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D.C.’s theater scene roared back to life in 2022

Understudies emerge as heroes amid ongoing COVID struggles

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‘Flight’ at Studio Theatre. (Photo by Mihaila Bodlovic)

The first thing I saw in 2022 seemed crafted with the pandemic in mind. After a long closure, Studio Theatre reopened in January with “Flight,” the story young Kabir who along with his older brother Aryan whose arduous journey takes them from their battered homeland Afghanistan in search of a future in the U.K. 

Using dioramas, tiny modeled figures, voiceovers, and individual peep-show style booths for audience seating, Vox Matus (an innovative Glasgow-based theater company) created something unique and marvelous. The riveting hybrid theater/installation premiered at Edinburgh Festival in 2017. 

“Flight” remains a favorite. Here’s a sampling of other highlights from the year’s big theatrical output. 

In April, New York-based playwright Morgan Gould spent time at Round House workshopping her new play “Jennifer, Who Is Leaving,” a witty dark comedy about women caregivers. The play was inspired by Gould’s late gay grandfather Joey and his time spent at a nursing home where his catty sense of humor took a wild turn. Round House plans to present the work as a fully staged production in the spring. So far, local Helen Hayes Award winners Kimberly Gilbert and Nancy Robinette are on board as cast members. Gould will direct. 

Woolly Mammoth’s 2022 spring offering “There’s Always the Hudson,” starred out actor Justin Weaks opposite Paola Lázaro (also the work’s author) as best friends who make a pact to off themselves after settling scores against those who sexually abused them. It was a bold production, courageously acted and unafraid to unabashedly go for both laughs and some heartbreaking moments. 

As the title character of “Hamilton” in the national tour of the Broadway musical (moored to the Kennedy Center Opera House from August through October), handsome Jean Pierre Gonzalez approached the Founding Father with a serious intent on stage and off. 

In a Blade interview, the Bronx-born gay Latinx actor spoke to the enormity of the job: “It’s a powerful thing. We all learned history in school. We know who’s who when we look at a textbook; but when people who look like you are telling the story, it shifts.” 

Gay Latinx actor Pierre Jean Gonzalez. (Photo by Ambe J. Photography)

In late summer, National Theatre hosted the tour of “Six” which, for me, proved an unexpected treat. Half rock concert/half Broadway musical, the British-born show, tells the story of Henry VIII’s wives from the mostly doomed women’s perspectives. Fast-moving, energetic, and smart, the show filled the stage with an uber-talented cast of women, and with its flashy staging and smart book, the production easily captured the imagination of Tudor history buffs and Vegas show aficionados alike. 

At the beginning of 2022, masks and proof of vaccination were required at most venues. That’s different now, but the relaxing of health and safety protocols hasn’t happened uniformly. Some theaters, including the Kennedy Center and the National, became mask optional in the fall. The Shakespeare Theatre Company and Signature Theatre currently schedule performances with masks required and others with masks recommended, while Arena Stage, and a few others – last I checked – still require masks. It’s wise to check venue websites when making plans. 

Throughout year, performances were still disrupted by the pandemic, and in many cases, understudies emerged as real heroes. At a moment’s notice, they were asked to go on when principal actors were sent home with a positive COVID test. Without stand-ins shows wouldn’t have happened. 

As an understudy with the “Dear Evan Hansen” road show that played at the Kennedy Center in September, 19-year-old out actor Pierce Wheeler saved the day more than once. While touring, he was unexpectedly called on to cover for both Evan and supporting character Jared Kleinman.

At Mosaic Theatre in November, Antonio Michael Woodard shone as the title character in “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” the first part of playwright Ifa Bayeza’s “The Till Trilogy.” Playing the Black youth over the last two weeks of his life, Woodard nailed the 14-year-old’s exuberance, sensitivity, and frustrations. Out actors Jaysen Wright and Vaughn Ryan Midder gave terrific supporting performances as both Till’s buddies and the vicious men who murdered him for supposedly whistling at a white woman.

In November, Arena Stage presented “My Body No Choice,” a collection of riveting monologues – fiction and nonfiction – written by eight notable female writers expressly for female actors. Brilliantly helmed by Arena Stage’s outgoing artistic director Molly Smith, the impeccably staged work was a direct response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June. On receipt of the devastating decision, Smith set to work creating a theater piece that would provide a forum for women to share reactions to a decision that sets them back 50 years. And we thank her. 

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Theater

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with one of these three plays

‘Waitress,’ ‘Love Birds,’ ‘Fuenteovejuna’ offer differing takes on love

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MALINDA plays Jenna in ‘Waitress’ at Olney Theatre Center.

For theatergoers seeking to mark Valentine’s Day with live music, love, and friendship, the DMV offers some new spins on traditional themes. 

Poised to make its regional debut at Olney Theatre Center, Sara Bareilles’s hit musical “Waitress” (Feb.13-March 30) may not seem like a usual love story, but it’s a love story nonetheless. 

“It’s about learning to love and value yourself,” says MALINDA who plays Jenna, the show’s titular server/baker with aspirations to bake prize-winning pies and change her life. “It’s also about sisterhood. From the start, the women involved in the show decided to be there for each other onstage and off, and it shows. For anyone with girl group love in their lives, this is an especially good show to see.

“Jenna doesn’t get a lot of satisfaction out of her primary partnership. Along with self-love she explores the antithesis of that — partner violence. Our director [Marcia Milgrom Dodge] took the lesson of community support and community love to heart.”

Prior to coming out as bisexual in 2022, MALINDA considered herself more of a “quiet queer.” However, the inspiration derived from Irish music (“music of the oppressed”), which she’s famed for singing on TikTok, compelled her to go public. 

She didn’t always believe her queerness to be special: “For me,” MALINDA says, “it was like saying my eyes are hazel. There wasn’t much to celebrate. But then I realized there were missing voices in my community. Felt like the right thing to do, and it’s been one of the great blessings of my life.”

Six years ago, after her Helen Hayes Award-winning turn in “Once,” MALINDA took a break from musical theater. She needed time to age into dream parts, and one of those roles was Jenna. She recalls, “Going back to theater was prominently featured on my vision board, so when Marcia asked me to commit to ‘Waitress,’ I happily agreed.” 

For her, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to reach out and tell friends, family, and, of course, romantic partners, just how much you love them. 

And she adds “that’s exactly how I plan to celebrate.” 

D.C.’s delightful Holly Twyford is spending Valentine’s Day working at the Folger on Capitol Hill. She’ll be on stage, her wife will be in the audience, and depending on the length of the program, they’ll go out to dinner afterward.

For four performances, the multi-Helen Hayes award-winning actor is serving as narrator for “The Love Birds” (Feb. 14-16), a new Folger Consort work that blends medieval music with a world-premiere composition by acclaimed composer Juri Seo and readings from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “A Parlement of Foules” by Twyford. 

Standing behind a podium, she’ll read Chaucer’s words (translated from Middle English and backed by projected slides in the original language), alternating with music played on old and new instruments.  

“The new music is kind of dissonant with the sounds of birdcalls and nature sounds, painting a picture of what’s going on in Chaucer’s poem that’s beautiful and funny. Chaucer describes the male eagles pleading for the hand of the female eagle. Chaucer seems almost unwittingly feminist when he has the female eagle ask her eagle suitors to give her a year to think about it.”

GALA Hispanic Theatre in Columbia Heights presents “Fuenteovejuna” (through March 2), a timely production staged by out director José Luis Arelleno. Penned in 1613, this work from the Spanish Golden Age ranks among playwright Lope de Vega’s most performed plays.

It’s about tyranny and love, Arellano explains. Within Lope de Vega’s timely tale of brutish power lies an intense love story. In fact, at the top of the show, four characters, two males and two females play a game. What is love? One of the players asserts that love doesn’t exist, while the others disagree. It’s a charming way to kick off the play.

The celebrated director isn’t one to telegraph messages, preferring audiences think for themselves. That said, he does, of course, make strong directorial choices: “If I have to choose between love or war, it’s more important to talk about love. For me, it’s a revolution.” 

And apropos of a Valentine’s Day date, GALA’s production of “Fuenteovejuna” (performed in Spanish with English surtitles) is imbued with live music and verse, an important part of any romantic experience, adds David Peralto, the production’s poetry and verse consultant as well as Arellano’s longtime partner. 

The busy Spain-based couple will celebrate Valentine’s Day in Seville and couldn’t be happier. Arellano describes Seville as the most romantic city in the world.

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Theater

Broadway vet Ashley Blanchet tackles ‘Bedwetter’ at Arena

Sarah Silverman memoir a funny, poignant story of struggling with depression

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Ashley Blanchet as Miss New Hampshire in ‘The Bedwetter.’ (Photo courtesy Blanchet)

‘The Bedwetter’
Feb. 4-March 16
Arena Stage
1101 6th St., S.W.
$69-$119
Arenastage.org

Skilled and experienced at comedy and drama, Broadway vet Ashley Blanchet says there’s a big difference between the two. She explains, “Comedy is right or wrong, you nail it or you don’t; whereas with drama there’s room for subjectivity. Because I started out as a dancer, being able to hit the mark makes a lot of sense to me. There’s a lot of rhythm to comedy.”

Currently Blanchet is eliciting laughs as Miss New Hampshire in “The Bedwetter” at Arena Stage. A musical based on comedian Sarah Silverman’s bestselling memoir, it’s the funny yet poignant story of a hairy 10-year-old girl’s struggle with clinical depression and bedwetting.

Blanchet’s Miss New Hampshire is a kind of fairy godmother character.  

“Most of the time I’m in Sarah’s head. She first sees me on TV in Miss America, and soon I start talking to her.” 

By the end of the piece, Sarah learns that Miss New Hampshire is also a bedwetter. Subsequently, the future comedian turns her weaknesses into strengths, taking her depression and bedwetting and using it to fuel her creativity and eventual career.

This isn’t Blanchet’s first time as Miss New Hampshire. She initially auditioned in 2019 and eventually created the role off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company in 2022. 

She recalls going into the audition mostly cold. Only knowing that Miss New Hampshire is a pageant girl who unwittingly says some funny things, she partly fashioned her on Kristin Chenoweth’s ditzy Glinda in “Wicked.” 

“Sarah [Silverman] and the show’s director Anne Kauffman, were laughing. I thought they were just being polite. Turns out, they really liked what I did.” 

Although Blanchet, 37, doesn’t claim a personal connection to bedwetting, she can relate to the depression described in the show. Like Sarah, she had a difficult time transitioning into her teenage years. In fact, she credits theater with saving her life.

At 14, Blanchet left home to attend Walnut Hill School, a private performing arts high school in Massachusetts. From there, she moved on to University of Michigan, a great preparatory place for theater, she says. After graduating with a BFA, she went straight to New York where she made her Broadway debut as part of the ensemble in “Memphis.” Soon she began progressing to parts with words and songs.

Because so many musicals thematically touch on being different, Blanchet says bisexuality helps in her work. 

“I’ve always felt a little bit of an outsider, so the concept of acceptance and learning to love yourself found in ‘The Bedwetter’ is something I can relate to from both a queer perspective and from being Black. As I get older, I’m increasingly grateful to be who I am.” 

Going into college, Blanchet assumed she was straight, but after becoming exceptionally fond of a female friend, growing excited whenever they made plans to hang out, it became clear to her that her feelings were romantic. They were together for three years. 

“Being bisexual, there wasn’t like a community waiting for me despite there being many bi people. I didn’t have what my gay guy friends seemed to find. For me, sexual attraction is more about energy than body parts. Coming to own that and be proud of it was a journey and is relatable to different situations including acting.” 

Blanchet has played Elsa in “Frozen” on Broadway. She was the also the first Black actor to play the title role in “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” at Paper Mill Playhouse, a well-known regional theater in New Jersey. And Blanchet very happily led the cast as Maria in “The Sound of Music,” also at Paper Mill. 

“These are parts that I never knew I’d do it. That’s kind of what it’s like to be Black in this business,” she says. 

Scheduled to be in D.C. at Arena this winter, “The Bedwetter” cast assumed they’d be in for a wild time no matter how the election played out. They weren’t wrong. Fortunately for Blanchet, she’s immersed in her work and comfortably sharing digs with her big, beloved mixed-breed dog Cosmo.  

Returning to the show, a Broadway-bound production, is proving an exciting challenge. “I’m like, ‘what did a I do last time? What made this joke work?’ I can’t remember,” she says laughing. “But it’s always good to return to the show, making tweaks and changes. I’m always trying to do anything I can to improve my performance.” 

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Theater

‘Downstate’ follows plight of four registered sex offenders

What happens after prison when you can’t escape taint of wrongdoing

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Left to right: Stephen Conrad Moore, Richard Ruiz Henry, Kelli Blackwell, Jaysen Wright, and Dan Daily (Photo by DJ Corey) 

‘Downstate’
Through Feb. 16
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$50-$102
Studiotheatre.org

Crime and punishment are up for discussion at Studio Theatre. In Bruce Norris’s challenging work “Downstate,” the provocative playwright explores the circumstances of those who’ve done their time but can’t seem to escape the taint of the wrongdoing. 

Set in a tidy, no-frills group house somewhere south of the Chicago metropolitan area, “Downstate” gives us four disparate housemates with one thing in common: they’re all registered sex offenders. 

Here, the men live. They wear ankle monitors and follow proscribed and increasingly stringent rules about where they can buy groceries and catch buses. What’s more, there’s the serious harassment from belligerent neighbors who are privy to their pasts. 

We’re first introduced to Fred (Dan Daily), a former piano instructor. The snowy haired, avuncular resident who uses a mobility scooter and peppers sentences with “golly gee” and “gosh,” couldn’t seem more harmless. But Fred has a past. 

And today, Fred also has guests. Andy (Tim Getman), a polite, fortyish financial planner, and his wife Em (Emily Kester), a not particularly Zen yoga instructor, who have traveled from Chicago. 

It’s not a social call. Andy has come with a well-thought strategy on how to calmly confront the man who sexually assaulted him on a piano bench when he was 12. Since that day, Andy’s life has been plagued with anxiety and depression; he hopes to put some closure on the past. 

Interruptions ensue. There are calls from the couple’s son at a nearby hotel who’s eagerly awaiting a promised trip to a water park. At the house, other residents mill about, sometimes queuing up to use the modest home’s one bathroom. Soon, Fred’s visitors leave, wholly dissatisfied. 

Each of the ex-convicts’ stories are imbued with denial. Gio (Jaysen Wright) is an angry guy who quotes scripture, works out, and relies on cringy Eddie Haskell manners. Because Gio did time for statutory rape with an underage female he feels less deviant than his housemates Fred; withdrawn Felix (Richard Ruiz Henry), who sexually assaulted his very young daughter; and Diana Ross-adoring, comfortably queer Dee (Stephen Conrad Moore) who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy when he was 37 and after serving 15 years in prison continues to describe their connection as a loving relationship. 

Eventually, Andy returns without his wife and engages with Fred. Emotions run hot. (Here, fight choreographer Robb Hunter’s knowhow goes on full display.)

Playwright Norris, whose other works include “Clybourne Park,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2011), cunningly delves into revenge, guilt, and mercy through both the residents themselves and other characters including visiting probation officer Ivy (Kelli Blackwell) who shows an unyielding toughness with the occasional flash of sympathy, and Effie (Irene Hamiliton), Gio’s lively young co-worker at Staples. 

 “Downstate” moves swiftly and is never dull. The dialogue rings true, and Norris is master of the shifting tone. 

Perceptively helmed by director David Muse, the design team creates the perfect place for this difficult story to unfold. Set designer Alexander Woodward serves up a house with several mostly unseen bedrooms, a dated paneled common area, and smallish galley kitchen, all with furnishings culled mostly from thrift stores and yard sales. There are necessary details like a busy group bulletin board, Gio’s weight bench, and Fred’s keyboard, a scarily broken front window, and an ominous baseball bat leaning near the front door. 

The space is persuasively lit by lighting designer Stacey Derosier, creating different moods, atmospheres, and, most memorably, an early morning light flooding in from the surrounding outside world. 

In his director’s note, Muse writes “I hope this is the kind of play that stays with you after you leave.” In this, he certainly succeeds. 

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