It’s always a pleasure to have one of Sarah Ruhl’s plays in town. Ruhl (b. 1974) is a playwright with a delightful, comic-serious outlook. Her plays have an off-center, soft-edged sensibility as she muses about the complexity of living, and the illusions needed to make it through bewilderment.

In the DC area we have been fortunate to often have her works produced as premieres thanks to Woolly Mammoth and Arena. Her Dead Man’s Cell Phone, produced at Woolly, received a Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play.

Recently, No Rules Theater produced one of Ruhl’s earlier works from 2003 Late: A Cowboy Song. Now WSC Avant Bard is bringing audiences another early Ruhl work. It is her adventure, fantasy Orlando, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s long literary love-letter “Orlando, A Biography” which was published in 1928. In Orlando Ruhl distilled Woolf’s literature about time travel across centuries and crossing over gender boundaries to experience sensuality.

Under the direction of Amber Jackson, the WSC Avant Bard production is a lively, weightless, little romp with plenty of charm. She has a zesty touch and a mock-serious approach. In her program notes, Jackson wrote, “This play, to me, celebrates that diversity of being…a journey of transformation that embraces the rainbow-like qualities of our personalities.”

So what is Orlando about? Well, it tells the story of a young man named Orlando (played by Sara Barker). We first meet him during the time of Queen Elizabeth I (a flamboyant Mario Baldessari). We first gaze at him under an oak tree furiously trying his hand at poetry; he fails at it. His youthful gamin looks lead him to ever so briefly become the elderly queen’s lover. Soon after Elizabeth’s death, Orlando is smitten with Sasha (a flirty, breezy Amanda Forstrom), a young, mysterious Russian noble woman stuck in England because of a deep freeze. They have an passionate affair which opens Orlando’s eyes to truer love. It all too quickly ends. Then come other suitors including an annoying, persistent archduchess (a glitzy, gaudy Jay Hardee). Orlando decides to escape to Constantinople. All of this takes place with Orlando as a male.

And then comes intermission.

After waking from a long sleep, though not Rip Van Winkle in length, Orlando wakens to find himself transformed. He is no longer a male, but a woman. As a female, she is the same person and seems to have the same engaging personality. But physically she is clearly a woman as we readily witness through a gauzy, translucent white sheet. Orlando seems to have the same personality. Orlando learns the extent that the change to become a woman makes on life and living. The least of it being that were once he pursued women, now she is pursued by what become a true love (a solid, engaging Andrew Ferlo) and by the same archduchess who reveals herself to be a man (Jay Hardee again). All of these adventures happen over a period of several centuries; with many changing mores and life styles. The play ends in the early 20th century. Orlando has aged to be 36.

The Ruhl adaptation does not resolve questions the character Orlando poses, such as “Which the greater ecstasy, the man’s or the woman’s?” What the show does is to provide a clever, smart glance into a fluid life of growing-up and finding love.

A top-notch design team has turned a diminutive space in an otherwise non-descript Shirlington office building off of Arlington’s Four Mile Run into a lovely patch of visual delights. The moment the audience walks through the doors of a small hallway into the stage area, they are carried far away from the humdrum of real life. There is a handsome diamond-shaped set design by Steven Royal composed of many filigree wooden panels and an oak tree composed of paper leaves handing from the ceiling. The panels give a peek-a-boo, feel to the production. The audience sits surrounding the set, looking down into the action rather than observing up. The audience become emerged into the play, not just passive observers.

The lighting design by Joseph R. Walls is a gorgeous color wheel of feelings and moods. The lighting gives a sense of time and seasons peaking through the wooden panels or as dropped from above. There are shades of autumn orange and amber, the lush bright greens of spring, the cold halogen bright white of a snowy winter, and warm turquoise and strawberry reds of summer. Debra Kim Sivigny’s costumes allow us to travel well through time and gender with the cast.

The gamin Sara Barker completely immerses herself into the gender-bending role of Orlando. Her voice work even has the slightest change in pitch as she moves between male and female characterizations. She is a believable androgynous young man with an externally-focused, restless energy. Her body and arms are active, her face less so. Later with her “new” womanhood her acting style changes along with her newly seen female figure. It is not just her new clothes that make a difference in her outlook. She shows an inner being. Her eyes can be on fire, her smile wider, her cheek bones even seem to show more. She moves her eyes and eye brows without saying a word, but large emotions are telegraphed.

Barker makes her Orlando understated and believable. She is not so much fanciful or transgressive but more in constant surprise mode. Barker gives a nice life to words “Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.” and “I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”

Filling out the production is a Chorus of actors playing over a dozen different characters. Ruhl’s stage direction suggested that the Chorus “may be cast without regard to gender and may be double-cast. May be played by as few as three actors and as many as eight, but the author suggests a chorus of three gifted men to play all the roles. Director Jackson has taken the three men approach. At times and over the course of the show, an over-the-top frolicking attitude can become grating adding a bit too much unnecessary sugar.

Orlando never pushes limits or boundaries very hard. It is not in-your-face in any manner. It is not meant as a polemic. It is an agreeable scamper through sparkly fields, rather than a deep plunge over a cliff or a mystery told before a campfire. It is a dessert plate full of petit-fours to devour with someone you love. Often it is something like taking a single petit-four from a small plate and placing into the mouth of one you love. Yummy and just what you need for that particular moment in time.

Note: There are “afterchats” with cast members after Sunday matinees.

Photo Gallery

Sara Barker (Orlando)	Mario Baldessari (Chorus), Jay Hardee (Chorus), Andrew Ferlo (Chorus), Sara Barker (Orlando)
Sara Barker (Orlando), Mario Baldessari (Queen Elizabeth)	Amanda Forstrom (Sasha), Sara Barker (Orlando)
Mario Baldessari (Chorus); (back, left to right): Jay Hardee (Chorus), Sara Barker (Orlando), Andrew Ferlo (Chorus)

Photos by C Stanley Photography

Design and Production Team

• Director: Amber Jackson
• Set Designer: Steven Royal
• Costume Design: Debra Kim Sivigny
• Lighting Design: Joseph R. Walls
• Sound Design: Veronica J. Lancaster
• Properties Designer: Kevin Laughon
• Dialect Coach: Christine Hirrel
• Dramturg: Jenn Book Hasleswerdt
• Stage Manager: Maggie Clifton
• Assistant Stage Manager: Alika Codispoti
• Movement: Amber Jackson and the cast
• Production Manager: Jonathan A. Weinberg
• Technical Director: Dean Leong
• Master Electrician: Alex F. Keen
• Graphic Design: Dian Holton
• Photography: C. Stanley Photography

Cast

• Orlando: Sara Barker
• Chorus: Mario Baldessari
• Chorus: Andrew Ferlo
• Sasha: Amanda Forstrom
• Chorus: Jay Hardee

Disclaimer: WSC Avant Bard provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Under the confident direction of Tom Prewitt , an animated, thoroughly lively production of Shakespeare’s King John makes a rare presence in the DC area. It is so rare that your reviewer found in an unscientific search only two DC professional productions over the past decade or so; one by Shakespeare Theatre Company and the other by Taffety Punk.

Well, it is about time and kudos to WSC Avant Bard for taking a chance on a play that is lost in the Shakespearean shuffle to plays with more cachet, louder battles, sweeter kisses and more well-known quotations. There are reasons aplenty to see the production.

So how does Prewitt put his own stamp on King John. Elinor of Aquitaine (Cam Magee) gives Prewitt some directions right at the top, “a strange beginning: ‘borrow’d majesty!'” And we are off, into at first a young boy’s comic book-like play fantasy as he finds himself with his family in a 1960’s bomb shelter with President John F. Kennedy speaking of possible nuclear war. Prewitt also takes full benefit of the major female characters that Shakespeare provided in King John adding clear casting choices to further the strong female presence.

But, first, historically, who was King John? He ruled 1199–1216. He was the son of Henry II of England and Elinor of Aquitaine and father of Henry III of England. You may know Henry and Elinor from The Lion in Winter. John was King after the relatively short reign of his brother Richard, the Lion Hearted. It was the period of the Robin Hood legend, the Magna Carta, consequential wars with the French, and when excommunication from the Roman Church was not to be trifled with. And there were some spats about the malleability of family blood relations and illegitimacy of birth.

For the audience, the Shakespearean world steps lively into view; first with the pop and pow of a comic book’s panels in Act I directly back into the early 13th century as the young boy plays with his castle toy and little plastic people. Then effortlessly the play is no longer a boy’s fantasy, but we are in the dankness of a Middle Ages castle and off we go. Act I is an arch, loud, roaring presentation. After the intermission, the production turns inward as a sobering, tense psychological trip.

King John covers war that rages between the not yet solidified nation-states of England and France, internal English rebellions fester, and heated kinship politics about lineage are front and center. There is plenty of murder and mayhem. Could anyone keep their sanity? Could anyone survive by remaining consistently allied with one faction or another? How far might someone go to maintain his royal throne?

Many in the Avant Bard cast are veterans with backgrounds in Shakespeare. They seem comfortable as close to the audience as they are in the 85 seat Theatre on the Run in Shirlington.

Ian Armstrong’s King John has channeled his inner-Richard Nixon. A decisive presence and man of action at the start, by Act II, he has darken his outlook shrinking his appearance and demeanor with a day-old stubble. He is a character who at first is smart and wily, crafty and devious: one who can argue any point needed, like a skilled debater. Then over time he changes. His eyes dart about nervously. He becomes tentative and unsure. Armstrong personifies losing one’s grip with slumped shoulders sitting in a lawn chair throne.

Cam Magee as Elinor gives a strong, straight forward reading even in her whispers. She is one conniver for the ones she favors, at any moment. When she traded insults and invective with others, she gets right to the point, no quibbler is she; no prissy way of life for her. Charlotte Akin is cast as French royalty, the Prewitt created role of Felipe. In the Shakespeare text the role is a male, King Philip. No matter, Akin is one of authority with searing eyes and pursed lips, ready to pounce.

Chris Henley as Cardinal Pandulph knocked your reviewer socks askew with his ability to stand still and point a long, bony finger into someone’s chest as a verbal and physical weapon. His gaunt face and lean frame covered with a priest’s black cassock and hat made him just plain riveting. He could say anything; it would sound consequential. Bruce Alan Rauscher as Richard Plantagenet, the narrator for the play’s arc, is the legitimated illegitimate royal son of Henry II. At first Rauscher seems to play for laughs as he faces the audience and even sits in an aisle. But, come Act II he is a changed man, his bold slyness and calculation fit.

Slick Hicks take on two roles, that of Hubert, one of John’s close men, and also the leader of a French town not yet decided who to support in the ongoing English-French war. This small man just grows larger in stature in both roles. He imbues struggles to save his town, or not kill someone as King John has asked him to do. He is not actorly; he is genuine. He plays “incredulous” just spot-on, behind thick black rimmed glasses, as an “everyman,” trying to stay alive, using his wits.

Anne Nottage deserved notice for her Constance, daughter-in-law of Elinor and mother of Arthur, perhaps an heir to the throne. She can trade heated words with anyone; insults just don’t knick her. She does not back down. Her deep-set, dark eyes, full face and physical stature become the essence of a fighter. She is one furious woman in Act I holding more than her own in arguing over things not going her way. Then, in the opening Act II as she falls apart before our eyes, over the loss of her son, she goes quite mad “Grief fills the room up of my absent child.”

One other to watch is Sun King Davis, a dominant force, at least when he is all himself. (spoiler alert, to say no more).

And let us praise Ethan Ocasio (The Child). A Northern Virginia fifth-grader, he is more than an add-on, without lines or significance. At the curtain he has travelled his own road in his fantasy to become a real Prince. He nails his lines with competence and feelings.

The set (Joseph Musumeci) is well-accomplished built of floor to ceiling faux stone work and various entryways and stairs. The lighting (Joseph R. Walls) is often shadowy black and white. Color has been drained. There is one particular prop by Chelsea Mayo that is quite a delight; you will see for yourself when time comes. There are several close quarter battle scenes including one in slow motion with prop weapons as young boys conjure them from make-shift found items.

No need to “gild refined gold, to paint the lily” as Shakespeare wrote. See this King John not just to chalk up to your list of Shakespearean plays but because it is good. See for yourself. You will be well rewarded.

Note: There is “Who’s Who in King John” material provided at the door. A good quick summary read before the play begins.

Photo Gallery

Ian Armstrong (King John) and Slice Hicks (Hubert)	William Hayes (Lewis, the Dauphin), Chuck Young (Chatillion), Charlotte Akin (Queen Felipe of France), and Sun King Davis (Austria)
Bruce Alan Rauscher (Richard Plantagenet, the Bastard)	Cam Magee (Elinor), Bruce Alan Rauscher (Richard Plantagenet, the Bastard), Ian Armstrong (King John), Charlotte Akin (Queen Felipe of France) and Connor J. Hogan (Arthur)
(Foreground, L to R) Rebecca Swislow (Blanche), William Hayes (Lewis, the Dauphin), Anne Nottage (Constance); (middle) Charlotte Akin (Queen Felipe of France) and Ian Armstrong (King John); (background) Connor J. Hogan (Arthur), Kim Curtis (Essex), Sun King Davis (Austria) and Christopher Henley (Cardinal Pandulph)	Ian Armstrong (King John)

Photos by Christopher Maddaloni

Disclaimer: WSC Avant Bard provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

• Six Characters in Search of an Author, November – December 2012 Schedule
• Martina and the Birdmen, March 2013
• The Silence Between the Waves, March 2013
• Caesar and Dada, May – July 2013
• The White Devil, May – July 2013

Schedule is subject to change due to performance rights conflicts or other issues.

WSC Avant Bard’s production of Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime is a fun trip, albeit one that I am not quite sure I completely understood. Shepard’s jive is a futuristic turf war of gun-slinging rock stars in fast cars. In this mash-up of a dystopia, the top dog, Hoss, feels threatened as a new guy, Crow, begins to infringe. Hoss consults a star-gazer and a DJ about his future as head honcho in Act One. Act Two is all about the “sing off” showdown between Hoss and Crow.

The ensemble is strong. Each member of the cast does a fine job of articulating meaning in Shepard’s tricky text. While I was often unsure of the literal meaning of the playwright’s words, I was never unsure of the character’s intent. Their efforts are to be commended in dealing with this kooky script. Special recognition ought to go to Graham Pilato, who, for a large portion of the play, takes on the task of playing a decapitated backup dancer, his head held on with a scarf. This was, in a word, hilarious–so much so that it did border on distracting, but I didn’t mind.

Kathleen Akerley’s direction was straightforward in terms of concept. In a play this complex, a straightforward approach feels necessary. The runway-style staging was a nice addition, and it is apparent that a great deal of time was spent with the language of the play. The ideas come through very strongly, and there are a few great surprise moments in there as well. There is an air of detachment between audience and actors that I am not sure was intentional, but for me, it worked.

Set Designer Jessica Moretti creates a bang-up landscape. The show is semi-in-the-round; audience flanks both long sides of a central platform with spaces on each short end. The simplicity of the bare platform (with a cool surprise I’ll remain mum on) combines well with beat-up road signs and a guitar-inspired throne on either side. Lynly A. Saunders’ costumes are well-balanced between cowboy and rock’n’roller, tinged with a futuristic sensibility. Crow’s flamboyantly “pop” costume serves as a nice contrast to the rest of the old-schoolers, who tend more toward a rock/punk/western feel. The music and sound design are well-executed. The rock music has the simultaneous feeling of a honky-tonk and a poetry jam. The lighting design (Jason Aufdem-Brinke) transitions cleanly. Often, I didn’t even notice a scene change. This was the design’s primary strength.

This production of The Tooth of Crime reminded me of watching Troilus and Cressida half-translated into Spanish: I get the overall concepts, the gist of the plot, and the character’s intentions, but I do not catch every single line. I enjoyed allowing WSC’s production wash over me in order to organically absorb it. It is an experiential piece, with fun music and necessary flash.

Director’s Note

There’s so much I’d like to tell you. I’d like to tell you about how Sam Shepard generated two versions of this play ten years apart—versions so radically different that characters are renamed and have entirely new motivations–and to ruminate on what was gained and lost in the re-write. Or about the dramaturgical hoops we jumped through for the first three weeks: my cast will groan and roll their eyes if I talk about the back story and world we had to create to make consistent sense of every one of Shepard’s lines and dramatic inventions, inasmuch as this involved a laborious description of how my index finger represented Music, my middle finger represented Driving (no coincidence that!), my third finger represented Air Waves (the Four Keepers and haunted by bloodthirsty Kelpies–none of which we ever get to meet), as well as a model of temporal anomalies that would be the envy of any Star Trek: TNG writer (the action of the play is in 1977, except in the cities where it’s the later 1980s, while the cars race along desolate roads in 2012–and one of the characters has been alive since 1850).

Whether you would ever be able to tell in watching this show that we decided the inciting action of Shepard’s world was the 1969 release of Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand” is really gravy–anyone who produces this play has a lot to solve, thanks to Shepard’s fantastic juxtaposition of Mad Max/Western/Rock Opera imagination and merciful paucity of exposition, and thus has to let go of the need to underline all their solutions. Here’s the one that’s most important to me:

Neil Young would never win American Idol. “Cowgirl in the Sand” would get no radio play today. The option exists with The Tooth of Crime to lean on the themes of natural and cyclical order, to highlight how one showman becomes obsolete and another takes his place, even to say that the waning artist brings on his own demise by having trucked in the first place in style and trends: live by the music video, die by the music video. But for me the play is about how artistry and soul have been replaced by showmanship and appearance–not just some tired plaint that “they don’t write songs like they used to” but more importantly that the value we placed on ragged voice telling a necessary musical truth has been lost in favor of which “singer” makes the most marketable product. As we watch Hoss and Crow battle one another, it seems to me worth asking which of them would still choose to sing–would need to sing, would exist in singing–were he alone on his porch meditating on the wide wasteland.

–Kathleen Akerley, Director

Photo Gallery

John Tweel	John Tweel
Tom Carman (Foreground)	Tom Carman
William Hayes, Tom Carman	Tom Carman, William Hayes, Cyle Durkee
John Tweel, Tom Carman	John Tweel

Photos by C. Stanley Photography

Cast

• Crow: Tom Carman
• Jakob the Jeweler, Keyboard: Mickey Daniel DaGuiso
• Ruido Ran: Cyle Durkee
• Doc, Drums: Vince Eisenson
• Chaser, Guitar: William Hayes
• Becky, Vocals: Jennifer J. Hopkins
• Referee: Sam McMenamin
• Meera: Graham Pilato
• Hoss, Lead Vocals: John Tweel

Artistic Team

• Director: Kathleen Akerley
• Assistant Director: Sarah Barker
• Scenic Designer: Jessica Moretti
• Lighting Designer: Jason Aufdem-Brinke
• Costumer Designer: Lynly A. Saunders
• Sound Designer/Musical Director: Neil McFadden
• Assistant Musical Director: Tom Carman
• Incidental Music Composition: Tom Carman, Neil McFadden, William Hayes
• Choreographer: Melissa-Leigh Bustamante
• Props Designer: Kristen Pilgrim
• Stage Manager: Jay Chiang
• Assistant Stage Manager: Rachel Holland

Disclaimer: WSC Avant Bard provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods–They kill us for their sport.” Gloucester’s line from King Lear could well serve as an epigraph for Euripides’ The Bacchae, as Dionysus, a wanton boy of a god if ever there was, vengefully kills his cousin Pentheus in a way he finds highly entertaining. The play insists on the triumph of irrationality and violence over reason and order.

The ruling family of Thebes incurs Dionysus’ wrath by denying his divine parentage. An androgynous–not to say polymorphously perverse–man-god, Dionysus (Jeremy Pace) begins his revenge by touching the local population with riotous, out-of-control sexuality, including wild women who take to the hills where they lead insane, bestial lives. In the Dionysian world, irrationality reigns supreme, especially among women, and the primal fear of unbridled female sexuality as a threat to male-ordered society is a deep thread throughout the play.

For the chorus, entwined with him and one another, Dionysus is a leader of debauched revels. For those who cross him, he is an implacable, irresistible, and utterly merciless foe. Pace plays the god with sinuous sensuality, complete with tats and piercings, coolly exercising his power with complete, smug confidence. He is a bit too cool at times to fully convey the awe and terror a god inspires, getting his way through seductiveness and manipulation more than through divine force of will.

Dionysus’ primary foil is his cousin Pentheus (Elliot Kashner), King of Thebes, who insists on rationality and the rule of human law to the point of attempting to ban the cult of Dionysus. Bad career move. The god lures him into the woods, where he is torn to pieces by the crazed crowd of women.

Pentheus’ downfall results from his inability to understand the awesome power of irrationality and the impotence of mere men in the face of divine majesty. Kashner plays Pentheus in a stiff, somewhat callow way, emphasizing his unthinking arrogance while giving insufficient emphasis to the case he has to make for reason and order.

No disrespect to Pace or Kashner, but the chorus is the star of this production. Any Greek chorus comments on the actions of the principals and enacts the emotions of the people of the city to the play’s events. This production’s chorus goes further, singing their lines to Mariano Vales’ original songs and dancing to Aysha Upchurch’s active and arresting choreography, by turns sexually alluring and threatening. The singing and movement aptly convey the feeling and meaning of each moment, and the show avoids the potential pitfall of becoming Dionysus: The Musical.

The chorus is literally the central element of the Director Steven Scott Mazzloa’s well-conceived production, The main set unit is a long, low, relatively narrow rectangular platform, placed between two parallel banks of seats. For the most part, the chorus occupies the platform, reacting vividly to the words and actions of the named characters, who are typically blocked at one end or the other of the rectangle or circle its periphery. A particularly nice touch is the use of several chorus members as musicians to accompany the singing. The musicians are themselves singers and actors who blend into the chorus on occasions when they are not playing their instruments. At times, the chorus provides the percussion beat by slapping their bodies or the stage.

In typical Greek tragedy fashion, the most violent action happens off stage, and it is left to messengers to bring the terrible news to those affected by it. Frank Britton provides an ominous description the conduct of the women in the wild, and Jim Jorgensen does a particularly expressive job of telling the terrible tale of Pentheus’ death to Pentheus’ grandfather, Cadmus (Theodore M. Snead), who accepts the loss and the destruction of his family with sorrowful dignity. The most tragic figure is that of Agave, Pentheus’ mother (MiRan Powell). Maddened by the god, she has led the mob that tore her son asunder. When she regains her reason and understands what she has done, she is inconsolable with grief and guilt as she goes into exile. Powell is riveting as she copes with the consequences of her actions.

The chorus costumes are mostly subdued earth tones. Pentheus wears a black uniform, except when Dionysus gets him to dress in what the script refers as female garb, but which looks more like something from a colorful toga party. Dionysus himself ends the show in a white suit, natty but scarcely godlike. There is a strong prop moment near the end of the show, when Dionysus speaks, with amplified power this time, in the guise of a large god mask, the pieces of which are operated by several chorus members. The pre- and post-show soundscapes were a combination of water and urban sounds, the relationship of which to the remainder of the show was unclear (though seeming to bear a closer relationship to the program cover showing a suited man in a Metro tunnel).

What makes this play difficult for a modern audience, I think, is that its outcome has little to do with any concept of justice we would recognize, or even with the idea that “character is fate.” The notion that terrifying consequences attend disobedience to mysterious and capricious powers that rule the universe might well have seemed less strange to an audience of Euripidies’ day. Nicholas Rudall, the translator of the very fluid and accessible version of the play chosen for this production, has commented that, at the time of the play’s writing, “Athens is dying. It is the end of the Peloponnesian War. Rational democratic government has failed….[In portraying] the inadequacy of rational human government in the face of the ecstatic Irrationality of Dionysus…,the play is about the inadequacy of human response to the incomprehensible. It is about the necessity of submission and the futility of resistance to divine power. It is finally, and perhaps prophetically, about the imminence of destruction.” Given the history of the last 100 years, a classical play about the power and destructiveness of irrationality may not be so far removed from our reality as we would like to believe.

I had the opportunity to see the production in previews last Sunday (it opened officially Monday night). The show ran smoothly, and I expect it will be in top-notch form when it begins its full run on May 19th.

Photo Gallery

Jeremy¨›Pace	Frank Britton, Elliott Kashner
Frank Britton	Jase Parker, Jon Jon Johnson, JR Russ, James Finley
Jim Jorgensen	Jim Jorgensen Behind: The Bacchae Chorus
MiRan Powell, James Finley, JR Russ	Theodore Snead and MiRan Powell

Photos by Kristina Sherk

Cast

• Chorus:
• Anna Brungardt
• James Finley
• Kari Ginsburg
• Chistin Green
• Behzad Habibzai
• Heather Haney
• Jon Jon Johnson
• Jase Parker
• JR Russ
• Mundy Spears
• Dionysus: Jeremy Pace
• Teiresias: Manolo Santalla
• Cadmus: Theodore M. Snead
• Pentheus: Elliott Kashner
• A Herdsman: Frank Britton
• A Slave: Jim Jorgensen
• Agave: MiRan Powell

Production Staff

• Director: Steven Scott Mazzola
• Original Composition: Mariano Vales
• Choreographer: Aysha Upchurch
• Scenic Designer: Jessica Moretti
• Lighting Designer: Jason Aufdem-Brinke
• Costume Designer: Melanie Clark
• Sound Designer: David Crandall
• Musical Director: Mariano Vales
• Godhead Puppet Designers: Betsy Rosen, Eric Brooks
• Props Designer: Kristen Pilgrim
• Dramaturg: Alan Jay Katz
• Stage Manager: Maggie Clifton
• Assistant Stage Manager: Autumn Boyle
• Technical Director/Master Carpenter: Jason Krznarich
• Master Electrician: Alex F. Keen
• Scenic Artist: Betsy Muller
• Assistant Technical Director: Nate Kurtz
• Electricians: Sarah Mackowski, Alexander Henry, Cathryn Salisbury-Valerien, Molly Scrivens, Jonathan Hudspeth, Amanda Demczuk
• Director/Editor ‘Behind the Scenes’: Keegan Cassady

Disclaimer: WSC Avant Bard provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

In one of his poems, Bertolt Brecht said it in one sentence: “We who would lay the foundations of kindness could not ourselves be kind.” Brecht was Communist, the darling of East Germany’s fundamentalist Stalinist regime. As an opportunistic supporter and pampered beneficiary of totalitarianism, Brecht didn’t need to bother with ambiguity or ambivalence. The solutions to all of humanity’s problems were right there in black and white. Lenin had settled any questions that Marx — who never actually experienced “real socialism” — had left unanswered.

One strident sentence like Brecht’s, however, was not enough for the French ex-Communist Albert Camus. He had been expelled from The Party because of his inability to refrain from questioning unquestionable Marxist/Leninist dogmas. He irritated the infallible dogmatists of his day. In his 1949 play Les Justes Camus portrays fanatical revolutionaries — bomb-throwing terrorists. Les Justes (the justified ones) is based on a real incident. In 1905 a group of Russian socialist revolutionaries assassinated the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, governor of Moscow and the Tzar’s uncle.

The current WSC Avant Bard production of Les Justes condenses Camus’ five acts into one. The play consists largely of self-justification and rationalization along the lines presented in Brecht’s highly condensed poem. Translator adapter Rahaleh Nassri and director Jay Hardee make clear that Camus’ characters’ extreme unkindness is intended to lay the foundations for kindness, justice, equality, love, happiness and every sort of wellbeing. These blessings were to be delivered in some distant utopian future. The vehemence of the repetitious declarations of good intentions are convincing only in one sense. They convince the audience that these five characters are desperately trying to convince themselves that the end (utopia) justifies the means (bombs.)

A simple complication injects a bit of anti-dogma. The designated bomb-thrower, Yanek, lets the archduke’s car go by unharmed because sitting on either side of the intended victim are his niece and his nephew. Yanek is all for terrorism if the victim is a notorious autocrat. But children? Murdering children is too much for Yanek. However, he’ll get a second chance at being a slow-motion suicide bomber. (It is a given that terrorist will be caught in the act and eventually hanged.)

Yanek’s reluctance to kill children gives the loathsome Stepan a chance to make derogatory remarks about the failed assassin’s fear and bourgeois scruples and squeamishness. Revolutionary solidarity with a fellow radical is not part of Stepan’s strategy for smashing the state. Stepan is actually Camus’ invention. No such character was part of the grand duke assassination plot. Stepan is apparently a stand-in for Lenin. Like Lenin, he escaped from prison and fled to Switzerland and then snuck back into Russia. Like Lenin, he is one of those guys who is all for killing, but doesn’t kill. He is a proponent of deadly violence, but he is a survivor. He admits he hates people, but he claims to love humanity.

Yanek’s second attempt at heroic terrorism is successful (this time the grand duke was not accompanied by children.) Yanek quickly finds himself in jail, eager for his impending illustrious death.

At that point strident rhetoric gives way to far more subtle dialogue. As a secret police agent, Graham Pilato uses the full register of persuasive speech, ranging from implied threats to intimations of deliverance. His tone slides from caressing to ironic and back. In fact he even gives Yanek (played by James T. Majewski) a few caresses on his rigid back. If only Yanek will denounce terrorism and plead for forgiveness, things might go well for him. Then along comes forgiveness itself in the form of the grand duke’s wife, played with restrained hysteria by Karen Novack. The half-mad duchess finds succor in religion, and she urges Yanek to follow her edifying example. Yanek, who speaks mostly in manifestoes, is offended by the prospect of anything but a martyrdom that will somehow further the revolutionary cause.

A bit of ghoulish comic relief is provided by Brian Crane as a just plain murderous murderer, no ideological justification required. As he mops up Yanek’s cell, this character lets it be known that he is the prison’s executioner: a year off his sentence for every hanging he performs.

And love interest? Not much.

Nora Achrati plays Dora, the revolutionaries’ designated bomb-maker. One of her artifacts apparently killed her former lover, who somehow handled it improperly. Like Yanek, Dora speaks mostly in vehement manifestoes. But Achrati makes it clear that she finds Yanek attractive. And the sometimes flighty Yanek reciprocates in his straitlaced puritanical way. Once Yanek is dead, Stepan, played with a wide streak of viciousness by John Stange, admits that he was jealous of Yanek — presumably because of Dora’s fondness for him and also because, at least as nostalgia, Yanek could express joie de vivre.

Underscoring the plotters’ moral/political poverty are costumes by Jen Bevan and a setting by David C. Ghatan. Everything is either black or white. When Pilato (playing the policeman) comes in wearing gray and speaking in modulated tones, suddenly the ethical landscape broadens. The duchess and the executioner wear red, offering intimations of blood — staining the sterile world of abstract political theory and heartless tactics. The walls of Ghatan’s scenery slide forward and back, suitable for either a cramped prison cell or a large, barren, unfurnished subversives’ safe house.

The WSC Les Justes gives some timely insight into the psychology of terror and suicide bombing. Les Justes is far less subtle and probing, however, than Dostoevsky’s 1872 story “The Possessed” or the “Grand Inquisitor” chapter of his “Brothers Karamazov.” As one who barely escaped being hanged for subversion, and who then did hard time in prison, Dostoevsky was an expert when it came to the sorrows of fanaticism.

Les Justes doesn’t touch at all on one of the mundane motives for terrorism — ambition. Lenin, a virtuoso of ambition, allegedly told his daughter that, although he was an accomplished pianist, he could not allow himself to play Beethoven’s sonatas. If he were to do so, he would be tempted to believe that a society that could produce anything so wonderful and perfect couldn’t be all that bad. Such a sentiment might undermine the revolutionary ambition of a tyrant-in-waiting.

A Note From the Director

When I first read Rahaleh Nassri’s excellent adaptation of Albert Camus’ Les Justes I knew I wanted to direct it because I was struck by just how much I would love to play any of the roles. Each character is so tantalizing, richly rendered in a blend of vivid color, even if their worldview is starkly black and white. Each, at one point or another, surprised me as they revealed all the contradictions and complexities that make them human. In turns, I empathized with, feared, loved and reviled each of the nine speaking characters in this play. I am thrilled to get to tell their stories. I want to thank Rahaleh for entrusting them with me.

-Hay Hardee

Photo Gallery

Nora Achrati (Left); James T. Majewski	James T. Majewski
Nora Achrati (Front); John Stange (Back)	Nora Achrati (Front); John Stange (Back)
Nora Achrati; John Stange	James T. Majewski

Photos by C. Stanley Photography

Cast

• Annenkov: Frank Britton
• Dora: Nora Achrati
• Stepan: John Stange
• Voinov: Theo Hadjimichael
• Yanek: James T. Majewski
• Doorman/Guard: Josh Speerstra
• Foka: Brian Crane
• Skuratov: Graham Pilato
• Grand Duchess: Karen Novack

Designers

• Scenic Designer: David C. Ghatan
• Lighting Designer: David C. Ghatan
• Costume Designer: Jen Bevan
• Sound Designer: David Crandall
• Properties Designer: Lynn Sharp Spears
• Stage Manager: Maggie Clifton
• Assistant Stage Manager: Lisa K. Blythe
• Director: Jay Hardee

Disclaimer: WSC Avant Bard provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

• Happy Days, August – September 2011
• The Mistorical Hystery of Henry I(V), November – December 2011
• Les Justes, February – March 2012
• The Tooth of Crime, May – July 2012
• The Bacchae, May – July 2012

Performances will take place at the Black Box Theater, in Arlington County’s Artisphere in Rosslyn. Schedule is subject to change due to performance rights conflicts or other issues.