When mentioning beginner operas, Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas never comes up. Even though it's based on a well-known story, and set to swelling romantic music, it has never even approached the popularity of regular introductory operas such as La Boheme, Rigoletto, and The Magic Flute. The Washington National Opera's first production of Hamlet, now at the Kennedy Center, displays the limitations of the show that may have prevented it from becoming better known.

Critics have maligned Thomas's opera since its premiere in 1872. As The New York Times points out, it's seen as over the top. It takes too many liberties with Shakespeare's work, focusing on Ophelia's madness to a much greater extent than the play. The opera also nearly abolishes the roles of Laertes and Polonius, and paints the latter as evil through and through.

But these critical concerns should not have done in the piece. Though there have been some long runs in other countries, Hamlet has largely remained unperformed in the United States. Before this year's new production at the New York Metropolitan Opera, it hadn't been performed there since 1897. This is odd, since Thomas's score seems to contain everything it needs to appeal to a large audience. The soaring overture has a signature crescendoing theme that appears throughout to foreshadow that something bad is going to happen. The music is appropriately light and flute-filled during the celebratory scenes, and appropriately dark and string-filled during the serious ones (i.e. when Hamlet contemplates suicide). The opera also provides a coloratura soprano role, which is always an easy way to impress upon audiences.
Nonetheless, just being listenable does not a great work make. Hamlet has no memorable arias that leave you humming after the show the way that better works do. Much of the music is the same from scene to scene.

However, the main challenge with Hamlet is its overdrawn libretto. At three hours, the opera is about forty minutes too long. Everyone seeing the production is already familiar with the story, so the lengthy scenes of Hamlet promising himself to avenge his father, and Ophelia's 20 minute madness scene feel extremely drawn out. The one illuminating characterization is of Hamlet's mother Gertrude. She is given many scenes to express her remorse at killing Hamlet's father, and express trepidation at losing her son. You almost feel bad for her. Unfortunately, the worst role dramatically is given the best singing part. Ophelia arrives at her madness too quickly, but then spends too much time being mad. In this production, it seems like Ophelia was also given some poor direction to act physically unstable throughout, as if that would make her mental instability more believable. As a result, she literally totters whenever on stage, giving off a drunk vibe. Moreover, all the themes are presented in the most heavy-handed manner possible. Again, the audience understands that Hamlet is about indecision, loyalty, and love; we don't need every single line to spoon feed the message. There are virtually no jokes, nothing to relieve the tension during the three hour production.

Though I imagine there might be a creative way to stage Hamlet so that it provides some new insight into the narrative, the WNO's production did not seek to do that. It's staged in an unnamed European country at the end of the war. The leaders dress in military decor while the civilians dress in late 40's, early 50's outfits. Despite all these criticisms, the singing is competent throughout. Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop's Gertrude was my personal favorite. Though there were many opportunities to sneak out of the theater (after all, there are 5 acts), Hamlet was still worth seeing all the way through. In an opera-poor city, the chance to hear excellent soloists is always a treat.

Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies

There's always something unsettling about musicals based on the music of such-and-such. Often, these musicals--think Mamma Mia based on the music of Abba, Movin' Out based on the music of Billy Joel, and Times They Are A'Changin based on the music of Bob Dylan--tell stories only tangentially related to the music. They are made to draw on the songwriters' popularity and fill theater seats. Thus, they are very close to being campy, almost bordering on parody of the writers' work. Sometimes this works. Mamma Mia is successful because it embraced the camp, and didn't take itself very seriously. Even in the film version, serious actors like Meryl Streep look like they are having a lot of fun playing unrealistic, one-dimensional characters. The music seems to drive the story, even though we know it was created the other way around.

Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies, playing in its final two weeks at the Arena Stage at the Lincoln Theatre, falls squarely in the camp category resulting in varying degrees of success. A self-described celebration of Duke Ellington's career and influence on America, it features musical acts from all stages of his career, along with the appropriate dance style. So early on, a piece with both scantily clad male and female dancers mimics the jungle themed cabaret acts of the 1920's. Later, during the jitterbug period, we see a white couple slowly learning to jitterbug with the help of some skilled black couples. The white couple is exhausted at the end, collapsing on the stage floor. Throughout the musical acts, there's a lot of sexual innuendo with whether it's a woman dancer sandwiched between two male dancers, or a male dancer miming sniffing at a female dancer's butt. At one point, Ellington's character (Maurice Hines) receives four pecks from one of the female dancers. "Very continental, darling," he says, "But why four?" "One for each cheek" she responds, winking at the crowd. All of this is tastefully done, hearkening back to an era when live shows were the only place to publicly enjoy such titillation.

At the same time, dance is the only stimulation Sophisticated Ladies has to offer. The show is one musical act after another. I spent the first thirty minutes waiting for a plot to emerge, and the next thirty coming to terms with the fact that there isn't going to be any plot. We are basically introduced to the entire cast through the first four numbers. There's a glamorous singer, young upstart dancers, a woman vying for a man's attention, and the Duke himself. But these roles shift throughout the production. The only consistent character is Duke Ellington. His "sophisticated ladies" consist of eight women, none of whose relationship to Duke is clearly defined. We just know that many of them pine for him, but he has trouble being faithful. Of course, this isn't a real problem that the audience care about; it's merely a vehicle for songs like "Mood Indigo Blues" and "In My Solitude."

Once I got over the missing plot, I was able to relax and enjoy the dance numbers. The unexpected highlight was the tap dancing. The show actually drew on local talent for many of the tap numbers, which left a strong message for the importance of arts education. Last night's performance was a neighborhood affair in other ways as well. There was the coming full circle aspect of a musical about Duke Ellington performed in Duke Ellington's city of birth. Maurice Hines also took many opportunities to speak to the audience directly during a number of tap scenes. Even the audience, consisting of blacks and whites alike, reflected DC better than the usual Northwest DC affair. One can see how this crowd pleaser--despite its lack of cerebral content--was held over to June 6 by popular demand.

Labute Explores Vanity at Studio Theatre

When I rented The Shape of Things several years ago, back when the local rental store was still in business, I thought I was in for a nice, relaxing romantic comedy. Starring Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd, I knew it would not be entirely vapid either. But by the end of the movie, I wished that I had rented Clueless instead for my dose of Paul Rudd. Instead of being the typical feel-good rom-com, this movie written by Neil Labute provides a stark look at how vanity leads to cruelty. Rachel Weisz plays an art student with whom Paul Rudd falls in love at the beginning of the movie. Thanks to her artistic talents, he goes from rattily dressed professor to sharply dressed dandy. The film's denouement, however, reveals that Weisz's character is using Rudd's in a twisted act of manipulation. I finished the movie feeling despondent, as if I had been tricked as well.

And so I was prepared to see the same kind of cruelty spotlighted in Neil Labute's play, reasons to be pretty in its closing fortnight at the Studio Theatre. (Yes, it insists on lowercase representation.) The conclusion of a trilogy that includes The Shape of Things and Fat Pig, reasons to be pretty does touch on the theme of American's obsession with the superficial, and its undesirable consequences. The play opens with Steph yelling at her boyfriend Greg for telling other people that he thinks her face is ugly. Steph (Margot White) knows this because her best friend Carly (Teresa Stephenson) overheard Greg (Ryan Artzberger) talking to Carly's husband Kent (Thom Miller). After arguing with Greg over what he did or didn't say, Steph ultimately breaks up with him. This scene terrifically asks who the vain one really is - Greg for making a appearance focused remark, or Steph for taking it so much to heart?

In the meantime, Carly and Kent are having their own troubles surrounding vanity. Kent is the stereotypical macho jerk who's cheating on Carly with "the new girl." All we know is that she has a fantastic face, even though Carly is already a knock-out. One joke in this play is "My dad always said, find a hot girl, and you'll find a man who's tired of fucking her." Kent soon involves Greg to deceive Carly. Greg ultimately has control of whether or not Carly finds out. In the scenes where he's alone with Carly because they both work at the same place, we wonder how much responsibility Greg has for Kent's actions. And we wonder how far Carly wants to go to deceive herself.

But Labute is most interested in the origins and purpose of vanity. Though we may think all the characters are shallow for protecting their bruised egos, Labute shows that this obsession with the exterior may be a manifestation of how one feels on the interior. This idea is most fully explored in a final scene when Steph confides in Greg that she wanted him to be someone who would put a ring on her finger, and take care of her. Unfortunately, it took four years of being with him to realize that he would not be able to provide those things. In this moment of confession, we wonder if the "ugly" comment sealed the deal for Steph, or if it was on some level an excuse for her to leave Greg. Did she hurt herself by giving up so easily, or save herself by leaving when she did? The extent to which superficial concerns actually drive decision making is a question that Labute leaves unanswered.

The Inanity Coming-of-Age-in-the-Age-of-Rock Movies

Now that the boomer generation is getting old, and the generation that remembers where they were when the Beatles premiered on Johnny Carson is getting really old, nostalgic movies are coming out about the birth of rock. Two such films, Taking Woodstock and Pirate Radio, cover much of the same material. Young, straight and narrowish people are suddenly exposed to romantic hardships, hidden secrets of the past, and forced to grow up all with music in the background. Taking Woodstock, which aims to vaguely trace the history of Woodstock, centers on twenty-something Elliot Teichberg, and his journey to bring a music festival to his town of Woodstock while gaining independence from his parents. Pirate Radio, which aims to trace the history of off-shore radio stations in Great Britain in the 1960's, centers on a teenage Carl's stay on the Radio Rock ship while he discovers sex, the identity of his father, and civil disobedience.

Neither film is particularly insightful. Both revel in cliche and heavy-handed delivery of messages. Taking Woodstock tries to tell people to believe in themselves, and break loose by having Elliot (Dmitri Martin) discover his homosexuality and get high on acid to Jefferson Airplane's "Red Telephone." Long sequences of haziness illuminate the freedom of drugs. Similarly, Pirate Radio tries to sell people on the idea of fighting for what you believe in by having Radio Rock's entire crew agree one by one to stay on the ship even after the government shuts it down. Elgar's Nimrod swells in the background. Long montages of random Brits enjoying Radio Rock illustrate music's liberating effect. We get it: music equals love, democracy, and all that is good in the world.

The one thing that makes Pirate Radio more entertaining to watch than Taking Woodstock is that Pirate Radio takes itself way less seriously. Maybe it's the British sense of humor, but the film seems to wink at us during a ship-sinking scene that reminds one of the drama of Titanic. Things are resolved a bit too easily, but also with humor. In one set piece, two DJ's play a game of chicken by climbing on to the mast and then jumping off. Plus, the music selection is fabulous. Pirate Radio hits all the Sixties greats aside from the Beatles, including Cat Stevens, the Beach Boys, and Leonard Cohen. Taking Woodstock only has some snippets of Woodstock acts. Though Pirate Radio is a bit long clocking in at 2 hours, its soundtrack makes an otherwise vapid movie bearable. Too bad Woodstock can't say the same.

Gruesome Playground Injuries

The Woolly Mammoth's new production of Gruesome Playground Injuries opens with Doug (Tim Getman) and Kayleen (Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey) as eight year olds. They are hanging out in the nurse's office at their Catholic school after Doug cut his face on the playground, and Kayleen came down with a stomach pain. While musing over their respective injuries and trading elementary school banter--"I broke my face"--"It's not broken, just cut"--the two discover they have a special connection. When Kayleen touches Doug's cut, he miraculously feels better. So foreshadows an unique relationship that will carry them through the next thirty years.

The subsequent scenes jump to the pair when they are 23, 13, 18, 33, 23, and 38 respectively. In each scene, Doug and Kayleen find themselves injured, needing the other to help them recover. We see a trend in the injuries. Doug's injuries are always extremely violent, the result of some physical stunt. One time a firework explodes in his eye; another time, he gets in a fight. Kayleen's injuries, on the other hand, are more hidden. One time she throws up blood; another she feels the results of her parents' abandonment. It's as though Doug manifests Kayleen's emotional injuries. Though it's unlikely for a pair of real-life friends to limit their interaction to times when they get hurt as they do here, Doug and Kayleen's relationship calls to mind any where one's well being is dependent on someone else. It asks what it means to share injuries with another person, to inflict injuries on another person, and to heal injuries in another person. Though Doug and Kayleen each suffer from extreme injuries, their injuries still recall smaller hurts--whether emotional or physical--that anyone in the audience may have suffered.

This specific production of Gruesome Playground Injuries is staged in a way that brings the audience in even closer. Staged on a theatre-in-the-round, the actors use four "corners" to change between scenes. They effectively never go off stage during the entire show (there is no intermission). We see them literally changing before us. In addition, rock songs relating to injurious love like Ludo's "Love Me Dead" play during the blackouts to situate us, and to reflect the actual music that the characters may listen to.

Gruesome Playground Injuries officially opens today, and there are still some rough edges. The acting is the most prominent rough edge. Getmand and Fernandez-Coffey's characters maintain a childish posture regardless of age. When they are eight, Getman uses a loud guffawing, and Fernandez-Coffey maintains a petulant attitude. Unfortunately, this loud guffawing and petulant attitude persists when the two are older. I got used to it over the rest of the play, or maybe the actors realized what they were doing. By the final scene, when they are thirty-eight, each has calmed down.

This was only the second show I've seen at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Though their shows are usually less well-known than the other theatres' in the local area, they bring shows from up and coming playwrights. The writer of Gruesome Playground Injuries, Rajiv Joseph, is definitely talented. Hopefully the acting will match up as the run continues.