Animal, at Studio Theatre

Ooh nelly, yesterday was one big treat. I had a two hour lunch with a dear friend I've not seen in entirely too long and last night got to get all gussied up and head out for a night at the theatre. 

A woman (now lovely friend) I met when she attended a pickling class I taught years ago invited me to the Studio Theatre's Fall Benefit. It included dinner and drinks, the world premiere of a new play, and a sit-down with the studio's artistic director, playwright and director.

I'd not been to Studio Theatre before and really like the space. Perhaps an aesthetic nod to Studio's emphasis on contemporary theatre that doesn't shy away from edginess, the building casts a modernist look over a corner of 14th and P Streets Northwest, in Logan Circle. Painted in sleek blacks and whites with vibrant splashes of orange, Studio houses four theaters, none of which seats more than 225 people.

Last night's preview was of Animal, a play commissioned by Studio Theatre and written by British playwright, Clare Lizzimore. Studio is committed to doing its part to remedy the fact that currently, fewer than 1 in 4 produced plays are penned by women. Animal is opening now, not accidentally, during DC's Women's Voices Theater Festival, a tremendous joint effort of more than 50 DC-area theaters.

I had no sense of the play before taking my seat last night, a position I often prefer to take with theater, film and museum exhibits because too much information can bias my expectations.

As I learned during the conversation among David Muse, artistic director, Ms. Lizzimore and GT Upchurch, the director, Animal was written to be performed in Studio's black box theatre, an intimate space known as Stage 4 that can hold no more than 120 people. The play, an often-intense drama about mental illness and women, both enhanced and was strengthened by the spare, dark nature of Stage 4: the almost complete lack of set made it hard to do anything but train your eyes entirely on the actors on stage just feet from the audience.

Animal is small, a cast of six, three of whom play important but somewhat secondary characters. The lead is Rachel, incredibly well played by Kate Eastwood Norris, a gifted actress who has worked in prominent theaters in DC and beyond. Animal marks her Studio debut and does so in a big way. She has an enormous number of lines and is rarely offstage, a feat made even more challenging by there being no intermission during the play.

The lack of intermission is critically important to Animal, in my opinion, because the energy and trajectory the actors develop is never interrupted and thus never needs to be brought back up to speed. I wish Hamlet, despite its length, had omitted its intermission; the second half suffered for the break, and even Hamlet's and Gertrude's strong performances couldn't totally resuscitate the energy lost during it.

Norris' real-life husband, Cody Nickell, plays her husband, Tom, on stage in this production. He and the other male lead, Joel David Santner (who plays a doctor), were both very strong and gave us complex performances that seemed authentic and deeply human.

All six actors are American and yet used British accents masterfully. It was really striking actually. How many times have you seen famous movie stars try to carry an accent through a film and succeed? I catch accent breaks and poorly done accents all the time, and it is SO distracting. There was none of that last night, and it was impressive. 

I don't want to say more because the play is suspenseful and there is a reason for that. It's uncomfortable at times, and I like that. It's great to see a work focus in serious, unvarnished fashion on a difficult topic. A spoiler would be a tremendous disservice to an excellent work and a truly enjoyable theatrical experience.

Animal runs through October 25, so get your tickets now. 

Update: Check out this fantastic review by Charles Isherwood of the NY Times. He attended some of the Women's Voices Theater Festival and declares Animal the finest play he saw!

Hamlet, at the Barbican with Benedict, part 2

I'm so glad so many of you enjoyed the first part of my review of Hamlet. Thanks for letting me know!

Part 2

Now, recognizing that Ophelia is not written as the most appealing character, I found myself hoping that Siân Brooke would, in some way, redeem her. Would make me sympathetic to Ophelia's withering, whiny anxiety which ultimately does her in.

Brooke did not do this. In fact, I found her Ophelia so irritating that I kept wishing she'd drown herself sooner rather than later. One must wait until sometime post-intermission for her to throw in the towel on life. 

Brooke's voice is both trembling and somewhat nasal, and her body language and gait seem affected rather than remotely true. At times she's dressed like some sort of Victorian and at others, in a cardigan and capris, you wonder if she's just jumped from a J.Crew catalog. Her role is fairly limited in this production, and for that I was grateful.

The wonderful Ciarán Hinds played Claudius, often well but inconsistently. His primary soliloquies in the first half were excellent, but his energy in the role seemed to wax and wane. I wasn't sure if that was his doing or a directorial misstep, but in either case felt he needed to maintain and emote a greater sense of murderous treachery as the end of the play neared.

The men playing Polonius, Laertes and Horatio did a fine job as did Anastasia Hille who gave us a wonderful Gertrude. 

the Hamlet stage in the second half

One of the most under-reported, impressive and exciting elements of this Hamlet is the stage. The set designer is utterly brilliant, and each alteration and the myriad uses of the main decor -walls, the staircase and balcony, the main hallway, the piano- added tremendously to the overall experience of the performance.

My sister subtly swiped this picture as we were leaving the theatre. In it you can see the enormous mounds and slides of rocks and pebbles that depict the utter destruction the second half marches toward. Ophelia marches barefoot down the dark hall, as if called to the light at the end. She turns there, and we know that the river awaits.

Hamlet and Laertes duel in the middle of the stage, Gertrude dies on front stage left and Cladius at the bottom of the grand staircase.

The whole stage is used all the time, and the lighting, colors and decor are all exceptionally well considered and executed. 

Turner's Hamlet isn't perfect. Though we were rapt for the entire first half -which is really quite something given that it runs for nearly two hours- both my sister and I felt the momentum the actors had gained dissipated during intermission and never fully returned. It made us wish we'd all powered straight through. And I do so wish Claudius had seemed more menacing and Ophelia more likeable.

All that said, it was a theatrical experience of a lifetime, and I remain thrilled that I was here. 

At the gift shop after the curtain closed, the cashier said she'd heard Benedict would be signing autographs outside the Silk Street stage door. My sister and I literally paid and ran, hoofing it to fan line in our shirts and heels. We saw Ciarán Hinds not two feet from us and Anastasia Hille just further than that.

And then the grand master emerged, and I was not six feet from him and I saw his hair and immediately said, "It's Benedict. Just look at that marvelous hair." 

That's all I got but it'll do me.

benedict's hair is just in there

Hamlet, at the Barbican with Benedict at the helm: Part 1

As y'all probably know, I have a full-fledged, adult woman crush on Benedict Cumberbatch. Yes, I think he can wear a suit like no one else, is full of class in a way too rare today, and has hauntingly sexy eyes. He plays slightly-mad genius like it's his job but is as capable with comedic wonk and suave intelligentsia. He is the perfect Sherlock. I also think he'd be a fucking blast to hang at pub with. He is good-hearted and a feminist whilst also hard-working, well-educated and refreshingly, appealingly understated. In short, he seems damn near perfect, and so my tickets to last-night's showing of Hamlet were treasures to me like few others. 

It is really something to see magnificent theater firsthand. To see a person you feel you have some sense of transform so completely as if to disappear, birthing another character or being whom you get to know for just a little while.

Julia Roberts was really fantastic in Pretty Woman but since has been, for the most part, Julia Roberts playing someone else. I always feel like I'm watching Julia Roberts try to pull the wool over my eyes by donning a good costume. I am never tricked. 

Daniel Day-Lewis, on the other hand, is never Daniel Day-Lewis. He is always Cecil or Abe or Christy or Tomas. 

I do feel that Benedict has, despite his singular looks, the ability to change as completely. To transmogrify, really. He is a brilliant, perhaps drug-addled sociopathic detective. He is a maybe-gay intelligence agent and a wildly uncomfortable man in love with his half-sister. He is, with slightly more of a stretch, the enigmatic founder of WikiLeaks, and now, with no stretch at all, he is a Danish prince.

And so, in long form short, a review.

It should be admitted now that I am not a fan of Shakespeare. Yes, I loved Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film production of Romeo and Juliet. Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting and Milo O'Shea were perfectly cast and the movie has stayed with me clearly through today, even though I first saw it many years ago. I've seen it many times since but not in ages. 

Shakespeare's insults are unsurpassably brilliant, and more linguistic tidbits than I'll ever really know were born by his pen, but his works are somewhat an effort for me and long-winded ones at that. A fault that may be, but it's the truth.

I made this pilgrimage to London and the Barbican and Hamlet for one reason only: Benedict.

The Barbican Centre is an odd place. It's like Star Wars met a Communist-era architect and they joined hands with Kafka and planned a theatre. Lots of concrete and elusive elevators and almost zero helpful signage. It's huge and yet can feel too small. Our row of seats, for example, sat only six, and we were ushered through a narrow wooden door that seemed crafted from a thick wood plank and that sealed shut behind us. As if we were on a submarine.

The stage is enormous: deep, tall, wide. Impressive and it leaves much room for real exploration of it. It was fronted by weirdly-70s gold lamé sheets. I have no idea what they're actually constructed of, but they lent a real disco vibe to the already conflicted aesthetic.

view from my seat of the stage, still covered by the curtain

Lyndsey Turner, director of this production of Hamlet (and just the third female recipient of the Lawrence Olivier award), had such a spectacular and fresh vision for this show. As you may have heard, the "To be, or not to be..." soliloquy was initially moved to the open of the play; by last night's performance, it had been moved back to Act III. Wherever it was, it worked. The willingness to move these famed lines is brave, and even though the change didn't stick, it still serves to highlight all the modernization, shifts and reinterpretations Turner ventured to make. 

Though many characters dressed in costumes reflective of old-school Danish royalty, Hamlet's outfits (and those of his peers: Ophelia, Horatio and such) were current: hoodies, backpacks, sneakers. It didn't distract at all but rather helped bring the story, still so obviously of another time, to an easier understanding via the present. An angsty prince in modern attire is, perhaps, even more accessible than he might be when buttoned behind uniforms, crests, epaulets and the like. 

Indeed, I found Cumberbatch's Hamlet to be totally understandable. He is angry, betrayed, grossed out and grief-stricken. He's scared and shocked and desperate to exact revenge. This Hamlet never struck me as whiny or spoiled; no, he seemed to understand himself well. To be cognizant of the "inky cloak" that weighted his shoulders too often and why. The burden not only of this understanding but also of the realization that "if one doesn't know what follows death, there is a chance that the unknown is worse than life was" is tremendous, and Cumberbatch negotiated that vexation beautifully.

If you've only seen Benedict in films, you might not know what a talented comedic actor he is. He's downright hilarious at times: quick, obviously very smart, willing to play the fool, willing to be silly and enjoy it. And he ably teased out, as Hamlet, the many instances in which madness is funny. In which the only thing that can tame grief is finding levity in the situation that's caused it. 

We laughed out loud many times during the show, and these moments were real snatches of relief during an otherwise intense few hours. 

It must also be said that Benedict expends huge amounts of mental and physical energy during the play, and as he walked offstage after the last ovation and bow, I could only imagine his exhaustion. I believe he must have also been exhilarated by the experience, of acting such a vaunted role in front of sell-out crowds on the London stage. In concert, the fatigue and thrill must wear after a while and when the run ends in late October, I hope he can catch some rest.

Ok, I must get to bed, so Part 2 tomorrow, but as a teaser, I'll let you know that I waited my the stage exit and saw...Benedict's hair!!!!!!!!!