Enhanced Interrogation: 4,380 Nights, reviewed.

Ahmad Kamal and Rex Daugherty (C Stanley Photography)

Annalisa Dias's world premiere Gitmo detainee drama 4,380 Nights is a strong offering in the Womens' Voices Theatre Festival. My review is in this week's Washington City Paper.

The Strangest Yard: Whipping, or The Football Hamlet, reviewed. Plus: King Kirby.

Emily Whitworth and Kamau Mitchell in Whipping. (Kathleen Akerley)

My review of Kathleen Akerley’s latest opus, Whipping, or The Football Hamlet, is in today’s Washington City Paper, along with a few paragraphs about another show that has regrettably already closed: Crystal Skillman & Fred Van Lente’s King Kirby, a bio-play about legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby and his lifelong struggle to be fairly compensated for the dozens of Marvel Comics characters he created—or co-created with Stan Lee. They don’t agree on who did what, and therein lies the tale.

If this subject interests you, I recommend Sean Howe’s 2012 history Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

Be Brief, I See into Thy End: Fear, reviewed.

Vince Eisenson, Matthew Alan Ward, Seamus Miller, and Amal Saade in Fear.

I had the good fortune to interview Star Trek's resident alien linguist Marc Okrand this week, for a video that'll posting next week as part of Air & Space / Smithsonian's coverage of Trek's 50th birthday. I met Marc through his involvement in DC theatre. After the shoot, we got some coffee and talked about—well, okay, yes, about his work on various Trek movies mostly, again, some more. But we also discussed how much we both enjoyed writer/director Kathleen Akerley's ambitious new play FEAR, which I review in this week's Washington City Paper.

For evidence of just how pear-shaped the genre of plays-about-playmaking can go, consider Jackie Sibbles Drury’s unaccountably popular We Are Proud to Present…, a story about a half-dozen actors working to “devise” a play about a historic tragedy of which they know nothing. Though it’s meant to look improvised, it’s fully scripted, and the it's the single worst play I’ve ever seen in my professional or biological life. Akerley's play needs a revision, but it ducks the self-absorption that makes Drury's so, so insufferable.