The Prince of Wails: Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, reviewed.

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Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Edward Gero in Henry IV, Part 1.

That's Edward Gero as King Henry IV. I found out only the other day he was in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, a film I loved in 1990 but which has not aged as well as Die Hard or even Die Hard with a Vengeance. I probably didn't talk about him enough in my tangled but enthusiastic Washington City Paper review of both parts of the Shakespeare Theatre's Company's new, Michael Kahn-directed repertory of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.

The Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles' 1965 compression of the Henriad, which I probably spent too much real estate on in the review, is officially, criminally out-of-print, but you can watch it in its entirety for the time being on YouTube. Do.

Sounds of the 60s: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, reviewed.

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Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Bethany Anne Lind, Tess Malis Kincaid, and Tom Key in Arena's Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. (Teresa Wood) 

If you don't know what to get your playgoing (or at least not-theatre-averse) parents for Christmas, and you can afford the freight, Arena Stage's Malcolm-Jamal Warner-starring Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and the Shakespeare Theatre Company's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum are both good revivals of 1960s items that they're likely to enjoy.

I liked them, too. But then, I'm big on the music, movies, and TV of the 60s. I review both in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free.

Kinky Reboots: Mies Julie and Bondage, reviewed.

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Hilda Cronje and Bongile Mantsai in Mies Julie. (Rodger Bosch)

My reviews of Mies Julie, a South African August Strindberg update, and Bondage, a 1992 David Henry Hwang play from locals Pinky Swear Productions, are in today's Washington City Paper.

While their origins and scale differ, it's useful to compare the productions to one another. Both plays use the sexual negotiations of an interracial couple as means of discussing the troubled racial histories of their native lands.

Bondage reminded me of David Ives' Venus in Fur, while Mies Julie recalled uncomfortably a slavery-era exploitation flick from 1975 called Mandingo that's come up lately in discussions of Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave. I don't imagine that's what adapter-director Yael Farber was going for, but nothing exists in a vacuum.  Anyway, read.

A Bit of the Old Albrecht Von: Wallenstein, reviewed

​Colin Carmody and Steve Pickering in Wallenstein.

My enthusiastic review of the Shakespeare Theatre's ironicized and much-slimmed-down new version of Wallenstein, an epic of the Thirty Years War first performed in 1798, is in today's Washington City Paper.