(L-R) Eric Hissom, Chris Genebach, Todd Scofield, Richard Ruiz, and Dan Crane in Cyrano at Folger Theatre, through June 5, 2011. Photo credit: Carol Pratt

If you’re expecting to see Folger Theatre do the traditional over-three-hours-five-acts-cast-of-hundreds production of Cyrano (and yes, having been brought up on Derek Jacobi’s brilliant RSC Cyrano, I was), forget it. You don’t need the caffeine, it’s already built into this lightning fast adaptation by Michael Hollinger and director Aaron Posner. Nine actors play multiple roles over two acts in a translation that may lose some of the poetry but none of the verve.

Or rather, the panache.

Thanks to its constant reinvention in popular culture ever since its debut in 1897, the plot of Edmond Rostand’s play about the swashbuckling 17th-century soldier with an enormous nose and a heart to match is well known enough that slicing and dicing the text isn’t viewed as too sacrilegious. Hollinger’s new translation tosses the Alexandrine couplets in favor of a less formal tone, and the cuts he and Posner made streamline the action to its most essential elements. Sure, I missed a few of my favorite bits and the lusciousness of the Anthony Burgess translation, but that didn’t mar my enjoyment. This adaptation is whistling sharp, like a rapier. Or as a friend put it afterwards, “It’s the Cliff Notes version… if Cliff Notes were actually really good.”

What is the beating, raging heart of this production? Eric Hissom’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Completely believable as both a scathing poet and a dashing fighter, his self-loathing whips him on to acts of self-destructive bravery and selfless love. Battling a hundred knights on the bridge? I bet he could’ve handled a thousand.  Continue reading →

Jenny Jules as Mama Nadi and Rachael Holmes as Sophie in Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater’s production of Ruined April 22-June 5, 2011. Photo by Joan Marcus

There are 683 seats in the Fichandler theater at Arena Stage. The house was packed for Ruined, playwright Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning play about the atrocities inflicted on women during the Second Congo War (1998-2003). They laughed, they cried, they applauded. They applauded a lot. And then they left. I heard many say “phenomenal” as they exited the theater.

683 seats. In the program, production dramaturg Amrita Mangus notes that “in some villages, as many as 90 percent of the women have been raped.” Eight organizations are listed in the program, including CARE and V-Day, to encourage the audience to act upon what they’ve seen.

I couldn’t help wondering how many audience members would get involved afterwards. There was so much laughter, some of it perhaps nervous, through the first act of the play. So much applause at the end. Would they leave and go back to their comfortable lives, telling others “go see this play!” but not “go get involved!” Would I? There’s a danger with political theater. It allows us to feel involved by the mere act of watching.

Lynn Nottage conducted extensive interviews throughout the Congo with survivors of the brutality of mass rape. Their voices come through authentically in Ruined, and it’s in these moments – especially the monologue by Salima (a riveting Donnetta Lavinia Grays) that opens the second act – that the play is at its most powerful. Continue reading →