“Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?” is a feat of dramatic discipline. When Eric Bentley assembled this 1972 docudrama from House Un-American Activities Committee transcripts, the playwright savvily stripped his work of dramatic license and laid bare the Red Scare’s horrors. The deceptive decorum and the cold coercion. The scapegoating and the blacklisting. The capitulation and the contumacy.
It’s a riveting artifact that shines anew in Anna D. Shapiro’s revival, now at Arena Stage after running this summer at New York City Center. By recounting the mid-century testimonies of various Hollywood fixtures — playwright Arthur Miller, director Elia Kazan, choreographer Jerome Robbins and more — Bentley serves up a collage of confrontations. Certain entertainment icons emerge as beacons of civil disobedience. Other pillars of the industry crumble under the weight of McCarthyism, the nickname for the intense search for communists by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.). Weaving together those humanist threads? The loom of Capitol Hill overreach.
In lesser hands, such a methodical re-creation could have been an indulgent bore. But Shapiro’s taut staging finds the musicality in Bentley’s script, then pushes the tempo and, when certain larger-than-life personalities arrive, dials up the volume. Unfolding against Andrew Boyce’s sparse Capitol Hill set and Brittany Bland’s newspaper projections, the proceedings play out like riveting ping-pong rallies.
Aaron Bliden expertly portrays Larry Parks, a blacklisted actor hoping against hope that he can sway the committee (composite characters played by Philip Earl Johnson, John Leslie Wolfe and Jason Babinsky) into calling off its witch hunt. “House” actor Peter Jacobson is a finger-wagging delight as the brash “Guys and Dolls” co-writer Abe Burrows. Rivka Borek lends a cool defiance to playwright Lillian Hellman, the only woman spotlighted. It all builds to Kevin Mambo’s staggering turn as the artist and activist Paul Robeson, whose testimony turns the table on his interrogators and flips it for good measure.
Although the play covers hearings from the 1940s and ’50s, one doesn’t have to squint to spot the contemporary parallels. One recent example: the September testimony of former special counsel Jack Smith, who defended his investigations of President Donald Trump during a Senate committee hearing that devolved, as The Washington Post reported, into a “public tongue-lashing.”
Decades after Bentley ruled on McCarthyism, it turns out that the political theatrics are far from adjourned.
Through Dec. 6 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. About 1 hour 45 minutes. arenastage.org.
Here are reviews of two more productions on D.C.-area stages:
‘All the World’s a Stage’
There’s no doubting the beating heart of “All the World’s a Stage,” the sweet chamber musical having its regional premiere at Signature Theatre. Still, its predictable rhythms could stand to be more irregular.
Adam Gwon wrote this love letter to onstage expression and influential educators, about a closeted math teacher (a winning Kyle Sherman) in mid-1990s Pennsylvania who takes a smart aleck theater nerd (Deema Turkomani) under his wing. (The musical premiered off-Broadway a year ago.) When the evangelical community catches wind of the duo’s interest in “Angels in America” — and its sweeping exploration of American homosexuality — the culture skirmish tees up a commendable plea for tolerance and diatribe against censorship.
The four-actor cast also features Erin Driscoll as a school secretary conflicted by her faith and Callum Francis as the outspoken proprietor of a queer-friendly bookstore. It’s an impressive ensemble shackled by broad archetypes. This is the kind of show, after all, where romance is more inevitable than earned and characters blow up at each other before anyone lit a fuse. And the creaky plot machinations serve up twists accompanied not by gasps or murmurs, but “well obviously” nods. Gwon’s pop-tilted score, meanwhile, proves pleasing but pedestrian.
Sure, the collection of trying-their-best misfits is inherently enticing. Director Matthew Gardiner oversees a characteristically polished production, and Paige Hathaway has crafted an appealing classroom set steeped in ’90s nostalgia. Yet “All the World’s a Stage” would be all the more moving if it weren’t so easy to pin down.
Through Dec. 20 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. About 1 hour 45 minutes. sigtheatre.org.
‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’
Synetic Theater’s wordless take on “The Legend of Sleep Hollow,” now at the Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre in Arlington after a run at Olney Theatre Center, immediately unveils its most haunting tableau: a steampunk horse puppet galloping in slow motion, bathed in red light and engineered by a quartet of actors.
It’s a spine-tingling visual that this loose adaptation of Washington Irving’s 1820 fable — directed by Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili — never quite matches again, try as it might. But even if this isn’t the most spellbinding Synetic endeavor, the company’s movement-based ethos still hits the spot around spooky season.
Just witness the way Philip Fletcher’s contorting Headless Horseman and Maryam Najafzada’s ethereal Horse Spirit menace the not-so-innocuous Ichabod Crane (Vato Tsikurishvili). Or the unsettling sight of limbs and disembodied heads run amok. Konstantine Lortkipanidze, the composer behind the show’s pulse-pounding score, also gets in on the frights as a decapitated piano player.
This subversive script, credited to Paata Tsikurishvili and Nathan Weinburger, even spins a cautionary tale about bloodlust’s enduring perils. Give Synetic credit: This “Sleepy Hollow” may offer its fair share of headlessness, but you still can’t turn your brain off.
Through Nov. 22 at Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre, 125 S. Old Glebe Rd., Arlington. About 1 hour 30 minutes. synetictheater.org.
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