties Director: Chuck Fox
• Master Electrician: Christopher V. Lewton
• Sound Director: Timothy M. Thompson
• Costume Director: Joseph P. Salasovich
• Costume Shop Manager/Designer: T. Tyler Stumpf
• Show Carpenter: Sean Malarkey
• Props: Justin Titley
• Light Board Operator: Paul Villalovoz
• Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Nicki Rosecrans
• Spot Operators: Curtis Jones, Kelsey Swanson
• Sound Engineer: Roc Lee
• Associate Projection Designer/ Programmer: Paul Leiber
• Wardrobe Supervisor: Alice Hawfield
• Youth Company Supervisor: Chet H. Craft
• Musician Contractor: Rita Eggert
• Musical Orchestrations and Preparation: Leigh Pilzer
• Overhire Stitcher: Natalie M. Kurczewski
• Overhire Painter: Mimi Li
• Overhire Carpenters: William Klemt, George Page, Dan Peterson, Cathryn Salisbury-Valerien

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Its title notwithstanding, Charles Randolph-Wright’s new play, Love in Afghanistan, now playing at Arena Stage, has little in it of the conventional love story. Duke, a hip-hop artist in country to entertain the troops (Khris Davis), and Roya, an Afghan interpreter (Melis Aker), do not meet cute; they get acquainted on the job. They have amusing exchanges with each other, but their conversation is not out of the romantic comedy playbook. They come to have a powerful emotional connection and to care deeply for one another, but neither ever says “I love you.” There is an undercurrent of physical attraction, but only one brief kiss. Coming from vastly different cultures, meeting in a violent place, they and their relationship are constantly under threat, but Randolph-Wright has no intention of giving us a romantic tragedy of the Romeo and Juliet or Madame Butterfly sort.

The play’s great strength is the complexity of its characters, all of whom, in their own ways, live on the privileged peripheries of their worlds. Aker’s Roya has a fierce, unquenchable passion to make her country a place where women can live freely and joyously. She does not fit anyone’s stereotype of a passive Afghan woman: she is educated and multilingual, has considerable familiarity with Western culture, and is a risk-taker. Significantly, she has lived part of her youth dressed as and with the freedoms of a boy, consistent with a traditional custom for families that do not have sons. In her devotion to her mission, her refusal to live in fear, and her unwillingness to accept cultural gender role prescriptions, she is a sister of Shaw’s Saint Joan.

When she believes it necessary, as in keeping some of her activities secret from her father or concerning the interrogation of a Taliban suspect, Roya can dissemble, but she is otherwise exceedingly direct in her dealings with others, a characteristic that appeals strongly to Duke. From an affluent background, Duke has always had security, acclaim, and women come to him almost without effort on his part. All entitled ego at first, concerned primarily with his own success, Duke is, in Davis’ rendering, something of a classic American innocent abroad, not fully realizing the implications of his actions for people in the country he is passing through. (In this, Duke can be viewed as implicitly standing in for well-intentioned but heedless American interventions in places like Afghanistan.) In his physicality and vocal tone, Davis shows his character’s growing maturity and willingness to confront the consequences of his choices as the play continues. Akers and Davis share a wonderful ability to portray their characters’ willingness to be surprised by one another, though the surprises are not uniformly happy: the action Duke takes in the second act in an attempt to protect Roya profoundly misunderstands her, to the distress of both.

In counterpoint to the young protagonists are Roya’s father, Sayeed (Joseph Kamal), and Duke’s mother, Desiree (Dawn Ursula). Sayeed, also a translator, is a liberal, understanding parent whose traditional attitudes are in tension with his support for his daughter’s independence and rebelliousness. (The relationship between Malala Yousafzai and her father came to mind.) Kamal plays him as a calm, courageous man who is all too aware of the precariousness of his and his daughter’s position, particularly as the Americans prepare to withdraw. He is too experienced in the world to be fearless. Ursula’s Desiree is a smart, well-connected, sophisticated and worldly, British-Jamaican World Bank official, protective of her talented son yet ready to call him to account when necessary. Her characterization leaves little doubt that Duke came by his charm and ego honestly: no self-esteem issues in this family. In some ways, the two parents have an easier time understanding one another than do their children, perhaps because the stakes in their relationship — which provides best comic moment of the evening — are not as high.

The script is very topical (even including a reference to Edward Snowden), and, if it is being performed 10 or 15 years from now, it will be interesting to see if it has the same impact. That said, Randolph-Wright performs a signal service in emphasizing the scandal of the U.S. failure to make visas readily available to men and women from Afghanistan and Iraq who have served American forces as interpreters and in other capacities, threatening to leave many of them stranded and open to reprisals from Taliban or other hostile forces in their home countries after the U.S. withdrawal. One can hope that a production here in Washington can have some impact on policy toward people in this situation.

There are didactic moments in the first act, and Randolph-Wright resorts to melodramatic devices at times to move the plot along (none, it should be said, outside the realm of credibility in a war zone). Characters face forward a few too many times to deliver an expository monologue or one side of an interrogation. However, Lucie Tiberghien’s direction keeps the pace and tone of the piece in good balance and maintains the play’s focus where it should be — on the evolving relationships among the characters.

The technical side of the production likewise supports the focus on the characters without distracting. Daniel Conway’s set design is based low metal grate platforms, particularly fitting in the interrogation scenes, decorated simply with functional office-type chairs and a large Afghan rug. Mark Lanks’ lighting can be harsh and closely focused in interrogation scenes, warm in scenes involving the characters getting to know one another, and switches to a lush red with white highlights when the characters have a few days outside Afghanistan in a Dubai luxury hotel. The sound design (Elisheba Ittoop) mixes music suggestive of Afghan culture with hip-hop and nicely subtle background noise, whether of a crowd in a market or the click of overhead lamps coming on for an interrogation.

An important theme running through the play concerns the masks that people wear. Roya assumes the guise of a boy to avoid her culture’s restrictions on women. Duke lives in the bubble of his celebrity, guarding himself against involvement with others or even with his own deeper feelings. Desiree speaks of the phenomenon of racial “passing” in her own family and as an analogy to Roya’s situation. The hopeful note in the play is that masks need not be impermeable, and that people — even those from very different cultures — are capable of genuinely meeting face to face, something that Kipling, writing about the same part of the world in the late 19th century, probably would have appreciated.

Photo Gallery

Khris Davis as Duke and Melis Aker as Roya	Khris Davis as Duke and Melis Aker as Roya
Melis Aker as Roya	Khris Davis as Duke
Melis Aker as Roya	Joseph Kamal as Sayeed and Melis Aker as Roya
Dawn Ursula as Desiree	Joseph Kamal as Sayeed, Melis Aker as Roya, Dawn Ursula as Desiree and Khris Davis as Duke

Photos by Teresa Wood

Cast

• Roya: Melis Aker
• Duke: Khris Davis
• Sayeed: Joseph Kamal
• Desiree: Dawn Ursula

Production Staff

• Director: Lucie Tiberghien
• Set Designer: Daniel Conway
• Costume Designer: Kathleen Geldard
• Lighting Designer: Mark Lanks
• Original Music and Sound Designer: Elisheba Ittoop
• Stage Manager: Christi B. Spann
• Casting: Jack Doulin
• Dramaturg: Jocelyn Clarke
• Dialects: Gary Logan
• Associate Lighting Designer: Zachary A. Dalton
• Casting Director: Dan Pruksarnukul
• Dramaturgical Research: Linda Lombardi
• Stage Management Assistant: Leigh Robinette
• Interim Production Manager: Marissa Larose
• Technical Director: Scott Schreck
• Properties Director: Chuck Fox
• Master Electrician: Christopher V. Lewton
• Sound Director: Timothy M. Thompson
• Costume Director: Joseph P. Salasovich
• Costume Shop Manager: T. Tyler Stumpf
• Directing Assistant: Amber Emory
• Sound Engineer: Aaron Allen
• Wardrobe Supervisor: Emily Grace Blackstone
• Light Board Operator: Michael Brown
• Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Nicki Rosecrans
• Props: Justin Titley
• Board Intern: Allen J. Berman
• Board Intern: Michele G. Berman

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Mike: This is Mike Clark with ShowBizRadio. Today I am talking with Larry Kaye who is the producer of the show currently playing at Arena Stage called The Velocity of Autumn. Larry is a lawyer turned producer a few years ago as he was wanting to branch out into the more creative aspect of his life. Thank you for talking with me today.

Larry: Oh, thanks Mike. I’m glad to be here.

Mike: So lawyer-turned-producer. What kind of law were you doing? Where were you based?

Larry: I’ve been practicing primarily employment law and civil rights since 1992, primarily in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Mike: I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve worked with lawyers, so I can totally see how that can lead to getting burned out or frustrated with life in general. Is that kind of what pushed you towards the creative aspect of theater or were there other areas that were interesting to you?

Larry: I think it was a combination of things. I had a theater background before I became a lawyer. I went to graduate school in theater to get my Master of Fine Arts degree because originally I had wanted to be a theater director and decided not to complete that program.

I came back to the Washington DC area and continued to keep theater as a very important activity in my life and as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, decided that having a law degree could be a very valuable degree to have regardless of what profession you’re in. So I decided to go to law school at night while I continued to work during the day. As I was involved more and more with law school and the various activities that are part of the law school experience, it was clearer and clearer to me that I could really like the practice of law, and so I came out of law school and decided to practice, but I would continue to also be involved with theater.

I began to direct some shows in the Washington DC area, began to practice law, and use some of my theater background as a trial lawyer and eventually got to the point where although I really had had good results with the litigation that I was involved in and felt like I was making a great contribution to the employment law in Maryland, I became increasingly dissatisfied with it as a career. In the long-term I did not see doing that exclusively until I was age 65 or 70.

I started thinking more and more about could I get back to the activity that really seemed to feed my soul which was theater. I had an opportunity when I was working at a small theater in Alexandria called MetroStage. They came to me because they developing a show with a New York producer that was going to be going to off-Broadway. It was a two person musical called Rooms. They asked me if I would be interested in meeting with this producer and possibly supporting the show as it was going to off-Broadway. I had been thinking awhile that producing could be a good use of my skill set and spoke to a lot of the strengths that I had, but really wasn’t sure how do I do it.

And so I met with this producer, became involved with the production and as I began to go to New York and meet with other producers, started to hear about their projects it became more and more interesting to me. And then eventually I took classes at an organization called the Commercial Theatre Institute, which is an organization that trains new producers. I took pretty much every class that they had and began to get involved in projects where other people were acting as lead producers. I was sort of like a sponge. I sat in the room and absorbed everything I could possibly absorb and learn everything I could possibly learn. There is no substitute for on the job training. That is what brought me to where I am now.

Mike: I always think of producing as the people behind the curtain that coordinate all the details. Is that pretty accurate?

Larry: There are sort of two types of producers. There is what we refer to as a co-producer which is a producer whose come in underneath a lead producer and whose responsibility at least initially is largely money-raising to help get up shows on Broadway. And then would have additional responsibilities involved typically in attending advertising and marketing meetings, giving general input as required by the lead producers and then other duties as the lead producer asks you to be involved with.

The lead producing job is much more comprehensive. That is sort of the person who heads, if you will, the little industry which is a Broadway show. Responsible for hiring the director, ultimately hiring all personnel. Has any impact or any contact in any way with he show. Overseeing with the general manager and the show’s finances and basically shepherding the show through not only until it’s open on Broadway, but in its maintenance on Broadway and its afterlife after Broadway closes.

Mike: We out in the world, we see TV shows like “SMASH” and you have the producer worrying about the money all the time and getting the handful of people involved. Is that a fairly accurate view of what you were just describing?

Larry: It is. It’s exactly what happens. I would not necessarily say that “SMASH” itself is extraordinarily close to reality, but the basic premise of having a show or a property you believe in that you want to develop for Broadway. Getting other people interested in working with you on it including fellow producers who might come in to work with you as co-lead producers or as co-producers. Yeah, that’s very accurate.

Mike: I think I saw something fairly recently talking about the number of producers of a Broadway show has like tripled in the past few years. Does that seem real?

Larry: Oh, it seems very real. There was a time a long time ago, many, many years ago when one producer might put up all the money to produce a show. That time generally has long since past. What happens now is Broadway shows have become so expensive and producers are interested in sort of spreading out the risk associated with the expense of a Broadway show that they will bring in multiple people and essentially carve up the amount of money required to produce the show in more manageable amounts for more people. And so yeah the number of people investing in shows and in producing in shows has gone up considerably because of that.

Mike: That makes sense. And then your current show is playing at Arena Stage called The Velocity of Autumn. Tell us about that.

Larry: It’s a great show. It’s a two-person show about a 79-year-old woman played by Estelle Parsons, the fantastic Academy award-winning actress. This 79-year-old woman, her name is Alexandra, is in a stand-off with her family about going into a nursing home. They want to put her in a care facility because they believe she is having increasing trouble living at home by herself. She’s adamant that she is not going to a nursing home and so she barricades herself inside her Brooklyn brownstone with an inventory of Molotov Cocktails that she has made herself and threatens to blow up the building and frankly the entire city block if anybody tries to force her to go to a nursing home. Her estranged son Chris, who she hasn’t seen in twenty years, climbs in her window to convince her not to do this and becomes sort of an unlikely mediator in this dispute in an effort to save her life and also his own.

Mike: Wow. Holy smokes.

Larry: It’s a beautiful beautiful play and extremely funny.

Mike: And it’s headed to Broadway or it’s hoping to go to Broadway?

Larry: It’s headed toward Broadway. We are waiting to find out what theatre we have and we are still in the midst of raising money for it, but the prospects look very bright.

Mike: Has it been touring elsewhere or is this the premier here in DC?

Larry: It had a world premier in Boise, Idaho. Not with the same actors. And then a subsequent production at the Beck Center in Cleveland again not with the same actors. this is the DC premier of the show and this is the one that will be going to Broadway.

Mike: Any idea what time frame that will be or is it totally dependent on space up there?

Larry: That’s really what it depends on. It depends on the availability of a suitable theatre and obviously we need to make sure the actors’ schedules mesh with the availability.

Mike: It’s not a musical so that’s the thing I’ve heard is that Broadway can only be successful if it’s a musical. Is that a concern? Is that true?

Larry: No, no that’s not true at all. There are many plays that are very successful on Broadway. Different shows attract different types of audience members. A show like this may initially attract the sort of regular theatre goers in New York who will go to see multiple plays in a season. Estelle Parsons and her co-star Stephen Spinella, who is a two-time Tony award winner for the play Angels in America and then the sequel to Angels in America. They’re both two of the finest actors in the American theatre. And so New York theatre goers will we believe be extremely interested in seeing this pair on stage. Their chemistry is really something you’ve got to experience to take in. But they’re just absolutely superb in a very very funny and touching play. But a very difficult play to do. Keeping that active and alive in front of an audience is a really big challenge.

Mike: I was looking at your bio here. You’ve been in involved in other shows; How To Succeed in Business, Oleana, American Idiot, Blithe Spirit. That’s a pretty nice wide range of shows there.

Larry: It is. I’ve been really fortunate. The shows I’ve been involved with have all been pretty wonderful pieces that excite audiences or move audiences. It’s one of the things that really feeds my soul is finding a great piece of theater that can really move an audience in a variety of ways.

Mike: So as a producer is it more important to invest both time and resources, is it better to invest in something that speaks personally to you or speaks to you more commercially?

Larry: I think for producing you’ve got to find something that will do both. I could invest in a play because I happen to like the play, but if nobody wants to come and see the play that I happen to like then commercially it won’t be successful. So it’s important especially since you have responsibility to your investors to find things on properties, pieces that will really accomplish on both ends. Where the material is good and will really speak to, not only you as a producer, but audiences who you will come and see the show and then beyond that ones that will be as a result of that commercially successful.

Mike: So if someone wanted to start producing, how do they stumble across these works? It’s not all new works I’m thinking. So is it just networking, getting out there in their area of the country.

Larry: Well I think if someone wanted to start producing there would be a couple of things to do. One would be to learn about what producing involves. There are organizations. there are really two of them in New York. One I mentioned was The Commercial Theatre Institute and another called Theatre Resources Unlimited or TRU. Both of them offer classes and seminars to perspective new producers as well as veteran producers, but they train producers.

It would be good to avail themselves of the classes offered. Some of these classes are offered online in the form of webinars. So you don’t necessarily go to New York to take the classes. Some of them are being offered around the country in other cities. That would be a good thing to do. And of course to read about producing and what’s involved.

The second thing to do which is what I did would be to meet with other producers. Indicate to them that you are interested in becoming a producer and would like to find out about the business from them. Talk to other producers about their projects and what they are involved with.

Finally, and to join other people’s productions as you sort of learn. Once you are sort of through that particular step, and you think you are at a point where you think you can produce either as a lead producer or working as a co-lead producer with other people. Looking for other plays that speak to you, authors that are putting out new work around the country. That certainly is a good way of finding new plays. Once you become a producer people will send you scripts. I probably get 5-7 a week now from people who have shows that they would like to have produced or need assistance with. Then it’s really a question of reading them and seeing what speaks to you.

Mike: How much of a time commitment is it?

Larry: Well it can be a great deal of commitment. When I was first a co-producer my time would be spent raising money. Then once the show was up and there was no more money needed raising, then my ongoing commitment was usually about once a week for a couple of hours.

If you want to expand that level of commitment and spend time out meeting people, meeting perspective investors for the next project, then you can obviously expand that time commitment into as much as a full-time job. My producing now I’m slowly sort of winding down my full-time law practice. I still have a few cases I’m working on, but my time as a producer is very slowly eclipsing the amount of time I’m spending as an attorney and I’m probably spending with Velocity of Autumn probably close to full-time before my time as an attorney on the show. So I’m putting in now 60 and 70 hour weeks working on both.

I’m just very excited about the Velocity of Autumn which is running at Arena Stage through October 20th. I would encourage people to go see it. These two amazing actors we’re so fortunate to have them in Washington performing. The audience response, Mike to this show has been so fantastic. It is really striking a chord with audience members when thy go see it. People leave with all kinds of interesting stories about how the show is resonating with them. Reminding them of their mothers or their fathers or their sons or things that their going through as they slowly confront the aging process and it’s a really really funny and poignant look at it and I recommend it.

Have you seen Velocity yet?

Mike: No, we don’t get into DC itself that often.

Larry: Oh my it is just such a spectacular show. Really really wonderful. And it’s just so gratifying to sit in the theatre night after night and hear the audience react to it. It’s a very different sort of reaction. People see plays and say, “oh that was a good play” or ” really liked that play.” This one people are like, “My gosh I saw my mother in this. I was reminded when she was going through this.” It’s really sort of striking a different chord with audiences than I’m used to seeing. So very exciting.

But what’s also so wonderful about that is there are so many other things. When she’s talking, there are so many one-liners or jokes you can tell strike a chord. There’s a place in the show where she’s talking to her son about how much she likes being alone and then she says to him, “You know the thing that was the toughest about raising kids is that you were always there!” And the audience just laughed and you could tell they’re all laughing because they’ve all thought that at one point or another about their own kids.

She goes on and she says, “I loved it. I loved taking care of you, but after you went back to school it was like climbing out of a pit. Fingers torn from the climb, but free at last! Free at last!” And then he says to her “You should really write Mother’s Day cards.” And the audience just howls. But it’s true that they all probably thought that at one point in time. “My gosh why did I have kids.” There are so many other sidetracks and things like that really touch a chord with people. This character says things that a lot of people think, but would not necessarily say. It is very cathartic for the audience in a variety of ways. So it’s great.

Mike: Well, that’s busy! Do you ever want to get on stage? Or do you want to stay backstage?

Larry: I’ve actually been on stage before. I was an actor before. I did not necessarily consider myself a very good actor. When I was in college and my early years after that I did a lot of theater in the area. I played a couple leading roles at the Montgomery College Summer Dinner Theatre and things like that.

Yes, it’s funny, Mike, when I became an attorney my first trial was in front of a woman who a couple of years earlier had been my trial practice professor at the American University Law School. At the end of the trial during my closing arguments I sort of did something and I saw her sort of cover her mouth like she was trying to stifle a laugh. After she sent the jury back she said, “Mr. Kaye, when you did that I remembered that you were a frustrated actor.” So I was fortunate to realize that acting was not going to be my particular forte which was why I started moving more and more into directing. Then ultimately I’m just thrilled to be a producer. It’s been a great thing for me to do.

Mike: Ok, well your website is hopth.com if people want to get in touch with you for anything. Thank you very much for talking with me today. I appreciate it.

Larry: Mike thank you very much.

In this era of recession, unemployment, and ever-increasing inequality, is it theatrically relevant to build a play around the secrets, woes, and family dysfunctions of the highly affluent? In writing Other Desert Cities, Jon Robin Baitz certainly must have thought so. His play, now at Arena Stage, depicts the splintering of the wealthy, witty, brittle Wyeth family in their Palm Springs living room over a distinctly un-merry Christmas holiday.

A word about that living room: Kate Edmunds’ set involves a neutral-colored carpet, with neutral-colored furniture, with a stone bar festooned with a variety of liquor bottles, a Scandinavian-modern buffet, and a central fire pit with a gas-powered flame. It is the kind of living room that could fit only in a McMansion. It is too big to be homey, the kind of space in which family members can maintain physical, as well as emotional, distance from one another. Director Kyle Donnelly makes good use of this aspect of the set by staging one character across the set from others at times, underlining the separation between them. Nancy Schertler’s lighting design is also often in relatively neutral colors, with sometimes a color blue tint, in keeping with the emotional tone of the setting.

While the play takes place mostly in 2004, the living room’s decor is very much of the 1970s, consistent with the sensibility of its owners, Polly and Lyman Wyeth, whose heyday was the 1970s and 80s.

In that heyday, Polly and Lyman were part of the Reagans’ circle, on a first-name basis with Ronnie and Nancy. Lyman (Larry Bryggman), himself a former movie actor (his major talent was apparently doing prolonged death scenes, reminiscent of Mortimer, “the man who dies” in The Fantasticks), became an ambassador during the Reagan Administration. With a craggy, gracious exterior, and an unrelenting hatred for what he remembers as the drug- and sex-crazed, long-haired era of the 1960s and 70s, he values loyalty above all. Polly (Helen Carey, the excellent Mary Tyrone in Arena’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night last season) is smart, demanding, casually bigoted, and tough — the only person who ever made Nancy Reagan back down, her husband comments. She is ever ready with a zinger that can amuse or wound, and Baitz supplies her and others with zingers aplenty, especially during the quite funny first act. In a more reflective moment, she notes that her real talent is for despair. The other three characters all say that she is far too hard on her talented, but emotionally troubled, daughter, Brooke (Emily Donahoe).

Brooke is visiting from her home in New York, where she has completed her new book. Not exactly a starving artist (she lives in Sag Harbor), she is on antidepressants following a lengthy stay in a mental hospital. Her manuscript — a memoir of her growing up — becomes the play’s main source of conflict, since it focuses on an extremely painful episode, the apparent suicide of her beloved older brother, Henry, following Henry’s involvement in a botched bombing during the anti-Vietnam War protests. (Though never referenced, the bombing mentioned in the play may have been suggested by the bombing, by antiwar protesters, of the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in 1970. While apparently intended only to destroy property, the blast killed a researcher who was working late at night. Three of the four perpetrators served prison sentences for their actions.) The memoir harshly indicts her parents for failing Henry, and they are appalled, to the point where Polly threatens to break ties with Brooke if the publication proceeds. Not only would the memoir make public private sorrow and guilt, it would break the code of loyalty and reticence that the older Wyeths live by.

As played by Donahoe, Brooke is a very unsettled, self-absorbed woman, no longer young (by 2004, it appears from evidence in the script that Brooke would probably be in her early 40s), dependent and rebellious, wanting to stand up to her powerful mother but fearing the consequences, still not sure who she is, and using her memoir to shape, perhaps to re-shape, her story. Helping Brooke to tell her story in a way that shows her parents in negative light is Silda (Martha Hackett), Polly’s recovering alcoholic sister, who by this time in her life shares with Polly only their mutual anger. Hackett’s Silda is something of a lost soul, sleeping late, wearing designer knock-offs, frail in body and spirit but able to counterpunch on occasion, the opposite of her dominating, always-in-control sibling.

The fifth member of the family is Trip (Scott Drummond), Brooke’s younger brother. A more balanced personality, who has learned to maintain some degree of neutrality and detachment amidst the family strife, he is the only character capable of seeing both sides of arguments between other family members. Drummond gives a relaxed, casual air to his character, in contrast to the tightly wound, emotionally fraught nature of the others.

Silda, Polly, Lyman, and Brooke all have different takes on who Henry was and what led to his tragedy (Trip was too young to have been deeply involved). The interaction of their divergent narratives, all incomplete, all with one bias or another, some involving deliberate omissions or deceptions, raise tensions as the second act progresses, until a major plot twist turns assumptions on their heads. The characters react in a variety of ways: Lyman becomes loudly overwrought, Polly grimly hangs on, Brooke’s face gradually crumples into tears, Trip just watches, and Silda stays curled up on the couch, not reacting. (By this point in the play, these latter two characters, while remaining on stage, virtually disappear from the action, a weak point in the script.)

Other Desert Cities incorporates many typical elements of the family drama genre, though it does so skillfully enough to avoid being simply formulaic. Family members gather, exchange accusations, air resentments, and repeat lies. Secrets have corrosive, destructive effects on them. Characters see only bits and pieces of reality, always colored by their own perspectives and interests, and there are no guarantees that the truth will actually set anyone free.

Baitz makes what may be an attempt to mitigate the dark tone of the play’s climax by tacking on a brief, somewhat awkward, coda in which, in 2010, Brooke gives a bookstore reading from her book. It is implied by the passage of time that, as her father had asked, she has waited until after her parents’ death to publish; it is not clear whether the book was revised to include the second act’s big surprise. By her dress, hairstyle, and demeanor, Brooke appears by this point to be a more integrated personality, more reconciled to her own, and to her family’s, history. But she is still telling her story, which, after all, is primarily what a memoir is about.

The play has a very noticeable political viewpoint, one highly critical of Republicans and conservatives of the Reagan and Bush 43 eras, almost to the point of caricature. With their little prejudices and insular attitudes, the older Wyeths are an easy target for Silda’s and Brooke’s political jibes. While Baitz tries to humanize Polly and Lyman as parents, especially in the second act, there is little in the script that is inconsistent with a complacent, Democratic-leaning perspective on the Regan and Bush years. Playwrights should play fair with their characters, even those representing political positions with which the playwright (and much of his audience) might disagree, and the script falls short in this respect.

Other Desert Cities is a good, rather than a great, script, and the success of a production rests largely with the quality of the acting. Arena’s production scores high in this respect, particularly with Carey giving a riveting performance, dominating the stage as her character dominates her family. All the portrayals were credible, though, in the final confrontation among the three main characters, Bryggman was more histrionic than necessary.

Some reviews have drawn parallels between Other Desert Cities and Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, another family drama involving family secrets leading to unhappy results. However much Other Desert Cities may reflect difficult family dynamics that can arise anywhere, this is a story that, unlike Miller’s work, is very contained within the rarified world of the one percent. There’s a good deal to be said for plays, whether those of Miller or, for example, Arena’s Good People and the Shakespeare Theater’s Coriolanus earlier this season, that concern family and social conflicts in a wider universe.

Photo Gallery

Emily Donahoe as Brooke Wyeth	Martha Hackett as Silda Grauman
Martha Hackett as Silda Grauman	Scott Drummond as Trip Wyeth
Larry Bryggman as Lyman Wyeth and Helen Carey as Polly Wyeth	Helen Carey as Polly Wyeth
Emily Donahoe as Brooke Wyeth and Martha Hackett as Silda Grauman	Helen Carey as Polly Wyeth, Marth Hackett as Silda Grauman, Emily Donahoe as Brooke Wyeth, Scott Drummond as Trip Wyeth and Larry Bryggman as Lyman Wyeth

Photos by Scott Suchman

Cast

• Trip Wyeth: Scott Drummond
• Brooke Wyeth: Emily Donahue
• Polly Wyeth: Helen Carey
• Lyman Wyeth: Larry Bryggman
• Silda Grauman: Martha Hackett

Production Staff

• Director: Kyle Donnelly
• Set Designer: Kate Edmunds
• Costume Designer: Nan Cibula-Jenkins
• Lighting Designer: Nancy Schertler
• Original Music and Sound Designer: David Van Tieghem
• Stage Manager: Martha Knight
• Assistant Stage Manager: Kurt Hall
• New York Casting: Tara Rubin Casting

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

“What will posterity think we were — demigods? We’re men — no more, no less — trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed.” Benjamin Franklin to John Adams in 1776.

Playwright Katori Hall’s stated purpose in The Mountaintop has a good deal in common with Peter Stone’s 1969 take on the Second Continental Congress. Both seek to move iconic figures off their figurative (and sometimes literal) pedestals and make them more real and powerful for having very human flaws and uncertainties. Hall’s subject is Martin Luther King, on the last night of his life, just prior to his murder 45 years ago this month.

For slightly more than half the play, Hall’s script and Arena Stage’s production, directed by Robert O’Hara, fulfills that purpose admirably. Having just returned from making his magnificent “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, King, played by Bowman Wright, is seen pacing the motel balcony as the audience enters the theater, the picture of nervous energy and fatigue. The revolving set features the exterior and interior of the Lorraine Motel, Room 306, designed by Clint Ramos to closely resemble the real locale of King’s death (which have been preserved as part of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee). It is literally a dark and stormy night, with sheets of rain falling around the motel. King is tired, working on a speech to be titled “Why America is Going to Hell.” He needs cigarettes and coffee and to take off his smelly shoes. Room service arrives, in the person of Camae (Joaquina Kalukango), a smart, pretty, profane, sexy, motel worker on her first night on the job.

They talk about the state of the civil rights movement, black/white conflict, integration and separatism, class and sex divisions, Malcolm X, King’s pride in his oratorical skills, his fears (he flinches at the sound of a thunder-clap) and the nature of God (as the old saying goes, She’s Black, and She appreciates a dirty joke now and again). Camae has a brilliant monologue on what to do with the white man. They flirt: sexual tension is in the air, bringing to mind King’s by-now well-known sexual infidelities. The writing is sharp, believable, and often very funny — the show is full of laugh lines that the audience fully appreciated. The performances by Bowman and Kalukango were spot-on, fully credible as what might have been the interaction between King and a very knowing and emotionally vibrant woman who is able to relate to a famous, heroic man as an equal, not a worshipper. One of the strengths of the first half of the play is that Camae, as a kind of everywoman, shows the audience a path to approaching a legend on a human scale.

Then there’s the second half of the play, which suddenly veers off into what feels like a particularly religious corner of the Twilight Zone, leading to, among other things, a very raw and honest expression of King’s fear of death, his increasing radicalization on Vietnam, and his strong sense of the work he needed to finish; a sitcom-like sequence involving a phone call to God (including intentionally anachronistic cell phone jokes) and a pillow fight; a lengthy video montage summarizing history between 1968 and the present; and concluding with an inspiring sermon delivered by King straight out to the audience. There are some moving and some funny pieces in the midst of these rapid-fire changes of tone, but a coherent whole it does not make.

The playwright’s weakest moment comes when, shortly after King, weary of the constant demands of his role and longing to have been just a pastor of his own church, passionately declares “I am just a man.” Camae follows with a beautiful tribute to King’s large, loving heart, which makes him beloved of God and an angel in his own right, in the process undermining the play’s main point that we should look at our heroes as real people, not demigods.

In addition to sterling performances by the two actors (indeed, Kalukango’s portrayal is so riveting as to frequently make The Mountaintop more Camae’s play than King’s), the other remarkable feature of the production is the combination of Japhy Weidman’s lighting design and Jeff Sugg’s projections. There is no justice in the Washington theater world if these do not turn up in the Helen Hayes Award nominations. The rain behind the motel, a mystical snowstorm done entirely with light, the video montage near the end of the show, and above all the profusion of red flowers and petals covering the set during the transition between the first and second parts of thee play are among the most striking visuals anyone will see in local theaters this year.

As someone who lived through the great days of the Civil Rights Movement, and the inspiration that Martin Luther King and others, warts and all, provided to the nation, I find it impossible not to be moved by the material of this play, warts and all. But it is even more moving to read or listen to King’s own words, which carry his vision and humanity more effectively than anything the rest of us can say. Here is his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech of April 3, 1968.

Photo Gallery

Joaquina Kalukango as Camae	Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joaquina Kalukango as Camae	Joaquina Kalukango as Camae and Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joaquina Kalukango as Camae	Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joaquina Kalukango as Camae
Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joaquina Kalukango as Camae	Bowman Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photos by Scott Suchman

Cast

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Bowman Wright
• Camae: Joaquina Kalukango

Production Staff

• Director: Robert O’Hara
• Set and Costume Designer: Clint Ramos
• Lighting Designer: Japhy Weidman
• Sound Designer and Composer: Lindsay Jones
• Projection Designer: Jeff Sugg
• Stage Manager: William E. Cruttenden III
• Assistant Stage Manager: Marne Anderson
• Assistant Set and Costume Designer: Craig Napoliello
• Associate Lighting Designer: Alex Jainchill
• Assistant Lighting Designer: Catherine Girtardi
• Assistant Sound Designer: Anthony Mattana
• Dramatug: Jacey Little
• Show Carpenter: James P. Mulhern III
• Props: Marion Hampton-Dube
• Light Board Operator: Scott Folsom
• Sound Engineers: Adam Johnson, Roc Lee
• Video Engineer: Roc Lee
• Wardrobe Supervisor: Alice Hawfield
• Directing Fellow: Carla McGinnis

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.