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<title>Stage at Metro Weekly (Newspaper Magazine of Gay and Lesbian Washington, DC)</title>
	<link>http://www.metroweekly.com</link>
	<description>Weekly gay publication of Washington, DC including features on news, arts, politics, lifestlye, film, music, as well as events calendars, classifieds, home ads and free personals. </description>
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<title>Metro Weekly magazine</title>
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	<title>Show Time: Signature&#39;s revival of Show Boat avoids choppy waters in bringing a Broadway classic to an Arlington port</title>
	<link>http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/stage.php?ak=4662</link>
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Stage: At a time when the heavy bass of shows like Passing Strange and In the Heights and Rock of Ages are setting Converse&#45;shod feet to tapping in theater aisles&#44; a musical like Show Boat seems a little&#44; well&#46;&#46;&#46;quaint&#46; Charming even&#46; It certainly doesn&#39;t seem to have a likely place on the roll call over at Signature Theatre&#44; where this season&#39;s bill includes the meta&#45;musical Title of Show&#44; the gender bending I Am My Own Wife and the goth&#45;sexy&#45;before&#45;Twilight&#45;was&#45;a&#45;twinkle Sweeney Todd&#46; Show Boat But here&#39;s the thing&#46; A musical like Show Boat is exactly what we need right now&#46; Or&#44; more precisely&#44; Signature&#39;s reinvented version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II&#39;s musical Show Boat seems perfectly timed&#46; Behind the slightly misty nostalgia of the title is a gritty&#44; incredibly contemporary musical that deals with issues like race&#44; financial vulnerability&#44; and that murky and indefinable morass &#38;ndash&#59; family values&#46; ... (more)]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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	<title>Brute Force: In Keegan&#39;s Mice and Men&#44; the tension is high&#44; the tenor is loud&#44; and any hope of nuance dissolves into black and white</title>
	<link>http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/stage.php?ak=4645</link>
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Stage: The folks at The Keegan Theater have brought Of Mice and Men&#44; that bane of high school sophomores everywhere&#44; to the stage of their new home at the Church Street Theater&#46; While not without some very well&#45;crafted scenes and solid performances&#44; the play&#39;s full movement is too often hindered by a tone that is monotonously aggressive&#46; The tension is high&#44; the tenor is loud&#44; and any hope of nuance dissolves into a very black&#45;and&#45;white rendering&#46; Of Mice and Men &#40;Photo by Jim Coates&#41; True&#44; Of Mice and Men is hardly a lighthearted musical comedy romp through America&#39;s agricultural history&#46; Like the John Steinbeck novella on which it is based&#44; the drama tells the story of George &#40;Mark A&#46; Rhea&#41; and Lenny &#40;Danny Gavigan&#41;&#44; a pair of migrant farm workers in the late 1930s&#46; The two men travel together from job to job&#59; George taking the lead and acting as guardian for the extraordinarily strong but mentally impaired Lenny&#46; George knows that he could move faster without his outsized companion&#46; He could easily earn a better living and enjoy the fruits of his labor more if he weren&#39;t constantly responsible for Lenny&#46; But an unspoken sense of responsibility and loyalty ties the two together&#46; ... (more)]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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	<title>Perpetual Motion: Woolly incorporates the audience into Full Circle without sacrificing humor&#44; cushions or easy access to bathrooms</title>
	<link>http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/stage.php?ak=4633</link>
	<description><![CDATA[
Stage: It&#39;s often smaller companies who try for the kind of experimental staging that defies the usual juxtaposition between audience and players&#46; In last season&#39;s Small Craft Warning&#44; for example&#44; Washington Shakespeare Company deftly incorporated a limited&#45;capacity audience into the set itself&#44; a seedy coastal bar&#44; to the point that characters occasionally bussed the tables of theatergoers&#46; Full Circle &#40;Photo by S&#46; Barouh&#41; It was memorable and pleasantly edgy&#44; but such breaks from the proscenium always cut two ways&#46; Stripped of the safety of that magic line between stage and seats and denied the anonymity of a darkened theater&#44; an audience is forced into a new relationship with the actors and their mission&#46; If done well&#44; something more personal&#44; more daring and more emotionally invasive will result&#46; At its best&#44; it can be the theatrical version of a mood&#45;altering drug&#58; it can heighten the senses and intensify the experience&#46; The flipside&#44; however&#44; of literally and figuratively unsettling your audience is that if they&#39;re too pre&#45;occupied with the novelty of the form they may find it difficult to lose themselves in the drama&#46; So the question will always be&#58; can you and should you embrace that loss of fiction&#63; To director Michael Rohd&#39;s credit&#44; his unique staging of Charles Mee&#39;s Full Circle works in both concept and execution&#46; Not only do we share the mischievous joy of being moved in and around the Woolly Mammoth environs as we follow the action&#44; but we are still afforded just enough &#34;head space&#34; to be drawn into the play itself&#46; Of course&#44; it doesn&#39;t hurt that Full Circle is largely a comedy with a strong sardonic edge&#44; so although there are thought&#45;provoking moments&#44; it doesn&#39;t require the concentration of&#44; say&#44; Stoppard&#39;s Rock N&#39; Roll&#44; another play touching on themes of Communism and the societal costs of repression ... (more)]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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	<title>Classic Fare: Cate Blanchett gives a raw&#44; stellar performance in Streetcar and Folger imbues Much Ado with tropical flavor</title>
	<link>http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/stage.php?ak=4634</link>
	<description><![CDATA[
Stage: Go ahead&#46; You know you&#39;re dying to do it&#46; &#39;&#39;STEEEELLLLLAAAAAA&#33;&#33;&#39;&#39; Kennedy Center seats for Sydney Theatre Company&#39;s A Streetcar Named Desire&#44; directed by film icon Liv Ullmann&#44; have become the most desirable plots of real estate in town&#46; While the initial lure is undoubtedly the opportunity to see Cate Blanchett put on the starched white gloves and gentle Southern accent of Blanche DuBois&#44; the reward is a mesmerizing production that delivers something whole&#44; organic and true&#46; ... (more)]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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	<title>Masterpieces: Theater J&#39;s Lost in Yonkers should be greatly applauded while Adding Machine is an incredible night of theater</title>
	<link>http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/stage.php?ak=4619</link>
	<description><![CDATA[
Stage: Children should be seen and not heard&#46; For many of us this was the general house rule growing up&#46; An attitude held by grandmothers and elder statesman aunts who had already raised their own children and didn&#39;t need to hear the same complaints and questions all over again&#46; They had done their time&#46; Such is the attitude of the iron matriarch helming the family of Neil Simon&#39;s Lost in Yonkers&#46; This is the first full&#45;length Simon play to appear at Theater J&#39;s Aaron &#38; Cecile Goldman Theater and it deserves a warm and enthusiastic welcome&#46; There&#39;s a lovely sentimentality at work here&#44; a wonderfully broad&#44; almost romantic notion of family&#46; A family you may well recognize&#46; The uncle no one talks about&#46; The aunt everyone talks about&#46; The grandmother people talk about&#44; but very softly to make sure she doesn&#39;t hear you&#46; &#40;Of course&#44; she always hears you&#46;&#41; ... (more)]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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