DC Theater Review: An unforgettable ‘Timon of Athens’ at Shakespeare Theatre

By Ted Johnson

"It's the coolest shit that's going to drop in 2020"

Katy Perry has been working on new music with Ryan Tedder, Official Charts can exclusively reveal.

Easy Women — Photo: Christopher Mueller

In David Lean’s 1945 film of Noël Coward’s ghostly comedy “Blithe Spirit,” Margaret Rutherford memorably embodied the role of local spirit guide Madame Arcati — but she was given a run for money by her surrounding players. These days, the balance has shifted.

Jeffrey Seller, the producer whose penchant for Broadway long-shots paid off with Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights and Hamilton, less so with The Last Ship and The Cher Show,looks to have a new hit ready to go — only this time he's backing familiar material. Fly, which just opened at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego for a monthlong tryout, is yet another take on the adventures of Peter Pan, Wendy, the Lost Boys and Captain Hook.

No disrespect to Bob Dylan, one of the greatest songwriters in modern American music, but hearing his tunes sung by the melodious voices in Girl From the North Country is a revelation — the second time even more than the first. Moving to Broadway after a hit 2018 run at the Public Theater, this brilliantly conceived project from Irish writer-director Conor McPherson could be called the anti-jukebox musical.

Some people think Bob Dylan’s music is depressing — and in “Girl From the North Country,” Conor McPherson makes the case by setting more than twenty of Dylan’s songs into a surprisingly sturdy narrative about the residents of a seedy boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, at the height of the Depression in 1934.

Suddenly Last Summer — Photo: DJ Corey

The Bitter Earth — Photo: Manaf Azzam

There’s a lot of tsuris in Richard Greenberg’s witty and quite wonderful “The Perplexed,” — at least for the older generation of characters on this 10-actor cast. In this new play now making its bow at Manhattan Theatre Club, they’re struggling madly with changing times they can’t fathom, family wounds that won’t heal and a posh wedding that no one particularly wants — except perhaps for the off-stage, wicked, ancient billionaire whose palatial home is the setting for the event.

Amen Corner — Photo: Scott Suchman

The Wanderers: Theatre J — Photo: Teresa Castracane

Shipwreck — Photo: Teresa Castracane

Clearly inspired less by the Book of Exodus than the Playbook of Disney, DreamWorks' screen-to-stage adaptation of the 1998 animated feature The Prince of Egypt is a frenetic, spectacle-driven show, massive in scale but lacking in charm.

When the sinisterly charming emcee played by Francis Jue clicks through black and white slides of the Khmer Rouge period near the start of Cambodian Rock Band, he rolls his eyes at the automatic associations most people have with the Southeast Asian country. "Bor-ring," he groans.