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Ian Thal

Recommended by Ian Thal

  • God Is Missing: Bigtan And Teresh Are Dead by Michal Richardson
    3 Mar. 2023
    “ An absurdist midrashic tragicomedy about the execution of two minor characters in one of two books of the Bible in which God is not mentioned is a whole other Megillah! What choice do they have in becoming plot device in a text read every year on Purim? What happens when they realize that their ends have already been inscribed? Richardson gives Bigtan and Teresh backstories that connect them to better known characters as Mordechai, Vashti, and Esther, and historical events. ”
  • Un Hombre: A Golem Story by Stephen Kaplan
    15 Feb. 2023
    “ Un Hombre is a magical realist exploration of grief steeped in Jewish tradition: Though it is comic to imagine a sculptress accidentally creating a golem and assigning him to tutor her son in both Spanish and Hebrew as he prepares for his Bar Mitzvah, Kaplan gives it gravitas expanding it into a philosophical meditation on existence, purpose, being part of a family still in mourning. The climax comes when Josh gives a D'Var Torah that addressing both the troubling aspects of his assigned reading and what has happened over the course of the play. ”
  • The Iron Heel by Edward Einhorn
    24 Jan. 2023
    “ Like Jack London's novel, Einhorn's adaptation contains a critique of capitalism's abuses, but the framing device of a historian-propagandist working with an ensemble of actor/musicians in the far-future to reenact a showdown between socialist workers and an increasingly repressive oligarchy called "The Iron Heel" leaves us wondering if the utopian Brotherhood of Man that comes centuries later is as it presents itself. ”
  • The Resistible Rise of JR Brinkley by Edward Einhorn
    22 Jan. 2023
    “ A grotesquely satirical tale about quack doctor, fortune hunter, demagogue, and media mogul, JR Brinkley, that draws strong parallels with the demagoguery, nativist populism, xenophobia, and pseudo-scientific attacks on medicine that fuel today's politics and give certain figures their power. Einhorn's storytelling is smart, funny, and a scary reminder that the culture wars are nothing new. ”
  • The Shylock and the Shakespeareans by Edward Einhorn
    9 Aug. 2022
    “ The "ancient Venice" of Einhorn's "Shylock and the Shakespeareans" is a savvily anachronistic fun-house mirror of our own time, drawing parallels between the rhetorical tropes of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", and the racial and conspiracy theories of today's political extremists. It also explores the precariousness of Diaspora Jewry caught between embracing identity or assimilation into the majority culture. All delivered with clever satire and dystopian horror. ”
  • Ada and the Engine by Lauren Gunderson
    30 May. 2022
    “ In "Ada and the Engine", Gunderson makes both the intimate friendships between Lovelace and Babbage (progenitors of the not yet named field of computer science) and their efforts to imagine the marvelous possibilities of steam-powered brass-and-steel brains palpable. A truly fascinating portrait of two lives whose significance to our world would not be fully appreciated for over a century: Indeed it was Lovelace's insights that presage we can use machines to exchange plays!

    I reviewed Avant Bard's 2022 production: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/551717/ghost-in-the-machine-ada-and-the-engine/ ”
  • Twigs and Bone by Tiffany Antone
    29 May. 2022
    “ Tiffany Antone's "Twigs and Bone" is a vividly crafted naturalistic horror story, as Moira, the protagonist returns home to a mother and father, both pathological hoarders, both repeating an endless cycle of tormenting one another over the trauma of the child they lost decades prior. Were they always like this? Antone evokes fairytales and folklore, but grounds the story in the visceral world of life, death, bodily functions, decay, and psychopathology. I reviewed the 2022 NuSass production: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/556169/twigs-bone-brings-the-supernatural-to-the-stage/ ”
  • MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN MAN by D.W. Gregory
    29 May. 2022
    “ It is not enough that D.W. Gregory has crafted a drama in which the gift a remarkably long and accurate memory could mark one for state terror, in which a scientific paper could arouse political concerns that risk sending the investigator to the Gulag, in which even the act of rehabilitation is not without risk, it's that she has imbued this historical drama set in the time between Stalin and Khrushchev with the vibrant language of its synesthetic subject. I reviewed the 2022 Washington Stage Guild production: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/556820/a-story-within-a-story-memoirs-of-a-forgotten-man-contemplates-russia-in-57-and-37/ ”
  • YELLA JACK by Donna Latham
    29 May. 2022
    “ Latham's "Yella Jack" is a richly rendered portrait of Memphis during the 1878 Yellow Fever epidemic. Her characters come from different races and classes, religious traditions, speak different dialects, and have different means of tending to the dead and dying, yet, whether they realize it or not, are in it together. A terrific ensemble piece for actors with Latham's usual attention to language and character, but also a worthy challenge for an imaginative director and design team. ”
  • No But by Patrick Flynn
    11 Dec. 2021
    “ A hilarious satire of the commodification of improv comedy and all the pent-up resentments and accretion of artistic ruts that can cause creative partnerships to melt down. ”

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