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

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

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

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