Bye Bye Birdie flies like a butterfly through D.C.'s Kennedy Center

I have a bit of a rule that I really don't enjoy musicals. I know, I co-wrote Wiener Sausage: The Musical! Of course there are great ones out there like Hedwig and the Angry Inch. There are movies like La La Land, Grease, Yesterday, Willy Wonka, A Star is Born, The Doors, Sing Street, and the list goes on.

So, ok, I guess I tolerate and every once in a while love musicals, which made going to the Kennedy Center Thursday night to see Bye Bye Birdie a little bit of a risky situation. But, it turns out, you would have to be a seriously hardened individual to not get carried away in the relentless joy of this story of the age-old struggles between Ed Sullivan-loving parents and their risque-pop-star-loving teens.

Despite the fact that I really want to start going to theater performances again (after a lack of doing so over the past five years, especially after letting my Woolly Mammoth season pass expire), I probably would not have gone to Bye Bye without the added incentive of seeing my wife's cousin Caroline Aaron in action. She's a renowned actor well-known to audiences from her roles in Woody Allen movies, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Edward Scissorhands, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and many more. This was the first time I've seen her on stage, and she doesn't disappoint as the curmudgeonly, racist mother of a record executive named Albert who has dreams of leaving the business, settling down with his girl Rosie, and becoming an English teacher.

With Albert's main client, Conrad Birdie, getting drafted into the military, this seems like the time for Rosie to convince Albert to make a clean break from his occupation. She comes up with a plan for Albert to immediately write a song for Conrad to sing on the Ed Sullivan Show before he leaves and to give "one last kiss" to a lucky member of Birdie's fan club. That's where the other side of the story comes in: Kim from Sweet Apple, Ohio is a member of the fan club and wins the kiss, but this causes strife with her steady boyfriend Hugo and her dad, played hilariously by Richard Kind, of Red Oaks, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mad About You, and many others.

Bye Bye Birdie has a rich history. here are some interesting nuggets about the show:

• The script was inspired by Elvis Presley getting drafted into the Army.
• Conrad Birdie was a play on country singer Conway Twitty's name.
• The original Broadway production starting in 1960 starred Dick Van Dyke, Chita Rivera, and Paul Lynde.
• In this new production, Ephraim Sykes plays Birdie, and he is well known for his roles in Hamilton, Vinyl, and 30 Rock.
• "Put On a Happy Face" is by far the song I recognized the most before seeing the show.

All of the songs are catchy in the production, the orchestra is magnificant, and the dancers are incredibly talented. My minor complaints are that I think some of the numbers are a little too long and, with such a thin story line, the fare is air light (not necessarily a bad thing in these often dark times).

4 out of 5 stars

Silver Spring's Lumina proves you really can get kids to like Shakespeare

The theater industry has fallen onto some pretty hard times since the pandemic. And looking back through my blog, I can't believe my last "theater" entry was when I saw Hamilton in New York in 2018. I used to frequently post reviews from shows around Washington D.C., especially ones I used to like so much at the Woolly Mammoth.

But a lot of shows have not really caught my eye at the Woolly or other prime venues lately. Plus my actor buddy who was always in great shows around the city has moved to Oregon. And sometimes it's those connections that really help push people (at least me) over the edge towards getting out the door and into the seats. I wasn't expecting much when headed out tonight to see a reimagining of Shakespeare's As You Like It set in hippy times and featuring lots of local kids who my kids know. Not only was the band in the show led by one of my former bandmates in The Sprogs (so obviously the music was great, right?), but the show was really funny and I truly enjoyed it. 

Early into the play at Lumina Studio Theater in Silver Spring, I couldn't believe the script could have been written essentially by a bunch of elementary and high-school kids. Children are definitely not Shakespeare's key demographic and they certainly don't write and perform with such excellent comic timing in ther Bard's works, not even in Bard spoofs.

And when I looked at the program a little later, this As You Like It - actually titled As You Dig It - was indeed written back in 2002 by David Minton. But the cast and band worked really hard to put on a knock-out performance that had me laughing out loud constantly. 

Some of the highlight songs performed, as the characters set about trying to perform a play within the play ("all the world's a stage") and deal with themes of love, envy, gender, and more, include Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco," "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies, "Reflections" by Diana Ross, and "Light My Fire" by The Doors. 

The stage was packed with the players most of the time, and there are actually two separate casts that have been performing different showtimes. Just about everyone in the cast gets their moments to shine and several have very promising thesbian careers ahead of them if they take that path.

That makes the future of the stage quite bit more promising than I had been giving it credit for lately.

Hamilton is inspiring in many ways, including rereading about the Revolutionary War

After seeing Hamilton on Broadway, the inevitable next step is to dig back into Revolutionary War literature. I figure one place to start and not go wrong is with acclaimed author David McCullough. 

His book 1776 opens with, in 1775, despite much opposition in the press and throughout the country to the troubling war in America, King George III addressing a whopping 60,000 people in London’s St. James Park. Can you imagine that many people gathering back then?

Having seen the crazed wickedness of George on hilarious display in the musical, some of the small personal details at the start of 1776 are well worth lapping up, such as his “whitest hands ever seen” with a large red ring on them and the four-ton exceedingly elaborate carriage he had made to carry him around London. Many found the King a bit dull and, unlike in the play, he refused to wear a huge white wig, the fashion of the time.

George was steadfast throughout his life, even in his later “mad” life, that America must obey England, even though he had never been a soldier or to America, or the Scotland and Ireland which he often praised.

The play, by the way, is every bit as astounding as everyone says. It was also fun sitting in the 10th row center with the likes of Jerry from Parks and Recreation and film and TV star Alfre Woodard of St. Elsewhere and 12 Years a Slave.

Woolly Mammoth presents a powerful love letter to American immigrants

Every time I start to think I'm losing interest in our season tickets to the Wooly Mammoth theater in Washington D.C., another great show like Familiar - which just ended its month-long run - pulls me back in.

The show, written by Walking Dead and Black Panther star Danai Gurira, is everything you could ask for in a stage production. Hilarious. An array of deeply-explored characters. Educational. Relevant and timely.

The story involves a family from Zimbabwe that is transplanted to Minnesota and, when a daughter's wedding is about to take place, all kinds of desires resurface, including the father's proclamation to return to the homeland to complete unfinished business in helping repair it.

I agree with the DC Theater Scene blog:

Some of the funniest scenes occur when Anne tries to teach Chris and his brother Brad (Andy Truschinski) how to properly execute the Roora ceremony. Brad, an army vet and self-proclaimed “family fuck up” must serve as the Munyai, a messenger between the groom and the ceremonial conductor. 

Gurira describes Familiar, as “an ode to the African immigrant”, and while the play does a marvelous job of humanizing representations of African-American families, it is also an outstanding work of classic Americana.

This is an instant classic. 5 out of 5 stars

Syria gets a much-needed closer look in Woolly Mammoth's Kiss

The first thing I loved about Woolly Mammoth's recent production of Kiss was the fact that I didn't read the playbill before watching the show.

That kept me guessing for several minutes in the middle of playwright Guillermo Calderon's play that the actors really were Skyping Syria to find out how life was going for the alleged writer of the play. When the translator left the screen, I caught on, but it made things about as current-event-y as could possibly be.

I feel like the world doesn't know nearly enough about the absolute destruction happening in a place I remember friends and family having told me about enjoying traveling throughout - beautiful plains, deserts, and mountains - in the past. Dictator Bashar Al-Assad has laid waste to the place in just a few short years, and the play does its best to help us understand just how awful life has turned there.

The story begins with a group of fairly average and superficial friends who are in the process of falling out of love with their chosen mates and into love with others in their tight circle. It's a funny and entertaining story, and something the audience would not expect from a night at the theater about Syria.

But then the play breaks and the excellent Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey (as a Faye Dunaway-like soap-opera star) quickly informs the audience that she's the director (she isn't) and the cast Skypes Syria to speak for the "first time" with the writer, who is holed up in a very sad and scary situation. The rest of Kiss brilliantly redoes the play as life very well could actually be in today's Syria. They blaze through the soapy elements with a focus on death and sniping and the all-out destructiveness that we all hear about in the news each day.

We've been so numbed by all the bad news from Damascus and Aleppo and many points in between that we can't even digest how this might be the worst of all wars on the planet right now and at least partially a result of our country's confused and directionless war against terrorism.

Tim Getman, Shannon Dorsey, and Joe Mallon are the other key players in this masterpiece collision of the arts and current events. Let's hope it continues to be performed in places throughout the country and has some effect on the ways we can all help our fellow humans in a place that truly needs it now more than ever.

What the theater should be in the 2010s.

5 out of 5 stars

Classic Reads: Ibsen Ponders Whether Life Means Anything in Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt is a man in Norwegian Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play of the same name who is trying to discover whether he's a good modern man or a bad one.

Despite not being much interested in a girl named Ingrid, Peer decides on her wedding night that he's going to try to steal her from the groom. This does not endear him to the community so he simply runs off into the forest.

While searching the woods, a girl named Solveig hears Peer's mother Aase talking about what he's like and falls in love with the young scamp. Peer falls in with some trolls in the woods and has a riotous night with some farm girls. He considers staying with the trolls but decides he has to go home.

After making a bit of a life with Solveig and witnessing his mother on her death bed, Peer journeys far from home. He makes a fortune in the American slave trade and selling idols in China, then loses his business riches in Morocco. He briefly becomes an Arab sheik as well. While pondering what he views as his wasted life in Egypt, he eventually is placed in an insane asylum.

Surviving the asylum, Peer makes it back home to Solveig. Although he is convinced he's bound for Hell, Solveig confuses him by saying that he is a good man and that's where the story ends, with Peer perhaps no wiser about the mysteries of man than when he started his many adventures.

The play remains one of Ibsen's most famous, along with A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler, with many films and adaptations (and Ibsen is the second-most-performed dramatist behind Shakespeare). Roger McGuinn of the Byrds even wrote music for a pop version of the play that has never been released. Several of those songs appear on Byrds' albums in the early 1979s however.

Rapture, Blister, Burn is the Most Fun I've Had With Feminism

To those who have seen the Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda's current production of Rapture, Blister, Burn, it should be no surprise that writer Gina Gionfriddo has written TV episodes of House of Cards, Cold Case, and Law & Order.

This is one of the snappiest plays around, featuring exceptional comic timing from all five actors, who deliver the most fun I've ever had with feminism.

The play, which ends this weekend, offers a compellingly told crash course in feminism, mainly featuring Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly. Michelle Six's Catherine has returned from her feminist-studies book-speaking circuit to visit college pals Gwen (Beth Hylton) and Don (Tim Getman), whose marriage has grown unexciting.

At first, it seems Don, played by Getman with a mix of Homer Simpson and Bill Murray, will surely have an affair with babysitter Avery (Maggie Erwin), but that is not who he has an affair with at all. He gets tossed between his wife and Catherine like a rag doll. This is a nice touch, putting the lone man in the downtrodden and abused position previously and traditionally held by women.

Sticking around, Catherine offers a class that is only attended by Gwen and Avery. Because of the low turn-out, she decides to hold it at the home of her mother (Helen Hedman), who provides the martinis to juice up the hilarious inter-generational conversations relating horror movies, porn, internet dating, and much more to feminism.

By the end, the older generation is "hooking up" and the younger generation is longing for a balanced career and family life.

This is a brilliant play, and playwrights would be wise to follow Gionfriddo's style of mixing well-told historical background with deeply explored and empathic fictional characters.

***** out of ***** stars

Tony Kushner Takes Too Long to Explain His "Guide"

Back in 2003, Tony Kushner's Angels in America TV mini-series probably helped open up dialogue about gay rights to a degree, but its pompousness made it difficult to really love.

The same holds true with his latest, which just wrapped up a run at Theater J in Washington D.C. After the first of three acts in the three-and-half-hour The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, the couple next to Rachel, Dan, and I mumbled, "Where do we get our money back?"

I didn't totally agree. In fact, I thought the first act had the most laughs and was the most enjoyable.

The story revolves around patriarch Gus, who is selling the family's New York brownstone, which lures his children home to find that he wants to kill himself (because the world has moved past him?). Tom Wiggin is Gus and he leads a generally excellent cast, including great performances from his kids: the incestous-impregnator Vito (Tim Getman), the triangulating gay Pill (Lou Liberatore), and the worker-rights lawyer Empty (Susan Rome).

The performances were worth remembering, but for the life of me, just two weeks after seeing The Guide, I can't remember what my theory was on why Gus wanted to kill himself. Kushner should use this play to finally realize he doesn't have to take so long to explain any of his epic pet causes.

*** out of ***** stars

Oscar Wilde's "Earnest" Brings its Impeccable Wit to D.C.

Before there was a Woody Allen or a Steve Martin or a Jerry Seinfeld, there was Oscar Wilde to deliver the funniest one-liners (a quote of Wilde's appears at the top of this very website).

So if a theater troupe sticks to the script of his best play, The Importance of Being Earnest, it would be pretty difficult to screw up. Playing now at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Lansburgh Theatre in Washington D.C., the show is rib tickling and stylishly impeccable.

The story revolves around two handsome young men named Algernon and John, who both pull off a ruse to win the women they want by renaming themselves both Earnest because their ridiculously shallow paramours pretty much refuse to date anyone not named Earnest.

As if that premise weren't wacky enough, throw in one of theater's most classic characters, Lady Bracknell, and you've got yourself a Monty Python or a Fawlty Towers or a Saturday Night Live of social commentary (and plenty of trivial nitpicking, which is often the best social commentary) for the Victorian set.

I have some concerns about the show, which runs for a couple more weeks.

Sian Phillips, who was once married to Peter O'Toole, plays Bracknell at a steady pace, dispensing advice about manners and social standards in every line. That's definitely part of the way this character should be played, but I still would have preferred a more outlandish performance. I always picture Bracknell as a larger-than-life rage of a woman, and Phillips takes the route of barely lifting a finger or turning a head.

I felt there were also some lulls in the action at times, when it almost seemed like the cast was sleepwalking through all that wit rather than pouring their full amount of energy into it.

But, again, when you've got this much impeccable source material, the audience-enjoyment level is almost a lock. Especially for anyone who hasn't seen or read this play, I highly recommend jumping on tickets while this production is thankfully showing.

**** out of ***** stars

Appropriate Brings Race Into the Discussion at Woolly

Appropriate just wrapped at Woolly Mammoth in Washington D.C. and it is exhibit B of a triumphant return – after a series of questionable productions over the past year or so – as the city’s best theater company.

Following the also-excellent Detroit (exhibit A), Appropriate delves into comedic drama, with black playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins examining white siblings gathering with their families in Arkansas to determine what to do with their deceased father’s hoarded belongings in his decrepit mansion.

Wild child Frank (played with Stanley Kuwalski-like furor by Tim Getman), Bo (a Jack Nicholson-like, cell-phone addicted, big-bucks New Yorker), and nasty racist-like-her father Toni (the always-excellent Deborah Hazlett) discover possessions in their father’s house that lead them to confront whether their family has a history that includes KKK involvement.

The fact that Jacobs-Jenkins is able to keep the play from turning overly dark is a testament to his writing talent and gives Appropriate the stunning power to – hopefully – further our societal conversations about race and equity.

****1/2 out of *****

Detroit Brings Entertainment Back to a Recently Wobbly Woolly Mammoth

As long-time season-ticket holders at Woolly Mammoth, we've been increasingly disenchanted with the company's choices of productions.

That said, the acting has never been a particular problem. And now that Woolly has a script to match the talent of its performers, we may be back onto something: hopefully the best contemporary theater in Washington D.C.

Detroit roared into town promising a timely statement on our economically-depleted and culturally bereft country, where we can't get healthcare, global warming, education, or any number of essentials right. And much like the end-times fiction of Tom Perrotta, it delivers.

Newest Woolly members (and good friends) Tim Getman and Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey play people married to other spouses. Tim is part of the couple Mary and Ben, who have agreed to a situation where Mary is the breadwinner while laid-off Ben gets his website up and running for his new idea of a company. It appears the darkest thing about them is Mary's propensity to drink a little too much.

Gabriela plays the female in Sharon and Kenny, the wild couple that has moved in next door. She really steals the show with her emotionally-charged and looney treasties of life and how to live it. She is simply floored that she and Kenny are getting to know their neighbors, for instance.

The Woolly is taken over for this show by a BBQ grill and cornhole in the lobby, a totally different stage setup, and loud and large set production. The show, as it reaches a crescendo by its finale, is equally boisterous.

Thankfully, it appears the old Woolly may be back. Don't miss Detroit.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Wiener Sausage's Website Gets the Fat Trimmed

Thanks to my co-playwright, Dan Sullivan, the Wiener Sausage: The Musical! website has been revised. Although there was more there before, this nicely trims some of the excess fat.

We hope to add more original comedy bits through the introduction of a blog on the site, as well as more video, photos, and music, so check back often.

As the site says, The Wiener will, um, rise again!!!

Remington the Christmas Mouse Offers Promising Holiday Tale from D.C. Author

Nothing surprises me anymore with D.C.'s renaissance man Dan Sullivan. That may be because I spent 5 years writing Wiener Sausage: The Musical! with him.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be pleasantly surprised. His latest work takes a detour from his stop-and-start blog, his non-profit leadership, his masterful on-stage storytelling, and this past weekend's zany turn at Chief Ike's Mambo Room in Adams Morgan as the world's leading "vajazzler" (don't ask).

It's a children's holiday book called Remington the Christmas Mouse. This story, much like Wiener Sausage (some might say), is a little raw but has a lot of promise.

The premise is creative: The star has fallen off the top of the Green Family's Christmas tree and without it being set properly in place to rise up the chimney and into the sky to light the way to the Green's house for Santa, the family will have to make due without a Christmas.

Enter Remington, an ornament who lives near the bottom of the tree. He realizes the star needs to make it back to the top of the tree but he also knows that the tree's hierarchical cliques of ornaments (the best and prettiest ones get to have all the fun at the top) will make this a treacherous and near impossible journey. He recruits a couple of other bottom-of-the-tree outcasts, a bear and a clock, who help him navigate upwards.

The story is great and captivating. My recommendation, however, is that Remington would work better as a shorter children's book with lots more illustration from Kate Sullivan Nelson. Also, in the Amazon Kindle version I read, there were a dozen or so errors (where words were misspelled or misplaced), so that should be cleaned up. Finally, I'm not sure all the talk of Remington and his pals clearly being inferior because they are not as good-looking as the top-of-the-tree dwellers works for a children's book, where inclusivity and diversity are qualities worth reinforcing for young children. I would say there could be a better (and perhaps even funnier) way to highlight the social differences of the various ornaments.

A lot of promise from Mr. Sullivan is displayed in this book, and "children's storyteller" is clearly yet another side of of this artist that is well worth exploring further.

**** out of ***** stars

God of Carnage Throws Our Manners Out the Window

My buddy Tim Getman stepped into one of his biggest roles yet with the excellent God of Carnage, which just wrapped up a very successful run at the Everyman Theater in Baltimore.

Yasmina Reza wrote the play in French and it's been translated to English and performed all over the country. Its popularity makes sense. The story takes the excruciating plot of two couples getting together to discuss their sons' playground fight. We know this can't possibly go as well as the well-intentioned parents think it will. We're just lucky the play only lasts about 75 minutes because the couples would have definitely killed each other if it went any longer.

The pacing of the Baltimore production was top notch, and the four stars had me laughing steadily throughout. The story is also very compelling, as each person shows the ugly side of how we all think we're right most of the time when, in fact, who's to say who's right.

I'm curious to also see the film version, called Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and featuring a powerhouse cast of Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, and Kate Winslet.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

You For Me For You. How About None of Them?

I saw You For Me For You a couple of weeks ago at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington DC and almost immediately forgot the details of the play's content. So reviewing this now is mildly daunting.

But what I do remember is that it was about North Korea, which is, of course, an endlessly fascinating and mysterious place. Unfortunately, instead of taking any chances or being truly interesting, the show stuck to the script that North Koreans think Americans are the crazy ones and, conversely, their fearless leader has them set on the correct course.

Two sisters decide to escape from the country and their miserable lives, but the sister that is starving and unhealthy decides she can't leave. The other sister makes it to the U.S. and embarks on a relatively happy new life. She drops it all, however, as things reach a high point and returns to North Korea to reunite with her sister.

Sounds interesting, actually. But the story plods, the characters aren't particularly interesting, and the lack of chances taken by playwright Mia Chung makes it puzzling that this production seems to be so successful

I've been complaining about Woolly Mammoth's shows for a while now, and I really miss the stuff that once made this theater DC's best. Could it be that theater in general just kinda stinks these days?

*** out of ***** stars

Photograph by Scott Suchman

Two Takes on Cirque du Soleil in Washington DC and Baltimore

My favorite part of Totem was the bowl-flipping unicycle girls.

Cirque du Soleil has always been on my bucket list of things to do. I finally got the chance yesterday to see its Totem show under the big top by National Harbor in DC.

It was certainly enjoyable, and most of the feats performed really made you marvel at how humans could do those things, but I can't say I was floored quite as much as I thought I would be.

My main beefs: the story of apes evolving into cavemen and into modern humans was mindless, the Italian stereotype character repeating pizza, mamma mia, and eyeyiyi over and over was borderline offensive, and many of the skits went on too long.

Perhaps this is just one of the lesser shows in the Cirque series. I give it *** out of ***** stars. For a more appreciative take, my sister-in-law Madeline Comoglio wrote a tremendous take on a recent show in Baltimore and how she enjoyed it with her daughter Julia. Here's and excerpt and you can read the entire article at (cool) progeny.

A date night with my 6-year-old daughter sounded like the perfect evening before she started school next week … and perfect it WAS!

Back track a few years ago: I decided as a Mom I was going to stop giving my kids traditional gifts for special occasions (toys to add to their pile of toys they don’t play with, clothes they beg for but refuse to actually wear – you know where I’m going with this), and I would give them the gift of an experience. Since then I’ve had many Mother-Daughter dates with my Julia. We’ve done the countless Disney on Ices, a day at the art museum, The Lion King at the Hippodrome (amazing!) and, most recently, the American Idol Concert. I have to say that our date to Dralion is now at the very top of the list – right up there with the Lion King. A must-see experience!

The acts in Dralion are none like you’ve ever seen. The talent is beyond what you can imagine, the costumes are exquisite, and the music and orchestra are enchanting – you feel like you are watching a Broadway production, a ballet, a circus, a thrill show, a symphony, and an opera all at once.

It was an absolutely pleasure from start to finish. Honestly the perfect family treat!

Pop Culture Roundup: Hunger Games, Girls, Wilco, Mr. Burns

I guess I've just been having too much fun this summer at my new job, but rankings on my blog of my pop-culture intake have suffered in the past month. Apologies, dear readers. We'll just have to take a quick roundup/catch-up.


The Hunger Games: I read this back in early June when I was vacationing on the Outer Banks. True beach reading. It's a formulaic story, written in a truly sophomoric style and voice. Needless to say, I couldn't put it down. Author Suzanne Collins takes unforgettable heroine Katniss Everdeen through a survivalist battle worthy of the best reality-TV plot lines.
***1/2 out of ***** stars

Girls: So far, I've made it through the first 8 of 10 season-one episodes. This is another can't-put-down pleasure. The HBO series takes us deep into the not-so-deep minds of the 20-something generation, barely surviving, arguably employed, and down-and-out in New York City. Lena Dunham brilliantly leads the cast of aimless youngsters through a version of 90210 with a seriously funny and edgy edge.

***** out of ***** stars


Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play: My season tickets at DC's Woolly Mammoth have been good to me over the years. And I was super-excited going into this season, with an apocalyptic (fun!) theme coursing through every production. But this has been a real let-down of a year. I think Woolly is losing its way by, if possible, trying just a little too hard to be creative and different. The second act, the actors, and the premise are all fairly strong in Mr. Burns. It's several decades into the future and the only culture left among the survivors of a global collapse is the memory of The Simpsons. But the story is often sooo slow and convoluted, and it fails to shed insight into the Simpsons' episode that the actors discuss. A real pop-culture miss.
*1/2 out of ***** stars

Wilco: The band's recent performance at Wolftrap in Vienna, Virginia was another in a long line of great shows I've witnessed (I saw the first of a two-night stand there). Nels Cline added new guitar solos that displayed his increasing prowess as the greatest rock player alive. And the shifting styles keep multiplying for Wilco, which started as an alt-country band, and now often sounds like something between Radiohead, Billy Bragg, The Beatles, and Sonic Youth. Speaking of Sonic Youth, that band's guitarist, Lee Ranaldo, opened and, like his new album, was spectacularly catchy.****1/2 out of ***** stars

Civilization Threatens to Bring Down Woolly Mammoth's Season of Apocalypse

Woolly Mammoth shows are almost always between really good and near-perfect. But Civilization (All You Can Eat), whose run ended last night at the downtown DC venue, is off-the-charts, unexpectedly bad.

I'm not one to hold absurdism against anyone or anything. But this play, which features fine acting performances, simply has a script that prevents the audience from constructing any rationale whatsoever for caring about the characters.

Civilization is about how individuals have odds stacked against them to make it in this world. Sarah Marshall is one of the great regulars of Woolly shows, and here she plays "Big Hog," a fat, all-knowing pig.

The person-conquering mindset of her character, which is creatively costumed, has been done before in classic novels like Animal Farm and Watership Down. It's not clear why we need another riff from this perspective on the cruelty of mankind. I actually think the plot line of Big Hog taking us on the journey to escape the slaughterhouse and make something (or other) of itself could have been quite interesting if something original and exciting resulted from it.

The script by Jason Grote, a writer for NBC's Smash, is just not funny. It's not illuminating in any way. I'm not even sure it's trying to be "deep" in any way. If it is, it fails miserably. The attempt at weirdness in the changeovers is just pathetic and uncomfortable - so absurd that it lacks absurdity. It's certainly clear why the play is 100 minutes with no intermission. At least half the audience would have left, if the comments made all around me were any measure.

A big misstep for Woolly, and one that will hopefully be redeemed with the next show of this season, which, with its theme of the apocalypse, has been otherwise wonderful.

* out of ***** stars

Second City Ramps Up the Absurd at Woolly Mammoth with Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies

If you haven't been to DC's Woolly Mammoth to catch Second City's Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies, you've got one more weekend to hop to it. Actually, it's probably sold out, so good luck.

But it's sold out for good measure. This is by far the funniest show I've ever seen at DC's best theater. While the plot gets at something to do with death, mortality, fate, and civilization's impending doom, the real point of seeing this show is that it's like a classic episode of Saturday Night Live, up close and in person.

Some audience members are more up close than others. The cast starts by pretending there is a delay and technical problems, so it engages some audience members in chit chat, some of whom then get reinserted into the action as the play unfolds.

Aaron Bliden is the funniest actor of a funny bunch, especially in his absurd vignette with a burrito. Scott Montgomery is wildly creepy as a TSA agent who details the personal statistics of several surprised audience members. Maribeth Monroe, of Comedy Central's Workaholics, is hilarious as a leathery casino patron. And James Alfred does a pitch perfect Barack Obama, and even strips a little like he might in real life.

This is a great slice of entertainment, and I hope Woolly continues to go in this direction. A Bright New Boise, which preceded Spoiler Alert, also headed down this absurdist path.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

A Bright New Boise Begins An Apocalyptic Season at Woolly Mammoth

Photo by Stan Barouh

The Woolly Mammoth's new season is devoted to plays about the apocalypse. As readers of this blog know, I'm a big fan of "end days" stories, so I'm happy to be a season-ticket holder right about now.

The first offering is A Bright New Boise, which takes place mostly in a Wal-Mart-like break room at a retail store in Boise named Hobby Lobby. Will, a former member of an evangelical, cult-like church is escaping his dark past by taking a job there.

His real motive is to reconnect with his long-abandoned son, who also works at the store. But, hard as he tries to build a new life and fix his past mistakes, Will finds it hard to break out of his pattern of constantly waiting for that exact moment when the world will end.

Playwright Samuel D. Hunter's story reminds me a little of Wiener Sausage: The Musical!, my own play with writing partner Dan Sullivan. The big-box setting. The philosophical musings on corporations. The misguided characters. The end of the world. These topics are competing in a crowded field these days, so the fact that Hunter and the actors in the Woolly's production do such a great job is testament to the power of this play.

**** out of ***** stars