Wounded, by Jiggs Burgess, is both gritty and warm. Digging into dark subjects such as alcoholism, drunk driving, co-dependent relationships, the alienation of being gay in a small town, and sexual assault, the play also shows how, in the face of adversity, humanity still shines through in some people.
Blind Runner, written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani, features only two actors. Set in Iran, the play is about a husband (Mohammed Reza Hosseinzadeh) and wife (Ainaz Azarhoush) who now only meet during prison visiting hours. Neither has an actual name. Wife is serving a sentence for something she posted on social media. Although it’s not specific, there is a suggestion she showed support for women who protested the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini by the Guidance Patrol, a type of morality police. The post alters the lives of the couple.
In The Blood Quilt by Katori Hall, four half-sisters gather a few weeks after their mother’s funeral for an annual rite of stitching a quilt. As they congregate in their childhood home, the quartet of archetypal characters rehash old conflicts with their different personalities and views of tradition.
Pony Cam’s Burnout Paradise is a madcap smorgasbord of actions that are tied together by a final aim: complete a number of tasks in a certain amount of time, all while walking on a treadmill. Part performance art, part physical theater, the show opens with four performers—Claire Bird, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams—on treadmills under a large screen displaying the words “Warm Up.” A soft, muttering soundscape (created by the ensemble) floats through the air, offering thoughts on greatness—“If greatness doesn’t come knocking on your door, you should go knocking on its door.”
Kafkaesque!, a clever new musical comedy with book, music, and lyrics by James Harvey, draws together the life of Czech novelist Franz Kafka and his major (and one minor) works. The show opens with Kafka (Harvey, a talented composer and pianist) at the piano as he defines who he is: a writer whose work has had so much impact that he’s become an adjective. The opening song about “the evils of bureaucracy, modernity’s alienation, man’s talent for hypocrisy, neuroses and fixation!” showcases the main themes of Kafka’s work that are woven together in the musical.
Empire, a musical about the building of the Empire State Building—has a lot of heart. Set in three time periods—1929, 1930, and 1976—the story moves back and forth between Sylvie Lee (Julia Louise Hosack) and Mohawk Grandmother (April Ortiz) in the 1970s and the character of Frances Belle (Kaitlyn Davidson), a.k.a. “Wally,” a firecracker of a woman who is classy in pants, working her magic in a man’s world in the 1920s and ’30s, as the iconic skyscraper is being built.
Here There Are Blueberries, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, explores the idea that a picture can speak a thousand words. The play has been created using “historical artifact, interviews conducted with real people, historical transcripts, and other primary sources.” Centered on an album of photos that was meant to be destroyed, the play asks whether the side of those who commit atrocities in history should also be shown.
Philadelphia, Here I Come, written in the 1960s by Irish playwright Brian Friel, poignantly captures the anticipation, fear, and excitement of emigrating to a new place. Set on the eve of departure, Friel’s play focuses on Gar, the would-be émigré, in both his Public self (played with subdued melancholy by David McElwee) as he struggles with his decision to leave, and his Private self (played with exuberance by A.J. Shively), screaming to get out. It’s deadly boring in Ballybeg, a tiny little corner of County Donegal, Ireland, where the most exciting things are a game of checkers and memories of teenage shenanigans.
The broken pieces of public education are laid bare in Fish, a world premiere drama by Kia Corthron presented by the Keen Company. Set in an unnamed high school, the play captures the ails of urban education, the poverty-stricken neighborhoods in which they sit, and the resulting challenges students experience as they try to keep their heads above water.
Foxes, set in a Black Caribbean community in London, is a sly and thoughtful exploration of a series of taboo subjects. Meera (Nemide May), who is from a Muslim family, tells her boyfriend Daniel (Raphel Famotibe), who is from a Caribbean Christian family, that she is pregnant. That creates a big problem: how will these two young people, from different cultural and religious backgrounds, work it out? They are also at the beginning of their young adult life, trying to determine their future. Daniel is planning on going to university, or “uni” as the Brits call it.
Amsterdam’s red-light district, circa 1956. A man walks into a bar and chews on the question: What does it mean to fall from grace? And, as a man who is having a few drinks in a bar and talking to strangers, he will ask many more questions, sometimes personal and often philosophical. In The Fall, by Albert Camus, a French philosopher who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and is considered the father of existentialism, the man in the bar is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a former Parisian lawyer who has himself fallen from grace.
Potomac Theatre Project’s Sex, Grift and Death, an evening of one-acts by British playwrights Steven Berkoff and Caryl Churchill, captures the brutal nature of sex, financial survival, death, and illness. The lively cast uses a mixture of British and American accents that work for the sensibility of each piece.
In William Shakespeare’s Richard III, the title character is a hunchback whose anger is fueled because he feels like an outcast. His quest for power becomes a form of revenge. Under Robert O’Hara’s direction, Richard III for the Public Theater is loose and playful. Actress Danai Gurira, in the gender-swapped title role, is sinewy and tiger-like. As Richard, she pounces, manipulates, smiles, grins, and grimaces: a shape-shifter who manipulates others.
Mime is a silent art of storytelling that requires great physical expressiveness. It is often associated with street performers, but Broken Box Mime’s Take Shape sets a new paradigm for the art form: mime as performance for the theater. Eight vignettes range in themes from global warming to cooking and parenting. There are no props, stage design or costume changes. All the stories in Take Shape are conveyed through the highly physicalized art of pantomime.
Hope blooms even in the darkest and cruelest of times in Heartland, by Gabriel Jason Dean. The story pairs two unlikely geographical places: Omaha, Nebraska, and Afghanistan. Geetee (Mari Vial-Golden), is an Afghani orphan who was displaced by war and adopted by Harold (Mark Cuddy), an Afghani scholar who teaches at the University of Nebraska. She returns to her homeland as an adult to teach at Blue Sky, a school for girls. There she meets Nazrullah (Naz, for short), a math teacher at the school.
Chasing Jack, by John S. Anastasi, is the story of a man willing to lose it all for the thrill of throwing the die. Dr. Jack Chase (played with boundless energy by Emanuele Secci) is a tireless cardiac surgeon who appears selfless but has one too many skeletons in the closet. The biggest one—a gambling addiction—can no longer remain hidden, and, after losing a patient, he finds himself in court.
Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec explores the life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the immensely talented 19th-century French painter and printmaker, using the sidewalks, doorways, and windows of Greenwich Village as the setting for a “pandemic-friendly theatrical experience.” Live performance, puppetry, music and a short black-and-white film combine to help the site-specific production tell the story of the artist who captured the seamier side of the Belle Époque.
Incantata, by Pulitzer Prize–winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon, is an elegy crafted into a theatrical narrative that loosely weaves together erudite poetic imagery and concrete memories with literary and artistic references. The experience is a journey through bumpy waters, a sensory and linguistic adventure with Stanley Townsend, a tremendously talented and physical actor, at the helm of the solo show.
Doctors Jane and Alexander wrestles with the idea of what it means to live in the shadow of a famous parent. Written, directed and produced by Edward Einhorn, the play focuses on the life of his mother, Jane Einhorn. She was the daughter of Alexander S. Wiener, a scientist who became famous (with Karl Landsteiner) for the discovery of the Rh factor in blood, critical knowledge for the success of transfusions
In One Discordant Violin, the music and narration are central to the story, sometimes complimenting each other and at other times riffing on one another. Adapted by Yann Martel (Life of Pi) from his own short story, the play follows the adventure of a single narrator whose journey provokes a meditation on the meaning of life, the Vietnam War, Trump, the real estate mogul, Joseph Conrad’s stories and fastidious use of punctuation, and the lost dreams of youth.
