Visual Arts

Ari Post • August 15, 2013

The first flecks of yellow are dotting the trees around Washington, a seasonal indicator that, among other things, signals the arrival of the fall arts season. The galleries around 14th Street, between U Street and Logan Circle, exhibit works by new and emerging local artists as well as those of national and international renown. The monumental quality of work brings together painting, sculpture, photography, installation and multimedia into a color show that rivals our annual foliage display. These galleries, all within a 15-minute walk of each other, represent the best of D.C.’s local art culture. Here’s what’s coming up.

Hamiltonian Gallery

“Heritage Aesthetic” is a new body of work by artist Amy Boone-McCreesh, which runs through Oct. 13, with an artist’s talk on Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. Exploring the dialogue between painting and sculpture, Boone-McCreesh sources a variety of materials, incorporating fabric, hand-made paper, rope and fur, to investigates the visual language of ceremonies and rites of passage while exploring themes of transformation and transcendence. Her found object installations are a pastiche of cultural heritage, adopting material cues from tribal ephemera, Middle Eastern ornamentation, and American Indian vestments. Her deconstructed global aesthetic appropriates the embellishment associated with celebrations from across the globe, speaking broadly to human accomplishment, customs and the universal tradition of decoration.

Gallery Plan B

Sheep Jones (on display through Oct. 14) is
a locally based artist, who operates a studio
out of the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Va. Working in oil and encaustic, her paintings, which look both timeless and fresh, transport us to a different place and state of mind—they are in themselves lessons in how to look at and interact with the world. Cavernous mysteries of color
and environment grow in the shadow cast by a worn, tin-roofed shack. A community of glowing, entwined root systems exposes the playful source of life beneath a garden. And though her work playfully celebrates of life, there is a graceful stillness that leaves you with a sense of calm, as if all is right and as it should be.

Hemphill Fine Arts

Hemphill opens its fall exhibition season with “William Christenberry:
Assembled Memory,” on view through Oct. 27. This retrospective of sorts
spans over 50 years and stretches seamlessly across Christenberry’s wide variety of media such as drawings, objects, photographs and sculpture. The work of this renowned artist is held in the
collections of the Hirshhorn, The Phillips Collection and MoMA, to name a few, and his exhibit at Hemphill brings together a diverse group of work from the earliest days of his career rooted in abstract expressionism, his mid-career, which speaks to the wonderment and pathos for the passage of time, and his more recent work, which expresses undercurrents of good and evil within our architectural heritage.

Adamson Gallery

Through Oct. 27, Adamson Gallery will host the work of London-based artist Karen Knorr. The
collaged images in her exhibit, “India Song,” insert animals into large format digital photographs of interiors in
various palaces, mausoleums and holy sites in India. The series takes inspiration from Indian mythology, depicting scenarios that are at once otherworldly and hyperreal, the lush and surreal images achieving feats of stunning, exotic beauty. In “Edge of the Forest, Agravena, Agra,” two tigers lie relaxed and aware at the entry to the Taj Mahal. Their presence defamiliarizes our knowledge of the Taj Mahal as a contemporary tourist attraction, moving the space out of the present and into a mythical past. The viewer becomes a traveler, not through space or time, but through worlds.

Project 4 Gallery

“TOIL” is an exhibition of recent work by British artist, Jill Townsley, in her first solo exhibition in the United States, at Project 4 Gallery through Oct. 13. Her work examines the role of repetition in life, through sculpture, installation, drawings and video. Through tedious, rote tasks like scribbling, counting
and stacking, and using materials as banal as cash register till rolls and hairgrips, Tillman transforms these objects into something greater. These gestures are the exploration of industrial, workmanlike environments—the way a factory operates or a clock’s gears turn. There is a piece of paper almost entirely black. Accompanying
it is a video that shows Townsley scribbling manically on a white sheet of paper, and we watch as the paper and her lines become lost in time. [gallery ids="101010,135180,135166,135177,135172" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • June 25, 2013

People in the culture-noticing business often talk about Washington, D.C., treasures, hidden or obvious.  They mean old, historical homes passed into museum-stage, museums in our midst of which we and, therefore, tourists are often unaware, as well as the artists or performers of national and international renown who live in our midst. 

This sort of thing—treasures in our midst that sometimes go, if not unheralded, perhaps at times under-appreciated—is especially true in Georgetown and its surrounding neighborhoods, place historic and cultured by nature and fact.  

The occasion of the launching of an exhibition of four sculptures by John Dreyfuss at the Kreeger Museum on Foxhall Road  was a kind of serendipitous event which brought members of the Georgetown community, the city’s art community and the folks at the Kreeger, including family members, together.   The show is meant to showcase  the three pieces by Dreyfuss—who is represented by George Hemphill of Hemphill Fine Arts, which was and remains one of the gallery jewels of the city—and the addition of the Kreeger’s reflecting pool as a new exhibition space.

The Kreeger began as the home for David and Carmen Kreeger, designed by prize-winning, much-honored architect Philip Johnson in 1963. It opened its doors as the Kreeger Museum in 1994 under director Judy Greenberg. It sits along upscale Foxhall Road in a changing area where developments have sprouted in recent years. Far from most of the city’s museums, especially along the mall and downtown, it still casts a large shadow with its incomparable collection of paintings and sculptures and works of art, including an inviting hallway that is a kind of pathway of the career of Pablo Picasso.

The addition of a reflection pool for exhibition purposes is a perfect fit for the Kreeger’s existing sculpture terrace and sculpture Garden. Also fitting are the three pieces by Dreyfuss from his “Inventions” series in their scale and intent, their execution as clean, bold fabrications that inhabit both the living now and the coming future in a primal way, as if a clarion call.

Dreyfuss himself, the holder of a world reputation as a sculptor who uses modern materials and thinks and creates in an epic way, is also a long-time treasure in the flesh, so to speak. His work has consistently impressed for years, including those years when he worked in his studio at Halcyon House, something of a historic treasure as well. Dreyfuss has since moved out of Georgetown to the new condos of Southwest D.C. 

The exhibition opening was a kind of showcase for both the Kreeger Museum and sculptor Dreyfuss along with the idea of cultural leadership and cultural treasures—the art as well as the artists among us—on full display in our midst.  Long-time Georgetowners showed up,  members of the Kreeger family, writers and national leaders to bask in the beautiful setting which off-and-on-again showers and storms actually managed to enhance.  Art is not so easily diminished or subdued.

The sculptures of Dreyfuss—three more will be added in honor of the Kreeger Museum’s 20th anniversary next year—are the kind of work that demands and suggests reviewing on different moods, on different days from different angles. 

The Kreeger Museum itself—bolstered no doubt by the occasion—is the kind of place which makes you reluctant to leave.  You want to convene with the lone Van Gogh, with the many Picassos, with the Henry Moore sculpture or the large head inside a window and think about music played at eveningtide here.  

In this way, the day and the night became a treasure at the museum, too.

John Dreyfuss’s “Inventions” runs through May 1, 2015, at the Kreeger Museum, 2401 Foxhall Road, N.W. — www.KreegerMuseum.org. [gallery ids="101301,150060,150016,150055,150049,150024,150045,150031,150038" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • June 20, 2013

Occasionally, an art gallery comes along that helps define a neighborhood’s culture. When Norman Parish saw a “Gallery Space for Rent” sign in Georgetown’s Canal Square one Saturday afternoon in 1990, he did not know that gallery was going to be his.
He and his now wife Gwen, who runs the Parish Gallery with him today, were visiting One Step Down, the legendary local jazz club on Pennsylvania Avenue (now closed). It was their frequent haunt since Norman had moved to Washington in 1988 for work at an engineering firm.

He had always been an artist—in Chicago, he worked alongside many of the founding members of the AfriCOBRA art movement, including Jeff Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarrell. He helped paint The Wall of Respect in 1967, an outdoor mural on the South Side of Chicago by a group of artists from the Organization of Black American Culture. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks even wrote a poem about it, titled “The Wall.”

Norman long had aspirations to open a gallery, and when he saw this opportunity, he took it. The Parish Gallery opened its doors in June of 1991, marking the beginning of hundreds of exhibitions and artists the Gallery would host over the years.

In the beginning, Norman did not sleep. “He would get up at 3 a.m., get off at 3 p.m., and come to the gallery for the rest of the night to open the doors for Georgetown’s evening.

“It’s because I found out how many artists there were that needed support,” says Norman. “They were good, really good. But they needed someone to help get their work out into the world.”

“At first, a lot of the artists we featured I knew from art school,” he says. “But around 93 and 94, other artists just started coming to me. These were artists missing opportunities because nobody was looking out for them, nobody was out there promoting their work.”

It was also important for him to continue his work in Chicago, promoting the work of artists from the African diaspora alongside artists from other walks of life.

“It was his passion,” says Gwen. “He was an artist, and he understood the difficulties artists encounter in trying to get their work out.”

“Norman never used his gallery as a showcase for his own work,” says Alla Rogers, a friend, neighbor, and owner of Alla Rogers Gallery. “His business was dedicated to focusing on underappreciated groups of artists.”

Over the years, The Parish Gallery has exhibited works by artists from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa and Morocco, alongside those from Greece, Turkey, Brazil, Spain and France. He forges Eastern, Western and African traditions with a harmony and ease of diversity that most gallerists work their entire lives achieve.

He has had success with his own artwork as well—he was selected as part of a traveling exhibition with the Smithsonian, “Seeing Jazz,” in the late 1990s.

In May of last year, a malignant tumor was discovered in Norman’s brain, and he underwent surgery immediately to have it removed. It has been a slow road to recovery in the following months, but as he points out, “I’ve been having more good days than bad days, and things are looking up again.”

After taking it easy for the second half of a year, the Gallery’s current exhibit is a “welcome back” of sorts. The current group show, “Through the Years,” features over 50 gallery artists that show Norman’s ability and range as a curator. It encapsulates the effect he has had on the Georgetown community and the people he and Gwen have brought together since the Gallery’s founding.
“And there’s more to come,” he says. “This isn’t even half. I have more artists than I can actually show, and I plan on hosting a follow-up exhibit in the near future.”

Norman is a true American artist, and The Parish Gallery represents the great artistic breadth that Washington has to offer. And we have confidence that he and Gwen will continue their artistic mission for many years to come.

Ari Post •

There is more to see as spring rears its head than most people can take in, artistically speaking, let alone the blossoming outdoor wonderland. As our spirits and energy thaw after preserving itself through the winter, it is an all-encompassing blessing of April to be suddenly surrounded by great beauty at ever corner. Within Washington’s art galleries, the work is vibrant, robust and very much alive, bolstering the rejuvenated spirits of the city. The galleries on Book Hill, nestled together on Wisconsin at the top of Georgetown, have arranged a collection of unforgettable exhibits to welcome in the spring season. Here is a look at what they are offering.

Addison/Ripley Fine Art
1670 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Through April 27, Addison/Ripley will be featuring the work of Amy Linn, an artist whose distinctive, vibrant and ambitious drawings balance precision with an elegant chaos. The works explore cultural diffusion, inspired by time Linn spent in Singa- pore and Russia. Her pencil marks fly and flare on pristine white surfaces, constellations of lines and points that pulsate like microscopic organisms or the Northern Lights. The growing complexity of her compositions and her deep commitment to her task, expanding weaves of tiny points of colored pencil in exuberant arrangements, can barely be contained on the paper. There is a lightness and balance that grounds her work, that can only be described as a soul. www.AddisonRipleyFineArt.com

Robert Brown Gallery
1662 33rd St., NW
Robert Brown Gallery’s current exhibit, “Window on Weimar,” on?display through May 24, includes etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, drypoints and char- coal drawings by some of the most renowned German artists of the early 20th century: Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Kathe Kollwitz, Lea Grundig, Max Pechstein and William Sharp. Many German artists in the 1920s valued content above form, using printmaking as an expression of immediacy, intimacy and a wider means of communica- tion with their audience. With the rapidly evolving political landscape as a backdrop, each artist offered their unique view of the human experience as effected by the Weimer era in Germany after WWI. With first hand experience of the destruction and suffering of war, artists in the Weimar Republic became distinguishable as advocates for social justice in addition to artistic creativity. www.RobertBrownGallery.com

Susan Calloway Fine Art
1643 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Causality is the relationship between events, where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first. This concept is explored within the boundaries of color and space in Washington-based artist Shaun Rabah’s exhibition Color Causality, through May 4 at Susan Calloway Fine Art. Each painting is composed of minimal layers of color, each a response to its predecessor, in an overall pursuit of beauty and purity. To truly see one of Rabah’s pieces, one must look beyond the surface layer to the numerous sub-layers and textures that together compose the final vision of the artist. In every piece, it is his intention to expose the life-cycle of each work, from the first brush stroke to its final manifestation. There will be an opening reception for the exhibit on April 12. www.CallowayArt.com

Heiner Contemporary
1675 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Heiner Contemporary is exhibiting “Concrete Abstract,” a group exhibition curated by Matthew Smith that explores the confluence of abstraction with the everyday, through April 20. Featuring work by a group of nine artists, the works in the show cultivate?a non-representational?visual language that?emerges from familiar?ready-made objects,?whether they are found?or alluded to compositionally. These ultimately balance the functional with the abstract, pushing and pulling out of context with the real, concrete world. Highlights include the Joseph Albers-like, neatly color-woven paintings of Jeremy Flick, and the real and suggested quilted surfaces of Matthew Smith and Becca Kallem. There is a discussion with the curator on April 20, open to the public. www.HeinerContemporary.com

Maurine Littleton Gallery
1667 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Maurine Littleton Gallery has been exhibiting and represent-?ing leading contemporary artists in glass, metal and ceramics?since 1984. Their current exhibited work includes the work of Washington-based artist Drew Storm Graham, whose mixed media paintings composed on stacked layers of wood extend off the walls by as much as a foot. Inspired by the countercultural movements of graffiti and tattoo art, his work aims to embody the bold and impetuous attitudes rooted in these cultures. Despite their unruly exterior, the artist notes, this type of art is itself impermanent and ephemeral, existing within a frame of time before its canvas is painted over by city officials or deceased. By creating a solid three-dimensional reality, Graham’s art reinvents its subject with physical permanence. www.LittletonGallery.com
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Gary Tischler • March 25, 2013

The more distant the recent past becomes, the more it tends to appear in our immediate rear view mirrors.

In America, we often suffer from selective memory, bracketed by convenient decades, or categories—Reagan’s Eighties, the transforming, revolutionary 1960s, the conforming, placid Leave-it-to-Beaver-disrupted-by-Elvis Eisenhower 1950s, the Greatest Generation, WWII, the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties, and so on.

Rarely do the Seventies appear in that mirror with any intensity, and when they do, the images are thought to be grey and indistinct, the music bland or discordant, the cars too long and the gas lines longer. There’s a certain disdain and disconnect that’s accumulated about the decade, as if it was mildly depressing with signs of American decline appearing like pimples on a once confident teenagers face, it’s as if nothing much happened, and whatever happened, we’d just as soon forget about it and move into Reagan’s morning in America.

So what are all these folks doing here, many standing in line waiting to get into the National Archives last Friday?

Most of them were waiting to see the new exhibition “Searching for the Seventies, the Documentary Photography Project,” showcasing some 94 photos from about 22,000 taken by 70 photographers from 1971-1977.”

The title alone suggests that the Seventies haves gotten lost somewhere in the overcrowded American imagination which now feeds on reality shows that aren’t real, access to everything and connection to all, mostly without focus.

The documentary photography project is reminiscent of similar Depression Era efforts, including the classic James Agee/Walker Evans book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” as well as the Roosevelt era Farm Security Administration’ photography program. “In Search of the Seventies” was a project of Documerica, which in turn was funded by the new Environmental Protection Agency, it had as a goal the idea of dealing with the energy crisis, a nascent spirit of environmentalism, urban renewal, economic crisis and challenges and the role and the rights of new political and social movements and identity by women in an America whose diversity in terms of racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identity, diversity was rapidly becoming visible and active.

Put that way, the project, instigated by EPA public affairs employee and former National Geographic photo editor Gifford Hampshire and headed by National Archives curator Bruce Bustard, seems almost dry and political.

It’s anything but that—while its focus seems to be on environmental issues—it appears to have reshaped the meaning of the word environmental to include the American human landscape, the human face that reminds us of ourselves over a period of ten years that were anything but uneventful. The result—as seen in the nearly one hundred photographs—is a look at how and in what ways and where Americans lived in a changing environment—the literal one as well as the metaphoric and social one.
On the day of the exhibition’s opening last week, there were lines, and inside, the seventies crowd mixed with young professionals, people who had brought their kids late in the day, and surely many of us who saw some vestiges of our younger selves in the photographs. “Oh my god,” one woman said, “there’s my Buick Skylark”. Cars, in fact, play a large role in the exhibition—as polluters, in a massive junkyard piled like GM auto corpses on top of one another, as rusted and abandoned by the side of a road in Arizona, as sleek, long American cars as proudly displayed in front of a garage in Lakewood, Ohio.

“Searching for the Seventies” isn’t necessarily about the dangers to the environment per se—although it came about a year after the first Earth Day was held, the EPA was signed into existence law by Richard Nixon. The photographers—all working with color, all of them gifted and talented—had a broad mission to follow what they were interested, what their lens and hearts saw, or so it seems judging by the results, some of them with very specific assignments. Broad themes are also here—“Everybody is a Star”, “Ball of Confusion”, “Pave Paradise”, alongside the specific journeys Jack Corn moved through Appalachia—traveling through West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia, coal mining territory, where he photographed the miners, their plights their families, many of them suffering from black lung disease, or the dangers inherent in the grueling work they did. There are miners. There’s a pool hall. There’s the hopeful young face of Clarice Brown, 19, who worked as a secretary for the United Mine Workers in Charleston, West Virginia, the man with the red helmet and lamp in Virginia-Pocahontas Coal Company #3 close to Richlands, Virginia.

There’s John H. White, the Chicago Daily News photographer who shot images of Chicago’s black population and neighborhoods, which struggled with poverty but also exuded a new vibrancy captured by his lens.

There’s Lyntha Scott Eiler who went on assignment to Arizona, especially in the north, capturing development surges, Native American children, the effects of strip mining and the smoke from power plants.

And then there’s Tom Hubbard, who once worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer and returned to his old stomping grounds to find a little bit of the soul of 1970s America in Fountain Square, an all-purpose square and park in downtown Cincinnati, which appears not so much as a specific place but a generic American place with a fountain, benches, musicians and jugglers, lunchers and people playing chess and protesting and carrying signs, much as you might find at Freedom Plaze, Dupont Circle or Farragut Square. The clothes look different, hats are from then not now, and dresses are as short as they are now and bell bottoms are the rage among dudes.
In a section called “Everybody is a Star”, you see the emerging people who fueled some of the outbursts of change in the 1960s—protesters, a man with a t-shirt emblazoned with a USA logo, wearing tie-dyed pants, sporting a beard and muscles and a black lab puppy. You see them all, rising up, the young black couple, he in a blue suit, topped by an Afro, she in bright red dress, three women sitting outside a retirement home in South Beach, farmers keeping safe during a dust storm, migrant workers, a bright-eyed teenager in her bedroom in Meeker Colorado, a guy selling Italian Lemonade.

You don’t necessarily hear America singing.

Actually, it’s John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival or Linda Rondstadt, bawling her man out with “You’re No Good, You’re No Good”—or Carole King going on with “I feel the earth move under my feet” as you move along.

What you see is planes, trains and automobiles, people waiting in line for a Metro shuttle in Bethesda, the smoke and rust of factories, run-down neighborhood, small towns hanging on, diners and the freeways of America.

What you see in the rear view mirror is the daily rhythm of change in America, moving out of the sixties, trudging toward the eighties. What you see in this rear view mirror is a younger face, looking vaguely familiar. [gallery ids="101195,143776,143770,143743,143765,143749,143761,143755" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post • March 13, 2013

Hillyer Art Gallery
9 Hillyer Court, NW
www.ArtsAndArtists.org

Through March 29, Hillyer Art Space is hosting three exhibitions. Narciso Maisterra’s exhibit, “Passing Through the Body Without Staying,” is a testament to an emotional process of recuperation from illness via artistic creativity. In January 2011, Maisterra had an accident that affected his physical appearance. As soon as he regained the use of his right arm, he resumed painting, and the work in this show became the key to his recovery. Maisterra decided to start a series of self-portraits inspired by the ugliness and sadness he saw to create an unsympathetic image of himself. The series shows an artist using art as therapy to familiarize himself with his new face. Jungmin Park, in her exhibit “The City Stories,” portrays the relationships between cities, nature and people. She personifies both urban and natural objects and encapsulates their existence within a single memory, which she visualizes with natural and man-made objects. Garth Fry explores the psychology of isolation by creating shapes and forms that are void of applied color. He investigates this concept through his use of raw, coiled paper and glue. Visual tension is created through his use of light and shadows, further emphasizing refuge and loss of identity.

Jane Haslem Gallery
2025 Hillyer Place, NW
www.JaneHaslemGallery.com

“Endless Flowers” is a group exhibition at Jane Haslem Gallery, running through the end of April, the title of which is as pure, beautiful and evocative as the artwork it represents. From watercolors and drawings, to aquatints and engravings, the show takes the audience through a veritable botanical journey, filled with the floral beauty, natural wonder, and intimate perspectives on our daily environments in their relation to the its surrounding plant life. Two qualities that unify the works are light and delicacy, whether represented through the soft translucence of a petal, the clean and playful symmetry of potted wallflowers, or a nettled pillow of wildly blooming Queen Anne’s lace. The craftsmanship of the artists also shine—the texture of Billow Morrow Jackson’s oil painting Flowers on a Table or George Harkins’ watercolor, Berries and Bluejays, are haunting and substantial, and a wonderful compliment to the downy fragility of the sun-washed red tulips in Nancy McIntyre’s silkscreen Everett’s Front Window.

Cross MacKenzie Gallery
2026 R St., NW DC 20009

Cross Mackenzie Gallery is pleased to present “Through the Trees,” an exhibition of new paintings by Virginia Commonwealth University art professor Kurt Godwin, one of the D.C. area’s most accomplished artists. Art in America critic J.W. Mahoney, describes Kurt Godwin’s previous body of work “Philosophy of Nature” as follows: “These paintings intentionally marry three visual worlds: the plain representation of natural place and organic growth, the abstracting of conditions in physical reality according to scientific iconography, and various symbol systems that serve as analogies to the qualities and nature of a
transcendent reality.”

In this new show, “Through The Trees,” Godwin achieves that “transcendent reality” by returning to the representation and abstraction of natural place – he is painting the shimmering, hypnotic, mesmerizing light. He has shed his complex layering of symbols and scientific imagery to concentrate on the pure powerful force of the radiant sun. Godwin is a magician with paint and he wields his brush skillfully, delivering lush surfaces, animated brushstrokes and dabs of singing color. The viewer gets glimpses of a burning sunset, a reflection of a cloudless cerulean sky and a fractured, mid-day white haze.

Leafless dark tree trunks in shadow act as filters for the light that bends around their silhouettes. One gets the sense that the light would be blinding without the vertical shields that protect one’s eye’s from the harsh rays behind – while at the same time that light beckons like a stained glass window. For some, these woods are dark and threatening, the branches cage-like. For the artist and this viewer these paintings are beautiful, peaceful reminders of walks through the trees, away from the noise and danger of the world inspiring a feeling of awe in nature and sunlight – a transcendent reality.

Studio Gallery
2108 R St., NW
www.StudioGalleryDC.com

From March 27 through April 20, Studio Gallery will be featuring the work of three artists. Veronica Szalus’ work, “Down to the Wire,” is an evolving concept exhibit that explores fluidity through irregular and contrasting forms through both dimension and movement. The installation uses manipulated materials that are fragile, delicately balanced, and often porous, exploring continual nuanced shifts of form, much like our natural environments. Sculptor Brian Kirk is also inspired by natural forms, but equally by man-made objects. His metal sculptures utilize geometric shapes and forms, while his stone and glass casting are more organic. Harriet Lesser’s paintings are inspired by the manipulation of natural elements in a different way—her work explores the relationship between making art and cooking. [gallery ids="101199,143810,143804,143801" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • February 28, 2013

STILL HERE,?BUT NOT FOR LONG
Here are our selections of some eclectic, shouldn’t-miss offerings now at local theaters, which will be ending their runs in March.

Metamorphoses
I hear the word amazing all the time—but here’s something that’s truly amazing—the amazing writer-director and visionary interpreter of classic stories Mary Zimmerman’s take?on ancient myths and stories based on Ovid’s classic text. You’ll laugh, weep, be astounded and moved by this production, and maybe get wet as the production is set in and around the perimeter of a large pool full of churning, emotional water and terrific actors acting out scenes from ancient myths. No intermission, at Arena Stage’s Mead Center for American Theater through March 17.
Also at Arena Stage, and entirely different and contemporary is the applauded new play “Good People” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire which won Best Play honors from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle in its Broadway run. The production stars Johanna Day as a single mother in South Boston struggling to make ends meet, and includes Andrew Long as her long-lost boyfriend. Through March 10.

Spring Awakening
A Broadway hit musical about feverish young students in love and lust in 19th Century Germany has a rock beat, and its thumb on adolescence angst of both current and past kinds and seems a perfect play to start the Olney Theatre Center’s new 75th Anniversary season. Olney Theater artistic director Jason Loewith calls the play “effervescent, thrilling, artistically rigorous, emotionally charged and designed like nothing I’ve seen at Olney Theatre Center be- fore.” Steve Cosson directs through March 10.

The House of the Spirits
Based on the novel by famed Chilean writer Isabel Allende and directed by Jose Zayas is?a generational play in Spanish with English subtitles at the Gala Hispanic Theatre through March 10 at the National Center For the Latino Performing Arts in the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights.

The Convert
A powerful play about subjugation, colonialism and cultural identity and loss by the terrific young playwright Danai Gurira at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre is studied, emotionally and electrically charged, and features a powerhouse performance Nancy Moricette as a young woman struggling between competing cultures and religious beliefs. Through March 10.

Hughie
Eugene O’Neill’s late-life study of a man named “Erie” Smith searching for new meanings in his life stars Richard Schiff of “West Wing” fame in the title role and is directed?by Broadway veteran Doug Hughes through March 17 by the Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Lansburgh Theatre.

Henry V
William Shakespeare’s rip-roaring, grand play about power, war and politics in action as a young English king invades France. Star- ring Zach Appelman as Henry V and directed by Robert Richmond, it’s been extended at the Folger Theatre through March 10.

The ______ With the Hat
continues at the Studio Theatre, a red-hot production of Adly Guirgis’s profane, dangerous new play directed by Serge Seiden with?a top-notch cast of characters trying to make sense of their often rage-filled lives.
There’s still a chance to get a double-dose of David Mamet—the classic kind in the Round House Theatre production of “Glen- garry Glen Ross” through March 3, where you can soak up the lives of competing, desperate real estate agents, and in
“Race” at Theater J, the current controversy conscious incarnation of Mamet in a play about murder and race through 17.

Shakespeare’s R&J
In which four young students discover a forbidden copy of “Romeo and Juliet” and act it out is Signature Theatre’s first-ever in-the- round production. Directed by Joe Calarco, it runs through March 3.

Coming Up Later This Spring
Shakespeare at the Folger Theatre
Robert Richmond will direct the Folger Theatre’s production of “Twelfth Night”, one of the Bard’s most popular romantic comedies April 30-June 9. Notwithstanding the play, there’s also Shakespeare’s annual birthday celebration at the Folger Shakespeare Library April 21
The Return of “Fannie and Alexander”
“Fannie And Alexander” was probably the sunniest, most optimistic and warm movie ever made by the late and renowned director Ingmar Bergman (of “Persona”, “The Magician”,?“The Virgin Spring” and “Cries and Whispers” fame. Now it’s become a play and a part of the expansive multi-arts Nordic Cool Festival throughout the Kennedy Center through March 17. “Fannie and Alexander” reappears as a production of the Royal Dramatic Theater of Stockholm directed by Stefan Larsson in the Eisenhower Theatre March 7-9.
Hello Dolly!
We’re having a little Thorntown Wilder?run at Ford’s Theater. “Hello, Dolly”, the super-sized hit Broadway musical courtesy?of composer Jerry Herman—and based on Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker”—will appear as a co-production with Signature Theater, with Signature artistic director Eric Schaeffer, who staged a magnificent “Meet John Doe” here— taking the helm. Broadway veteran Nancy Opel stars as Dolly Levi, with Ed Gero as half-a-mil- lionaire Horace Vandergelder. March 15-May 18.?
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Nico Dodd •

Wolf Trap
Helen Reddy, March 7 & 8?
Catie Curtis, March 28?
John Eaton, March 30?
A Prairie Home Companion, May 24, 25
Looking Towards Summer?
Bill Cosby, June 15?
The Temptations & The Four Tops, June 27
NSO @ Wolf Trap

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?
Bobby McFerrin, May 13
S&R Foundation Overtures Concert Series: Ori Kam, viola,?Mar. 21
NSO Pops: Trey Anastasio / Steven Reineke, conductor?May 22
An Evening with Patti LaBelle, March 25
S&R Foundation at Evermay
Tamaki Kawakubo, Violin and Ori Kam, Viola, March 26
Yu Kosuge, Piano, April 1?
Soichi and Kaori Muraji, Guitar, May 24
Overtures Chamber Music Project: Tamaki Kawakubo and Friends, May 29

The Birchmere
Leon Redbone, March 10
George Thorogood, March 12

The Hamilton Live
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, March 3
The Rebirth Brass Band, March 6
Allen Toussaint, March 15?
The Bad Plus, April 10?
Toots and The Maytals, May 22

Strathmore
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, March 20
Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell and Richard Thompson Electric Trio, March 29
Diana Krall, April 10
Gladys Knight, April 25 & 26
Bela Fleck and The Marcus Roberts Trio, May 10

Also Coming Soon
Sweetlife Festival 2013, May 11
DC Jazz Fest, June 5-16
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