In between heatwaves and a surreal election cycle, summer has felt like a restless fever dream. What we need right now is respite from the sweltering turmoil and, like a splash of cool water to the face, this month’s column looks to theater that offers up fantasy, humor, and immersive escapism in big generous helpings.
On Right Now
Noises Off, The Keegan Theatre
Showing Aug 1 – Sep 1
www.keegantheatre.com
What do you get when you throw together a love triangle, a flimsy set, temperamental personalities, and a not-great play about sexual escapades in a rented house? Comedy gold is the answer, and you’ll be served up spades of it in The Keegan Theatre’s reprisal of Noises Off this month.
“I’ve been calling it a sex comedy-lite,” laughs Valerie Adams Rigby, who plays Belinda Blair/Flavia Brent in Noises Off, a classic farce that The Keegan Theatre first produced in 2010 and has brought back by popular demand. “It’s a very British show.”
Originally written by playwright Michael Frayn at the height of conservative Thatcherism in 1982, this play-within-a-play (directed by Mark A. Rhea) makes use of the Keegan’s brand new in-stage revolve that allows audiences to experience the action from the front and rear of the set, a critical part of Noises Off’s unique narrative structure.
The first act of Noises Off sees a painfully polite dynamic established by a cast of nine performers acting in the fictional Nothing’s On, a subdued-yet-scandalous comedy play on tour through Britain. Acts 2 and 3 are devoted to the unravelling of professional and personal relationships, errant props, ad-libbing and technical mishaps that plague this acting company. The revolving set pivots after act 1 when the action all takes place ‘behind the scenes’, then swings back to allow the audience to watch Nothing’s On at the end of its tour and once the actors have thoroughly had enough of each other.
Gary Dubreuil – real life husband to Adams Rigsby – plays the role of Tim Allgood, the stage manager and general dogs body for Nothing’s On. “It’s refreshing and light, but with high stakes for the characters, and those are the reasons for us as actors to want to do it.” he says. “It’s making fun of farce, but also celebrating the art form itself.” As a stage favorite for over 40 years – including a Tony Award nominated Broadway revival by Manhattan’s Roundabout Theatre Company in 2016 and a 1992 film version starring Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve and Nicollette Sheridan – Noises Off seems to enjoy perpetual appeal. See it for yourself to find out why.
In the Spotlight
Soft Power, Signature Theatre
Showing Aug 6 – Sep 15
www.sigtheatre.org
In late 2015, playwright and librettist David Henry Hwang was walking home from a grocery store in Brooklyn when a stranger leapt out and plunged a knife into his neck. Little did Hwang know at the time that this horrific incident would provide the inspiration for Soft Power, one of his most celebrated musicals-within-a-play and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist in 2020.
Signature Theatre’s Associate Artistic Director Ethan Heard, who is also the co-founder of NYC’s Heartbeat Opera, explains why he felt a particular affinity for this profound piece of theater. “I saw Soft Power back in 2019 at The Public Theater in New York and really ired it. I’m Chinese American so I have a very personal connection to some of the questions in the show and some of David’s family’s experience really mirrors mine.” Think of Soft Power as The King and I, but reflected in a funhouse mirror, so that truth and reality are recognizable but weirdly distorted. The premise: DHH, a playwright (notice the similarities to David Henry Hwang) is attempting to translate a Chinese movie for American audiences, but is encountering several unexpected difficulties. After a vicious knife attack, he is plunged into a feverish hallucination where America stands on the precipice of a critical presidential election, Hilary Clinton is a superhero, and rose-colored glasses are a transformational fashion accessory.
“We’ve been talking about this show as tried and true dramatic structure that allows for wild theatricality within a dream, but also allows us to heighten and stylize what I think of as truisms of America and kind of wrestle with them.” says Heard, who immediately realized the impact of the attempted assassination of former president Donald J. Trump on this recalibrated version of Hwang’s work. “On the one hand it’s really challenging to work on this show now, but it’s also a gift because it allows us as artists and citizens to channel our energy, questions and rage into this political satire, which has deep heart and profound faith in America but is also a strong critique of certain things happening here.”
While undeniably political, Soft Power (the term for a country’s ability to convert through coercion rather than force) is also a musical play that reverses the exoticizing gaze so prevalent in American popular culture from the mid 20th Century, a la Rodgers and Hammerstein. In Soft Power, America is ‘the other’ as China takes center stage in world politics and love, while a score and lyrics by lauded composer Jeanine Tesori weaves its way through the action. “We have musical comedy in this production, so it lets us laugh, and then it also provokes us to think and reckon with our individual responsibility as citizens.” Heard says. “I hope the audience walks away with questions about their relationship to democracy and voting and their personal responsibility for casting a ballot and helping others do the same. In times of polarization, we really need to think about our shared humanity.”
Catch Before Closing
The Moors, Faction of Fools at the
Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
Showing July 22 – Aug 10
www.factionoffools.org
The Faction of Fools theater company has long perfected the art of contemporizing Commedia dell’Arte for today’s audiences. Their gaudy papier-mâché masks, flamboyant costumes and portrayals of social stereotypes with a twist are always on point and their production of Jen Silverman’s The Moors is no different. Faction of Fools’ co-Artistic Director sca Chilcote has rallied an energetic cast to tell the tale of Gray Gardenesque sisters Agatha and Huldey, their existential pet mastiff, a governess from London and a maidservant who is either pregnant or plagued by typhus. Oh, and an aerially challenged moorhen.
Silverman’s The Moors is much like plunging into a hot fever dream after reading a Brontë novel having also overindulged in strong liquor: The iconography of Gothic horror in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe is recognizable, along with the tropes of a collapsing country house on a desolate landscape, dark family secrets and eccentric characters exhibiting quirky peccadillos, but so are profound truths about human nature and the idiosyncrasies of toxic relationships. Twists and turns abound in this tragicomic saga that subverts the male agency so prevalent in mid 19th Century literature of this genre and gives the stage over to women seeking to better understand their inner selves.
