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Studio Theatre
1501 14th Street NW
Washington DC 20005
202-332-3300
 

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A professional theater
Operates the developmental Studio Theatre Secondstage
Price range $39 - $61
Click here to see archived reviews for this theater

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5


 
 

The Year of Magical Thinking
June 17 – July 5, 2009
Wednesday - Sunday at 7:30 pm; Saturday – Sunday at 2:30 pm
Reviewed June 21
by David Siegel

A detached, dispassionate solo performance piece
 of survival after the death of loved ones
Running time 1:40 – no intermission
Tickets $41 - $61

Click here to buy the script
Click here to buy the memoir


How does one survive the arduous time after the death of loved ones?  If you are the un-ruffled Joan Didion, who, for four decades, was a dispassionate observer of human intimacy, how far you are from throwing yourself onto the coffin and bewailing God for the losses? For an audience viewing Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, the question might be; is the existential approach to coping what you want to spend your time with? She scripts with almost clinical detachment, reciting detail upon detail to beat back depression without a mention of the Divine. Or perhaps she replaces a God-like presence with a different type of authority, that of mysterious and miraculous spirits. In this one-woman show, God - or something akin to such an entity - has been replaced not just with mysterious sprits to explain the unexplainable, but with a survival technique creating an almost fairy-tale of facts hoping that knowing and following the rules will be a protective factor and that bad things will not happen or can be reversed. Writers are always selling somebody out, Didion suggested long ago. In this theatrical work written originally as a book after the death of her husband and then her daughter, Didion sells herself out as so cool a character that losing control even for a split second seems a weakness of character to be rarely displayed and then quickly overridden. Under the direction of Serge Seiden and Joy Zinoman, Helen Hedman has the demanding task of touching an audience when the script is not so touching. She alone must carry the weight of the evening, describing a certain kind of grief and mourning. That Hedman succeeds is a testament to her infusing her character with some warmth through the slightness of gestures. Is she Didion in appearance? Not so much. But so what? What matters is Hedman slowly taking over the stage as she talks directly to us, explaining what to expect as death takes a loved one away. How you respond may well be determined by your own deep beliefs.

Storyline: After the death of her husband and her daughter, Joan Didion distilled her grief into a memoir. Her adaptation of that work for the stage features a single actress and Didion’s chiseled prose.

Joan Didion was born in 1934. The original book The Year of Magical Thinking won the 2005 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. Her own adaptation into a theatrical production premiered in New York in March, 2007 running for 144 total performances with Vanessa Redgrave, who was nominated for a 2007 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play and won a Drama Desk Award for Solo Performance. With Year of Magical Thinking. Didion placed herself under her own intense gaze. As she says in the opening lines of the text, she wrote to inform others which she does in with an unblinking memory as a chronicler. It is a shifting account. The melding of two deaths that can be a bit muddy at times as she moves back and forth to present aspects of her love for her husband and her daughter. She is a keen observer of little bits and pieces. One line gives a sense of others; she asks as she calls in her husband’s obituary to the LA Times, “Is he dead in pacific coast time since it is 3 hours earlier?” Directors Serge Seiden and Joy Zinnoman have created a work with fluid movements. Scenes appear as Hedman finds places to sit or stand with short bites of  violins and piano music by Eric Shimelonis flooding feelings into the production. This is a tough production about thorny matters, but under their direction, the humanity does come through.

Helen Hayes Award nominee Helen Hedman - a veteran of dozens upon dozens of productions in the Potomac Area for the likes of Arena, Olney, Signature and the Shakespeare Theatre Company - is the guide on this journey. She leads the audience by the hand with a warm pleasant voice that shoulders the entire burden, and remains affecting over the course of the evening. She can be so detached, her breathing level, her voice not rising, rarely smiling even with her little slight, off-hand humor. Yet she finds means and methods to show tidbits of emotion. While the performance moves along, there are quieter moments when Hedman’s face can tighten, as she twists her hands and fingers, or far from daintily almost crumples into a chair.  She fits a social worker’s description of the real-life Didion, "one cool character." She take an audience that is willing to listen on this profound interior trip, bearing witness so that an audience might save it to remember when it is their turn to live through such time.

The Metheny Theatre stage set is almost architectural … framed by a maple veneered structure with French blue tinted light surrounding at curtain up. Spots that Hedman unerringly finds are used to depict scene changes. There is a large high back rattan arm chair with a small circular rattan table on audience right and a smaller rattan settee on audience left. Behind the chair is a black and white abstract painting; sort of black squiggles as a motif on a white canvas … giving a sense of no color as when all color leaves the body of a deceased. Brandee Mathies dresses Hedman in an outfit of a cowl neck cashmere white sweater with full sleeves, black pencil-thin pants with loafers, and of course, the Didion trademark big sunglasses.

By Joan Didion.  Directed by Serge Seiden and Joy Zinoman. Design: Luciana Stecconi (set) Brandee Mathies (costumes) Collin K. Bills (lights) Eric Shimelonis (sound and original music) Carol Pratt (photography) Che Wernsman (stage manager). Cast: Helen Hedman.


 
 

Radio Golf
May 20 - July 12, 2009
Wednesday - Saturday and select Tuesdays at 8 pm
Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm; Sunday at 7 pm
Reviewed Ma
y 10 by David Siegel

Bittersweet, disarming and stinging in parts, but a lean final August Wilson installment
Running time 2:20 - one intermission
Performances in the Mead Theatre
Tickets $41 - $61

Click here to buy the script


This final installment of the majestic, potent ten play odyssey by August Wilson focusing on the African-American experience in 20th Century America is a bittersweet, ultimately lean evening. Radio Golf contains disarming, stinging confrontations about the struggle to keep a community’s roots alive against the onslaught of progress in this tale of resentments and grievances in long ago 1997 when it seemed the economy might lift everyone up. Here the struggles are visually depicted with the dueling images of Tiger Woods and Martin Luther King Jr. casting their potent forces upon the proceedings. Situated between their images is a man who thinks he knows the right path, but finds his way blocked and skidding along. And his own poster image bears a striking resemblance to the iconic one of President Obama. For those familiar with the Wilson saga this is a must see: a chance to grab at his last words. For those accustomed to the mystical matriarch, Aunt Ester, as the repository of traditions, Radio Golf presents a sad, inglorious passing as she is represented not by breathing flesh and blood but as a ghost of a worn-out, unlived-in house considered a blight. Unfortunately, this final chapter in a 100 year saga has too many set pieces, keeping it from cooking into a spicy, thick, pungent, savory stew. The characters seem as if animated arch types from which arguments emanate, rather than fully-formed individuals with emotional centers. Under Ron Himes' direction, the cast has perplexingly few sharp edges given the agonizing about destruction of values. Verbal fireworks do come as the audience is slapped about and asked to choose between life styles represented by the words “Negro” and “Nigger.” At the center of it all is Walter Coppage projecting a soft-spoken, well-dressed, hard-to-anger, well-educated, African-American real-estate developer turned Pittsburgh mayoral candidate. He's learning that his allies are fleeting, his power limited, his trajectory is going backwards and his wife is weighing her own options. He is trying not to go limp and spineless as the unforgiving White dominated world places a target on his back. He drinks from a Starbucks cup when he really needs a meal from Ben’s Chili Bowl.

Storyline:
In a run-down storefront in Pittsburgh’s deteriorating Hill District, mayoral candidate Harmond Wilks works out the logistics of a redevelopment project that will raze the decaying buildings of a primarily African-American neighborhood and bring in chain retailers. All that stands in his way is an old house and its eccentric owner, an elderly man who refuses to be cleared out.

August Wilson completed Radio Golf just a few months before he died in 2005. He sets his marker down clearly, asking the audience which side are they on as the bulldozers are at the ready. Your reviewer can only wonder what might have been without death on his mind and with more time to possibly further refine this work. There is a feel of a rush to the characters moving forward quickly into their positions to surround the central character forcing him to react to their views and society whims. Ron Himes is the Founder and Producing Director of The Black Rep, a professional African-American theatre company. For Radio Golf  there is a reticence in his approach, as if there is a line over which the actors cannot and should not cross. They contain themselves in small spaces. A screw driver held in a hand to open a can of paint is the greatest physical menace, while a finger full of white paint becomes war paint on a face as the most visual sign of fury. Even when going “all manly,” the actors seem to be holding back from clenched fists, tight cheeks and spit. The relationship between husband and wife seems coolly professional, giving little hint of sexual energy.

Erik Kilpatrick infuses his street-smart, fast-talking handyman, ex-con of a character with hard earned life experiences and survival skills. He stirs the pot of this plot with the tough questions of what it means to be yourself when faced with a larger community out to do harm to the essence of an urban community about to be destroyed to make way for the likes of Whole Foods and Starbucks. He presents the image of physical power never raising a fist to make his presence felt, but forces others to consider and re-consider their positions. Frederick Strother is marvelous as the eccentric old man, seemingly one to be toyed with, who uses his street smarts to out-flank the men in suits by bobbing-and-weaving. He takes blows, but his resilience has him re-appear much to the chagrin of the moneyed and educated. Deidra LaWan Starnes is Wilks' wife and professional advisor. With her flashing eyes she is the most dramatically emotive of the cast as she learns her value to others is based on the value others place upon her husband. Then again, her interpersonal chemistry with Coppage is unfeverish, they seem an unlikely sexual paring. Kim Sullivan is the most ruthless as a man willing to do anything to make a buck including let his best friend and own community be skewered. It is his golfing radio commentary that gives this play its name. He is an impeccable snake.

The Mead Theatre set is a cluttered storefront looking outward to the street. Used metal desks and chairs are strewn about along with files, and boxes are scattered here and there which gives a sense of lived in reality. Lighting moves the show through bright middays, dark nights and sullen moments. The costumes and shoes of Starnes change in each scene, but are always tailored and looking a marvel. Coppage and Sullivan are nattily attired in suits while Kilpatrick and Strother are in character-rendering outfits. The pre-show and scene changing music moves from toe-tapping bright rhythm and blues and urban pop through the Jimmy Hendricks rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

Written by August Wilson. Directed by Ron Himes. Design: Daniel Conway (set) Reggie Ray (costumes) Colin K. Bills (lights) Neil McFadden (sound)  Scott Suchman (photography) Katherine C. Mielke (stage manager). Cast: Walter Coppage, Erik Kilpatrick, Deidra LaWan Starnes, Frederick Strother, Kim Sullivan.