Another 'Eureka!' show at Mosaic

It may be the D.C. debut, but it won't be the last of this show in D.C.


How does Ari Roth, Mosaic Theater's artistic director, land these riveting, modern tales before anyone else? 


Eureka Day is the progressives gone overboard.  A mirror from the left looking at (laughing at) themselves. (Conservatives will adore it!) 

It's hilarious. It's provoking, and it's another big hit at Mosaic.

Two men and three women make up the  "executive committee" of a liberal private high school in Berkeley, California (where else?). 

Never mind that public schools need all the attention and attendance they can get from wealthy liberal parents. (Think, the Clintons, the Obamas, and Sidwell Friends School; thank you very much, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter who sent their daughter, Amy, to public school when they occupied the White House.)

After all, these are our children for whom we should do the very best and who cares about anyone else? Ours simply must attend Eureka Day! Enough liberal thinking!

A new parent (Erica Chamblee) is the outlier at Eureka Day School who sits on the outside of the group watching the circus, waiting, an audience of one, representing us, the viewers.

Two others in the group, Eli (Elan Zafir) and Meiko (Regina Aquino) are having an affair, of course.  Where would any contemporary sensible production be without this de rigueur practice?

Dancing Don (Sam Lunay) moves with the best of them, trying to keep everything and everybody in line, to reach "consensus" and maybe, everything won't be so bad.

Suzanne (Lise Bruneau) is the antagonist with a correction for everything:  Please, they are not Egyptians; they are enslaved persons.  

Please! Here we use only gender-neutral or non-binary pronouns. Get with the program! 

Tsk! Tsk! You really do need an education, don't you, to use those for recycled plates? They are not the right kind.

The script includes discussion about vaccinations.  To vaccinate or not?  Close the school?

The funniest part comes at the end of Act 1 when the committee leads a virtual meeting that parents may attend on Facebook. And do they ever. (Dylan Uremovich and Theodore J. H. Hulsker are in charge of projections.) Sling to the right of us, to the left, take that, and on and on producing regales of audience laughter, so much that who cares what the stage taskmasters are saying?


Eureka has its serious moments, too, but, thankfully, not as many as the humorous ones. (I just came to laugh, after all.  Vaccinations?  What vaccinations?  This is billed as a comedy.)

The music between scenes is divine.  The first act ends too quickly and the second finishes much too fast for it all to be over, meaning I wanted it to go on and on. 

The acting is superb, and the mannerisms drawn by Director Serge Seiden with such swooping and bending and looks, like those loved by audiences the world over.

Mar Cox and Thomas Nagata, the assistant stage manager, are also in the cast.   

Creative team members include Andrew Cohen, set; Brittany Shemuga, lights;Brandee Mathies, costumes; David Lamont Wilson, sound; Deborah C. Thomas, properties; Shirley Serotsky, dramaturg; Claudia Rosales Waters, intimacy consultant; and Aril E. Carter, stage manager

What:  Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector

When: Now through January 5, 2020, Monday, Dec. 30, and Thursday- Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees, 3 p.m.

Where: Mosaic Theater Company, Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20002

Getting there: Riding public transportation from Union Station on the streetcar is easy and free, if you can find the streetcar behind Union Station where signage to the streetcar is poor. Valet and parking options are available. 

Tickets start at $20. (Use discount code "2020" to get 20% off.)

Language: Adult

Duration: About two hours with one 15-minute intermission. 

Post-show discussions:  Dec. 30, Jan. 2, and Jan. 4.

Open-captioned performances: Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 (Call for time on Jan. 4.) 

For more information: Please call the box office (202-399-7993, ext. 2) or email boxoffice@atlasarts.org.

patricialesli@gmail.com

boxoffice@atlasarts.org

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'Theory' debuts at Mosaic

The Theory classroom ensemble at Mosaic Theater/Photo by Christopher Banks

A lady at the Smithsonian reception* the other night told me she liked provocative theatre, the kind which makes you think. She paused: "As long as it's got good acting." 

"You're going to love Theory," I said, the newest show at Mosaic Theater which presents the American premiere of an award-winning Canadian production.

It will set your mind ablaze, I told her, while you ponder the meaning. For progressive theatre lovers, it's must see.  

Ari Roth, the much beloved founding artistic director at the much beloved Mosaic Theater on H Street, writes in program notes that he finds hope in this show.  I am happy he found it; I am still searching.

The protagonist (Musa Gurnis is Isabelle) challenges "the heteronormative, white-male-dominated film canon she is charged to teach," Ari writes. Pity white males.

Norman Yeung, a man of many artistic persuasions (playwright, filmmaker, artist, actor) won a 2015 Canadian national playwriting contest for Theory which is billed as a “techno-thriller,” but the action doesn’t really get going until the last scene.

Then (finally!) Isabelle suddenly develops strength of character and a new person emerges, stronger and better possessed of her faculties in contrast to the mousy do-gooder she acts in most of the drama, trying to be all things to all students, unleashing the class to become
whatever it wants to be.

In Yeung's play, the roles reverse: The students teach, and the dull teacher/student learns the hard way that students need structure, after all.

Suspense gradually builds but not enough to introduce the sudden departure from its gait to the pace presented at the end.

The weak link in this chain of events is the main character, Isabelle.

She is married to a lesbian, of course. (Andrea Harris Smith  is Lee, her wife.)  This is modern-day stuff.

Isabelle's syllabus says nothing is off-limits to post for the class, including murder, mayhem, and violent sex. 

That is, until certain words becomes too much for her wife to bear, and the original deal is scraped by Teacher Isabelle who changes the rules of this game.

Dynamic performances by all the students  (Josh Adams, Benairen Kane, Camilo Linares) lift the show, especially Tyasia Velines whose animation, arms, and exclamations earn her standout status.

Also in the cast is Tony K. Nam in a realistic and concerning portrayal as Isabelle's department head.

The stage and lighting are segregated by scene in a well-executed design by Daniel Ettinger with lighting by Brittany Shemuga. The classroom and desks sit in the upper left corner with stage center reserved for the living quarters of Isabelle and Lee. 

The far right transitions from a school to home office and back again, complete with a plant merry-go-round which, after the third movement or so, becomes a distraction and you are left wondering if it's the home or the school office that's up next. 

And "devices."  Sigh. They are omnipresent. What's a show without them?  Not a contemporary show.

Director Victoria Murray Baatin, the theater's associate artistic director, makes her Mosaic theater debut with Theory which she discovered on the last night of a travel grant to Canada. 

Dylan Uremovich does a nice job with simultaneous projections on different-sized screens.

Other members of the crew are Danielle Preston, costumes;

David Lamont Wilson, sound; Willow Watson, properties; April Sizemore-Barber, dramaturg; April E. Carter and Laurel VanLandingham, stage managers; Ashara Crutchfield, assistant director; and Paul Gallagher, fight choreographer.

What: Theory

When: Now through Nov. 17 at 8 p.m. from Wednesday through Saturday; 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; and 7:30 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 10. 

Where: Mosaic Theater Company, Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20002

Getting there: Riding public transportation from Union Station on the streetcar is easy and free, if you can find the streetcar behind Union Station where signage to the streetcar is poor. Valet and parking options are available. Move. (For late-night streetcar rides, the show may go on.)

Tickets start at $20.

Language: Adult

Duration: 85 minutes without intermission. 

Post-show discussions:  Saturday, Nov. 9, 3 p.m.;
Sunday, Nov. 10, 3 p.m.;  Thursday, Nov. 14, 11 a.m. (cast talkback); and Saturday, Nov. 16, 3 p.m.

Open-captioned performances: Friday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Nov. 16 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. 

For more information: Please call the box office and leave a message: 202-399-7993, ext. 2.


*by Mary Louise Schumacher, art critic, at the American Art Museum

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Mosaic's 'Fabulation' is fantastic fabulous fable

Kevin E. Thorne II's performance as Flow was my favorite in Mosaic Theater Company's Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine. Watching from left are Grandma (Aakhu TuahNera Freeman) and Undine (Felicia Curry) /Photo by Christopher Banks

Undine undoes the audience.

At times the laughter at Mosaic Theater Company prevented my hearing all the lines in the uproarious production, the D.C. premiere of Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine.

The show is solid entertainment, sketching the no-nonsense life of a New York businesswoman, "Undine" (Felicia Curry), who becomes undone by a conniver named Hervé (Carlos Saldana).  

Hervé could convince a snake to fly. 

Girlfriends, Roz White, left, and Felicia Curry in Mosaic Theater Company's Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine/Photo by Christopher Banks

In program notes dramaturg Faedra Chatard Carpenter writes that "Undine" is a mythological "soulless creature" who can recapture her soul if she marries a mortal and bears his child. It's an unhappy union since the mortal does mortal things as we are wont to do.

With proclivities to trick, Hervé whirls Undine round and round the stage in a magnificently choreographed seduction. (Rashida Bumbray was the movement consultant, and Christylez Bacon, rhythm/musical consultant.) 

In a different scene in the solo spotlight, Hervé calls out the names of romantic cities, immediately conjuring bliss. (I, too, was captured in Hervé's spell.)

The manipulator, dast he, fells Undine, forcing her to return to her old home place and her people she hasn't visited in 14 years.  

"Brother, can you spare a dime?"

You laugh at the serious stuff in Undine telling yourself it's just not right, but it can't be helped and away you go.

Herve (Carlos Saldana) rocks Undine (Felicia Curry) in Mosaic Theater Company's Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine/Photo by Christopher Banks

The sad but riotous scene in the social services office ("the form!") is too real even for the imaginations of those who've escaped such an ordeal. Director Eric Ruffin builds frustrations to an hilarious apex of a welcome but unlikely exchange. 
 
Script for Undine's girlfriends Rosa (Roz White) and Devora (Lauryn Simone) brought lots of laughs. In their dual and triple roles, Ms. White and Ms. Simone had no trouble projecting their personalities for desired effects.

Ms. Curry, naturally, carries the fast-paced comedrama with flair and confidence as her life unwinds and awakens her to an existence she tried to ignore.

The actors handled their multiple roles with New York stage finesse, but the absolute knockout was Kevin E. Thorne II who is "Flow" in the show, Undine's brother and poet who fiercely protects his "territory" and decries his sister's laments about her life. (The D.C. resident and Howard University graduate was also an FBI agent in the show.)

Except for the long ending with too much melodrama, the script is brilliant, threaded with complex issues of African-American culture and history, most which bypassed me who was enlightened later by the program.
 
For quick scene changes, Mr. Ruffin's clever design of a "ring shout" has actors dressed in white moving in slow, shadowy circles to make African music by beating wooden and steel instruments.

Andrew Cohen's set and Willow Watson's props are nicely balanced and serve purposes more than adequately.

John D. Alexander's lighting chases quick movements and streams upon soloists on the darkened stage, mostly Undine who often turns and addresses the audience in monologues.

Wikipedia says critic Robert Scholes promoted "fabulation" (related to  "postmodernism") to describe contemporary novels of "magical realism" which veer from standard practice. In other words, Undine is a "disrupter" much like the world of disruption we experience daily.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for drama (the only woman to be so honored), Lynn Nottage (b. 1964), is the playwright. 
She was at least a decade ahead writing current disrupting literature. Undine opened off-Broadway in 2004. 
 
You can go home again, Undine, but, make sure you don't burn any bridges.

Other members of the cast are James Whalen, the accountant; Aakhu TuahNera Freeman, grandma/doctor/inmate; and William T. Newman, Jr., father/priest.

Other creative team members were Moyenda Kulemeka, costumes; Crescent R. Haynes, sound; Kim James Bey, dialect coach; Jared Smith, assistant director; April E. Carter and Laurel VanLandingham, stage managers.

A listing of post-show discussions may be found under "Dates" at this link.

What: Fabulation or The Re-Education of Undine

When: Now through Sept. 22 at 8 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday; 3 p.m., Saturday and Sunday; 11 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 12 and 19. Check the calendar for accessibility and post-show discussions dates.

Where: Mosaic Theater Company, Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20002

Getting there: Riding public transportation from Union Station on the streetcar is easy and free, if you can find the streetcar behind Union Station since signage in the station is poor. Valet and parking options are available for those who drive to Atlas.

Tickets start at $20.

Language: Adult but not heavily laden

Duration: About two hours with one 15-minute intermission.

For more information: Please call the box office and leave a message: 202-399-7993, ext. 2.

patricialesli@gmail.com