Theater
Gender bending the boards
‘Hair,’ saints in drag, ‘Falsettsos’ and more among season’s wacky offerings
D.C.’s new fall theater season promises to be one of its better in terms of LGBT presence on stage and off. While a lot of local theatrical offerings veer more toward musical and/or cheery material this season, there is undoubtedly a wide range of shows to see. Here’s a sampling of what’s coming up.
In October, famed elderly British drag queen and gay rights activist Bette Bourne is bringing his solo act to the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater for three nights only (Oct. 28 to 30). Bourne’s celebrated “A Life in Three Acts” follows his post-war childhood to his experiences with a Notting Hill drag commune in the 1970s and his seminal role in the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in Britain, as well as his years with the world-famous BLOOLIPS gay theater company.
Other enticing scheduled offerings at the Kennedy Center include the national tour of Broadway’s first great rock musical “Hair” (Oct. 26 to Nov. 21) and the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical “South Pacific” (Dec. 14 to Jan. 16) for a holiday engagement in the Opera House.
There’s a lot to lure Blade readers to Signature Theatre in convenient Shirlington Village this fall. Currently playing is rock musical “Chess” (through Oct. 3), a Cold War love story set against the very intense international chess circuit. Marvelously reworked and staged by the Signature’s gay artistic director Eric Schaeffer, “Chess” features a top notch cast including talented Broadway regulars Jill Paice, Jeremy Kushnier and actor Euan Morton (best known for playing Boy George in “Taboo”).
Other imminent Signature productions include Ken Ludwig’s new comedy “A Fox on the Fairway” (Oct. 12 to Nov. 14). A tribute to the great English farces of the 1930s and ’40s, the madcap romp is set to be directed by John Rando ands stars the very talented (and gay) Holly Twyford. In “Walter Cronkite is Dead” (Oct. 26 to Dec. 19) by gay playwright Joe Calarco, two very different women (played by Helen Hayes-winning favorites Nancy Robinette and Sherri L. Edelen) find themselves sharing a table in an airport. Representing two sides of the culture wars – one red state, the other blue state – they reluctantly open up and ultimately find common ground. Calarco also directs. And in December, Schaeffer directs Broadway vet Florence Lacey as Norma Desmond in Signature’s hotly anticipated take on the musical “Sunset Boulevard” (Dec. 7 to Feb. 13).
The Washington Shakespeare Company (WSC) opens its season with “By Any Other Name: an Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon,” starring gay actor George Takai, best known as Mr. Sulu from “Star Trek.” This fun-filled production includes performances of well-known Shakespearean scenes in both English and Klingon, the language spoken by the fictional warrior race in the sci-fi cult favorite. The special one-night even (Sept. 25) takes place at the Rosslyn Spectrum in Arlington.
After finally leaving its funky warehouse location on Clark Street, WSC is set to christen its new home at Arts Space for Everyone (ASE) in Rosslyn with a futuristic production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” (Oct. 21 to Dec. 12). Tackling the play’s ruthless title hunchback is company veteran Frank Britton, 31.
“When I first heard that WSC was mounting ‘Richard III,’ I set my sights on playing Richard’s ill-fated brother Clarence. I’m a character actor who typically plays supporting roles and I’m fine with that,” says Britton who’s bisexual. “So when [co-directors and life partners Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee] offered me the lead it felt too good to be true. And because there are not a lot of opportunities for African-American actors to play Richard, I’m especially excited and grateful.”
For fall, Factory 449: a Theatre Collective is presenting a world premiere production of Eric Ehn’s “The Saint Plays,” an intriguing six-part work that, according to collective member and the play’s director John Moletress, “takes Roman Catholic saints and smashes them into a contemporary narrative.”
At just a little over a year old, the company — whose name references Warhol’s factory and the date the group was established – is still finding its aesthetic. Like the collective’s successful premier production “4.48 Psychosis,” “The Saint Plays” will incorporate film and video elements. Also like its predecessor, this production isn’t very long — while individual parts run from six to 31 minutes, the entire play clocks in at about two hours.
One segment dealing with one of the more commonly known subjects – Saint Joan — places the Maid of Orleans (played by Zehra Fazal) in an undetermined country wracked by civil war.
“I’m interested in the gender issues surrounding Joan,” says Moletress who’s gay. “When she died her charred naked body was paraded to prove that she was actually a woman and hence had no real power to begin with. For me, it ties in with DADT and how in order to serve some soldiers must hide certain aspects of themselves.
“Typically the church doesn’t like to talk about sexuality and gender,” Moletess says. “Part of what is so great about Ehn’s plays is how they travel through time and address these issues.”
Following on the heels of last season’s success, “Naked Boys Singing,” Ganymede Arts is anchoring its fall arts festival with another musical — William Finn and James Lapine’s “Falsettos” (tonight through Oct. 10). The story of Marvin, a gay New Yorker who grapples with his ex-wife, young son and gravely ill lover Whizzer, “Falsettos” is a musical comedy about life, loss and love.
Sometimes termed an AIDS play, the Tony Award-winning musical is more than that, says Jeffrey Johnson, Ganymede’s gay artistic director who is both staging and playing Marvin in the production.
“This is the story of the universal struggle that draws people close and defines what a family is. Yes, the characters are brought together by someone dying from AIDS, but any other tragedy could have been the catalyst.”
Ganymede’s latest venue is the affectionately named “Noi’s Nook,” an improvised theater located in the back of “Go Mama Go!” a 14th Street corridor gift shop formerly run by the company’s late and great patron Noi Chudnoff. The intimacy of the space and the fact that a lot of Finn’s songs are kept alive by cabaret singers has inspired Johnson to strip away scene changes and focus on the telling of the story.
“Falsettos sticks with Ganymede’s mission of telling the LGBT story,” Johnson says. “It’s not some 42nd Street, hyped up, toe-tapping good time. It’s an entertaining musical about real issues.”
At Woolly Mammoth, Sarah Ruhl’s funny and poignant take on turn-of-the-century hysteria treatments, “In the Next Room or the vibrator play” runs through Oct. 3. Gay actor Sarah Marshall is featured.
Also this fall, the Studio Theatre presents “Superior Donuts” (opening Nov. 10) from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts (“August: Osage County”). The comedy follows the unlikely friendship between a cranky white Chicago shop owner and an ambitious black teenager with a secret. Studio’s talented gay associate producing artistic director Serge Seiden directs.
Shakespeare Theatre Company is kicking off its season with “All’s Well That Ends Well”” (Sept. 7 through Oct. 24) staged by the company’s now legendary gay artistic director Michael Kahn. Set just prior to World War I, the production features Tony Roach as Bertram and Marsha Mason as the Countess of Rossillion. For readers under 40, Mason was a big movie star in the 1970s.
Alexandria’s MetroStage opens its season with the world premiere of “Glimpses of the Moon” (Sept. 8 through Oct. 17), a Jazz Age musical based on an Edith Wharton novel. Helmed by David Marquez, a gay New York-based director/choreographer, the production features a fabulous cast including Natascia Diaz, Lauren Williams and Sam Ludwig.
Next month, Arena Stage inaugurates its superbly renovated waterfront campus with a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic “Oklahoma!” (Oct. 22 through Dec. 26). Arena’s artistic director, Molly Smith, stages a truly diverse cast in the fabled show that defined the modern American musical. The production features local favorite E. Faye Butler as Aunt Eller, and hot gay New York-based actor Nicholas Rodriguez as Curly.
Theater
Round House explores serious issues related to privilege
‘A Jumping-Off Point’ is absorbing, timely, and funny
‘A Jumping-Off Point’
Through May 5
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, Md.
$46-$83
Roundhousetheatre.org
In Inda Craig-Galván’s new play “A Jumping-Off Point,” protagonist Leslie Wallace, a rising Black dramatist, believes strongly in writing about what you know. Clearly, Craig-Galván, a real-life successful Black playwright and television writer, adheres to the same maxim. Whether further details from the play are drawn from her life, is up for speculation.
Absorbing, timely, and often funny, the current Round House Theatre offering explores some serious issues surrounding privilege and who gets to write about what. Nimbly staged and acted by a pitch perfect cast, the play moves swiftly across what feels like familiar territory without being the least bit predictable.
After a tense wait, Leslie (Nikkole Salter) learns she’s been hired to be showrunner and head writer for a new HBO MAX prestige series. What ought to be a heady time for the ambitious young woman quickly goes sour when a white man bearing accusations shows up at her door.
The uninvited visitor is Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a fellow student from Leslie’s graduate playwriting program. The pair were never friends. In fact, he pressed all of her buttons without even trying. She views him as a lazy, advantaged guy destined to fail up, and finds his choosing to dramatize the African American Mississippi Delta experience especially annoying.
Since grad school, Leslie has had a play successfully produced in New York and now she’s on the cusp of making it big in Los Angeles while Andrew is bagging groceries at Ralph’s. (In fact, we’ll discover that he’s a held a series of wide-ranging temporary jobs, picking up a lot of information from each, a habit that will serve him later on, but I digress.)
Their conversation is awkward as Andrew’s demeanor shifts back and forth from stiltedly polite to borderline threatening. Eventually, he makes his point: Andrew claims that Leslie’s current success is entirely built on her having plagiarized his script.
This increasingly uncomfortable set-to is interrupted by Leslie’s wisecracking best friend and roommate Miriam who has a knack for making things worse before making them better. Deliciously played by Cristina Pitter (whose program bio describes them as “a queer multi-spirit Afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist”), Miriam is the perfect third character in Craig-Galván’s deftly balanced three-hander.
Cast members’ performances are layered. Salter’s Leslie is all charm, practicality, and controlled ambition, and Gavigan’s Andrew is an organic amalgam of vulnerable, goofy, and menacing. He’s terrific.
The 90-minute dramedy isn’t without some improbable narrative turns, but fortunately they lead to some interesting places where provoking questions are representation, entitlement, what constitutes plagiarism, etc. It’s all discussion-worthy topics, here pleasingly tempered with humor.
New York-based director Jade King Carroll skillfully helms the production. Scenes transition smoothly in large part due to a top-notch design team. Scenic designer Meghan Raham’s revolving set seamlessly goes from Leslie’s attractive apartment to smart cafes to an HBO writers’ room with the requisite long table and essential white board. Adding to the graceful storytelling are sound and lighting design by Michael Keck and Amith Chandrashaker, respectively.
The passage of time and circumstances are perceptively reflected in costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka’s sartorial choices: heels rise higher, baseball caps are doffed and jackets donned.
“A Jumping-Off Point” is the centerpiece of the third National Capital New Play Festival, an annual event celebrating new work by some of the country’s leading playwrights and newer voices.
Theater
‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith
A ‘fully autobiographical’ work from out artist Adil Mansoor
‘Amm(i)gone’
Thorough May 12
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St., N.W.
$60-$70
Woollymammoth.net
“Fully and utterly autobiographical.” That’s how Adil Mansoor describes “Amm(i)gone,” his one-man work currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
Both created and performed by out artist Mansoor, it’s his story about inviting his Pakistani mother to translate Sophocles’s Greek tragedy “Antigone” into Urdu. Throughout the journey, there’s an exploration of family, queerness, and faith,as well as references to teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations with his Muslim mother.
Mansoor, 38, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and is now based in Pittsburgh where he’s a busy theater maker. He’s also the founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former artistic director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQ youth arts organization.
WASHINGTON BLADE: What spurred you to create “Amm(i)gone”?
ADIL MANSOOR: I was reading a translation of “Antigone” a few years back and found myself emotionally overwhelmed. A Theban princess buries her brother knowing it will cost her, her own life. It’s about a person for whom all aspirations are in the afterlife. And what does that do to the living when all of your hopes and dreams have to be reserved for the afterlife?
I found grant funding to pay my mom to do the translation. I wanted to engage in learning. I wanted to share theater but especially this ancient tragedy. My mother appreciated the characters were struggling between loving one another and their beliefs.
BLADE: Are you more director than actor?
MANSOOR: I’m primarily a director with an MFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon. I wrote, directed, and performed in this show, and had been working on it for four years. I’ve done different versions including Zoom. Woolly’s is a new production with the same team who’ve been involved since the beginning.
I love solo performance. I’ve produced and now teach solo performance and believe in its power. And I definitely lean toward “performance” and I haven’t “acted” since I was in college. I feel good on stage. I was a tour guide and do a lot of public speaking. I enjoy the attention.
BLADE: Describe your mom.
MANSOOR: My mom is a wonderfully devout Muslim, single mother, social worker who discovered my queerness on Google. And she prays for me.
She and I are similar, the way we look at things, the way we laugh. But different too. And those are among the questions I ask in this show. Our relationship is both beautiful and complicated.
BLADE: So, you weren’t exactly hiding your sexuality?
MANSOOR: In my mid-20s, I took time to talk with friends about our being queer with relation to our careers. My sexuality is essential to the work. As the artistic director at Dreams of Hope, part of the work was to model what it means to be public. If I’m in a room with queer and trans teenagers, part of what I’m doing is modeling queer adulthood. The way they see me in the world is part of what I’m putting out there. And I want that to be expansive and full.
So much of my work involves fundraising and being a face in schools. Being out is about making safe space for queer young folks.
BLADE: Have you encountered much Islamophobia?
MANSOOR: When 9/11 happened, I was a sophomore in high school, so yes. I faced a lot then and now. I’ve been egged on the street in the last four months. I see it in the classroom. It shows up in all sorts of ways.
BLADE: What prompted you to lead your creative life in Pittsburgh?
MANSOOR: I’ve been here for 14 years. I breathe with ease in Pittsburgh. The hills and the valleys and the rust of the city do something to me. It’s beautiful, it’ affordable, and there is support for local artists. There’s a lot of opportunity.
Still, the plan was to move to New York in September of 2020 but that was cancelled. Then the pandemic showed me that I could live in Pittsburgh and still have a nationally viable career.
BLADE: What are you trying to achieve with “Amm(i)gone”?
MANSOOR: What I’m sharing in the show is so very specific but I hear people from other backgrounds say I totally see my mom in that. My partner is Catholic and we share so much in relation to this.
I hope the work is embracing the fullness of queerness and how means so many things. And I hope the show makes audiences want to call their parents or squeeze their partners.
Theater
Jessica Phillips shines in ‘Penelope,’ a ‘pandemic parable’
Alex Bechtel was inspired to write about loneliness, waiting, separation
‘Penelope’
Thorough April 28
Signature Theatre, the Ark
4200 Campbell Ave, Arlington
$40-$99
Sigtheatre.org
In the new musical “Penelope,” Broadway’s Jessica Phillips gives an unforgettable take on the title role torn from the pages of Homer’s “Odyssey” — more or less. Fortified by bourbon and backed by a Greek chorus of musicians, the character uncharacteristically steps out from the background to share her story surrounding two decades waiting on the island kingdom of Ithica for the return of her absent husband Odysseus.
Sometimes described as a “pandemic parable,” the 70-minute work is based on composer/playwright Alex Bechtel’s personal experience. While separated from his partner during COVID, he was inspired to write about loneliness, waiting, and separation, a subject Phillips was eager to tackle.
An accomplished Broadway actor and mother of two, Phillips, 52, is best known for memorable turns in “Dear Evan Hansen,” “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” “Next to Normal,” and “Priscilla Queen of the Desert.”
Two years ago, she made news for coming out as queer after having long been identified as straight. Parts of the theater scene were caught a bit off guard, but only momentarily. Now, she lives in New York with her partner Chelsea Nachman, a theatrical publicist.“We share the same professional community but in very different roles. I think that makes life easier for us.”
Currently enjoying an extended run at Signature in Arlington where the trees are in bloom, she spares time for a phone interview, starting off with“Perfect timing. I’ve just finished the last song on Beyonce’s ‘Cowboy Carter.’ Let’s talk.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Increasingly, I hear artists report having been deeply changed by the pandemic. Did that have anything to do with your coming out in 2022?
PHILLIPS: Definitely. During the pandemic, those of us in the arts were in deep crisis, because our industry had collapsed in almost every way. At the same time, that space allowed us to be contemplative about where we were. For me, that period of time gave me the space to both come to terms with and confront those fears about saying who I was, out loud and publicly.
BLADE: Did you have professional concerns?
PHILLIPS: Oh yeah, I was specifically worried about perception. Not so much about being queer but more what it meant to have come out relatively late in life. I had some fear around whether people would take me less seriously.
At the same time, I was nervous about being fully transparent and worried about my privacy and being vulnerable. Like other women I knew, I was more comfortable dealing with traditional societal expectations in America. I grew up with those cultural expectations and thought of myself in those terms for a long time.
BLADE: What changed?
PHILLIPS: What’s been so freeing for me, I can confront how I took on those expectations and say I’m not going to let those determine how I live my life. I get to decide.
BLADE: There’s a lot of wonderful storytelling in “Penelope.” What’s been your way into that?
PHILLIPS: My way of moving through the show is allowing this character to experience all five stages of grief. Humor, slapstick comedy, bargaining, denial. And ultimately acceptance and deep grief.
When an audience is alive and invested, it’s palpable and elevates the storytelling. When an audience is having a thinking rather feeling experience that changes the tone of my storytelling and not in a bad way.
It’s interesting how much they’re a part of everything. It’s really intimate. The audience is just six feet away. It’s a unique experience and we’re on this ride together. And I find this to be a really beautiful and satisfying experience that I’ve not had before.
BLADE: After Signature, what’s next for “Penelope”?
PHILLIPS: That’s the million-dollar question. Hopefully we’ll take it forward to New York or tour it, but that requires willingness and money. I do think there’s a broad audience for this. It’s beautiful, unique, artistic, really emotional, and at the same time possesses an intellectual quality that’s missing from a lot of commercial theater these days.
BLADE: And what’s next for theater?
Phillips: I think one good thing that came out of the pandemic is that people like Alex Bechtel had an opportunity to create. In the next decade we’re going to see the results of that. I think we have some extraordinary things to look forward to. If a work like “Penelope” is any indication, we’re all in for something really good.
Blade Summer Kickoff Party returns to Rehoboth
Andy Cohen coming to D.C.
Want to dance for a good cause?
Calendar: May 3-9
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HHS reverses Trump-era anti-LGBTQ rule
4th Circuit rules gender identity is a protected characteristic
Pride season has begun
PHOTOS: Capital Pride Pageant
