Dachs Thoughts

Wow. Another great night of theater at the Woolly Mammoth where I sawOedipus el Rey. This was a new version of Oedipus Rex, set amidst a Chicano community, in the barrio and prison, that was powerfully affecting. The theater was reconfigured so the stage was like a fashion runway coming out where seats normally are, so I was about five feet from the outside corner of the stage. Like two of the last three plays I’ve seen it started with an actor on the stage as the audience filed in. It was a small cast and all of the action was very present, almost in your face, the stage being so close, as well as the fact that actors came in through the audience as well. When Oedipus and his mother have sex, this was (tastefully) done in full nudity, fully lit, right in front of me. It was very courageous acting. All of the acting was terrific. This is another one of those Woolly plays I’ve seen recently where I had very little knowledge or expectation going in, and have been very pleasantly surprised. I’m so glad I saw this.

Tonight I saw the next play in Shakespeare Theater Company’s season, a production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, the musical version of the play by Voltaire. It is a satirical comedy rebutting the philosophy of “Optimism”. It was a nice production, and the orchestra and singing were first class. The leading lady basically sounded like an opera soprano. The staging was interesting; after a small room setting, it opened into a fixed setting with walls that looked kind of like a paneled library. The brought staging elements into that fairly plain space in interesting theatrical ways. For a war scene, a few players were running back and forth, and people from the edge were tossing big silver balls back and forth across the stage, which effectively suggested cannon fire. Sea voyages and balloon flights had someone carrying a model in the background, while the actors moved like they were on the vessel. It was very effective. I’m glad I saw it even though this was the second show I’ve seen in two days.

Tonight I saw the next “play” in the Woolly Mammoth season, A Girl’s Guide to Washington Politics. This wasn’t a play at all, but a collection of comedy sketches put on by Chicago’s The Second City. It was very entertaining. There were five ensemble players (4 women and one man) plus a musical accompanist. It was a mixture of brief sketches that included singing and humor, and a few audience interaction pieces as well as an improvisational musical bit. The politics hit both sides, pulling the leg of the left and hammering the right, but was generally pretty funny. The singing was outstanding. Among the memorial bits were an Italian opera based around the Supreme Court, that turned into “Evita” except it was “Elena”. Another was the musical improvisational bit that was built around three suggestions from the audience “DuPont”, “Lindsey Lohan”, and “Health Care” that was amazing to see in its seamless flow and creative lyrics. One of the final bits started with a song from the ladies about online dating and how hard it was to find a guy, followed by pulling a guy up from the audience and the lead lady asking him questions about whether or not they might be compatible, with the chorus of other ladies punctuating his answers with improvised backup singing. I felt sorry for the guy, but it was hilarious (I would have been beet red). It was an evening of a lot of laughs. We’ll see how it compares to tomorrow night.

Tonight I saw the second play of the season at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre, House of Gold. This play was pretty avant garde, loosely inspired by the JonBenet Ramsey case. As Andi described it, it was very “Woolly”. While the overall inspiration was troubling, and in questionable taste, the production was fairly interesting. Scenes were performed in one of four levels of a fixed set, and in one case there was a very interesting used of video of the scene imposed on top of the scene itself (which was taking place somewhat obscured in the basement set). I can’t say that I enjoyed the play, that seemed to be a meditation on exploitation of a child from various quarters, but it was an interesting (brief, 90 min) play that was cleverly staged. This was certainly something that was new for me in comparison to the traditional and Shakespeare plays I’m so used to seeing.