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Filtering by Tag: The Studio Theatre
Tovah Feldshuh as Golda Meir.
I review Golda's Balcony, William Gibson's 2003 solo play about the life of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and the U.S. premiere of Australian playwright Declan Greene's Moth in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free. Read all about 'em.
In today's Washington City Paper, I review the Pultizer-winning drama Water by the Spoonful at Studio Theatre and Molotov's production of Normal, a play about the Dusseldorf Ripper.
Drew Cortese and Quentin Maré in Studio's The Motherfucker with the Hat. (Teddy Wolff)
We're wrapping up a highly rewarding and admirably trend-resistant year on DC's stages, as I aver in this week's Washington City Paper.
1973's Magnum Force inverted the premise of its prequel, Dirty Harry.
Thanks to Pop Culture Happy Hour full-timers Stephen Thompson, Glen Weldon, and host Linda Holmes for inviting me back on the podcast this week to talk about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and a subject closer to my heart than that one, Christmas music. Have I mentioned that I'm very interested in Christmas music?
Our dissection of that enervating Hobbit movie feeds into a discussion of second installments, and some of the ones that really work. If you haven't seen Magnum Force in a while, there's no time like the present, Christmas T-minus five.
You can listen here or download the podcast from iTunes here.
One element of our Hobbit talk that got cut for time was when I mentioned that I'd sought out a "High Frame Rate" presentation of this movie, because I'm interested in where action pictures might be headed. I remember James Cameron mentioning HFR as a potential new frontier in interviews from more than ten years ago, well before Avatar. (He has announced that Avatar's four sequels, coming in 2016, 2017, and 2018, will be released in HFR.)
I've read that director Peter Jackson messed with the color grading of the HFR version of Smaug in response to complaints that the prior Hobbit movie had a cheap, daytime-soap look. I love the irony that the newest, priciest filmmaking technology has the effect of making this megafranchise look like a shot-on-video-for-peanuts Dr. Who episode.
Anyway, whatever Jackson did seemed to my eyes to be for naught. Smaug has a distracting, video-gamey look that conspired with its pointlessly roaming camerawork to make everything in the frame feel weightless. I had a tougher time suspending my disbelief watching The Desolation of Smaug than I do watching the original 1933 King Kong, or a Ray Harryhausen joint. The illusion of weight, not size, is what makes impossible visions seem real.
Maboud Ebrahimzadeh & Emily Kester. (Igor Dmitry)
The short version of my Washington City Paper review of Sam Holcroft's Edgar and Annabel, now getting its U.S. premiere in a Studio Theatre production directed by the great actor Holly Twyford, is that you have to see it. It synthesizes about a half dozen well-chosen curated cinematic influences while remaining resolutely its own thing.
Ted van Griethuysen, Elizabeth Pierotti, Sarah Marshall, Kimberly Schraf, and Rick Foucheux inThat Hopey Changey Thing. (Photo: Teddy Wolff)
The Studio Theatre has two of Richard Nelson's four Apple Family Plays, the last of which had its world premiere at the Public Theater in New York only last Friday, in repertory. The two at Studio are That Hopey Change Thing and Sweet and Sad. My review of both is on Arts Desk now, and will show up in print in next week's City Paper. Happy Thanksgiving.
Won't someone PLEASE think of the children? Charlayne Woodard. (Igor Dmitry/Studio Theatre)
Charlayne Woodard is an actress and storyteller of no mean talent. I did not care for her solo show The Night Watcher.
Reviewed in today's Washington City Paper.
The Broadway cast of A Behanding in Spokane in 2010: Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Zoe Kazan, Anthony Mackie.
In this week's Washington City Paper, I review the local premiere of Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane and reminisce uncomfortably about the show's 2010 Broadway debut, which I saw twice on my way to the realization that I don't like the play very much. I also review Studio Theatre's terrific production of Amy Herzog's sublime 4,000 Miles.
