Clybourne Park

Tickets are selling quickly to the marvelous Woolly Mammoth Theatre reprise of "Clybourne Park," the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama and the best work I've seen at Woolly in nine years of faithful patronage. How "Clybourne" fares between now and Aug. 14 — the last chance you'll have to catch director Howard Shalwitz's scintillating cast — is inordinately significant, not only because of the topical social concerns playwright Bruce Norris hilariously raises, but also as another test of Washington's will to be a frontline...

BALTIMORE — Of all the nerve! Kwame Kwei-Armah, Center Stage's exuberant artistic director, believes theater is such a vital aspect of the culture that a Pulitzer Prize-winning play on the sensitive subject of race deserves to be answered — with another play. Where did he get such an idea? Not, surely, in this country, where theater practitioners tend to tiptoe gingerly around each other's work, like exhausted babysitters afraid of waking the kids. Oh, of course: Kwei-Armah is an Englishman, brought up in a land where,...

In a one-two punch of gentrification, merely months after D.C. has lost its African American majority, Woolly Mammoth Theatre has brought back "Clybourne Park. " Bruce Norris' play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama this year, examines a neighborhood before it undergoes two major demographic shifts: the first, in 1959, as the first black residents are about to move into a white neighborhood, and the second, in 2009, as the first gentrifying white residents are about to move into a black neighborhood.

BALTIMORE — Growing up in Britain, Kwame Kwei-Armah saw the American classic "A Raisin in the Sun" perhaps more often than any other play, with its powerful portrayal of race relations. More than 50 years after the debut of "Raisin," the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Clybourne Park" picked up on the story. It was striking to Kwei-Armah for its frank take on race and made him want to respond. Now the 46-year-old British actor, director and playwright is introducing a...

BALTIMORE — Growing up in Britain, Kwame Kwei-Armah saw the American classic "A Raisin in the Sun" perhaps more often than any other play, with its powerful portrayal of race relations. More than 50 years after the debut of "Raisin," the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Clybourne Park" picked up on the story. It was striking to Kwei-Armah for its frank take on race and made him want to respond. Now the 46-year-old British actor, director and playwright is introducing a...

NEW YORK — The Kennedy Center fell just short of achieving Tony glory Sunday night as its acclaimed production of " Follies ," considered by some the best musical revival of the Broadway season, lost in the category to a revised version of George and Ira Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess. " Still, in its third incarnation on Broadway, the 1970 musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman did receive one Tony, for Gregg Barnes's costume design. The $7.3 million show,...

The Kennedy Center's production of " Follies " earned an impressive eight Tony nods, including one for best musical revival, in the nominations unveiled Tuesday morning in New York. The announcements, by actors Jim Parsons and Kristin Chenoweth, also revealed that Shakespeare Theatre Company will receive the special Tony Award that is given each year to an outstanding regional theater company. The Pulitzer Prize-winning " Clybourne Park ," which had a crucial early...

Jeff Talbott's " The Submission " is maddening and smug, but it begins with a fabulous premise. Danny has just written a play he thinks is dynamite, yet he fears no theater will touch it. It's about poor black people. The problem is, he's a gay white guy. Here comes the unlikely comic twist that the Greeks called the "happy idea. " The script gets picked up for production at the prestigious Humana Festival in Louisville, so the desperate Danny — who submitted the play...

In the expansive living room of their bright Tribeca apartment, Jon Robin Baitz and his friendly, three-legged dog Trip both pad about restlessly, looking for comfortable places to alight. For the 51-year-old Broadway playwright, who recently underwent back surgery, this task proves especially daunting. Explaining that he's under doctor's orders, he stretches out stomach-down on an area rug, wincing as he reflects on lessons learned in a quarter-century of professional writing. "I think everyone's life requires a...

BALTIMORE — For an artist from another land, Kwame Kwei-Armah is sure making himself comfortable here quickly. Just a few short months after arriving from London and taking over as artistic director of this city's flagship theater, Centerstage, the British-born artistic director has announced that his first full season of plays will include one by himself — a piece posing a direct challenge to the racial portraiture of last year's Pulitzer Prize...

Jeff Talbott's " The Submission " is maddening and smug, but it begins with a fabulous premise. Danny has just written a play he thinks is dynamite, yet he fears no theater will touch it. It's about poor black people. The problem is, he's a gay white guy. Here comes the unlikely comic twist that the Greeks called the "happy idea. " The script gets picked up for production at the prestigious Humana Festival in Louisville, so the desperate Danny — who submitted the play under the...

In the expansive living room of their bright Tribeca apartment, Jon Robin Baitz and his friendly, three-legged dog Trip both pad about restlessly, looking for comfortable places to alight. For the 51-year-old Broadway playwright, who recently underwent back surgery, this task proves especially daunting. Explaining that he's under doctor's orders, he stretches out stomach-down on an area rug, wincing as he reflects on lessons learned in a quarter-century of professional writing. "I think everyone's life requires a...

How inescapable is "A Raisin in the Sun"? It's not actually being performed as part of the bold two-play "Raisin Cycle" beginning Wednesday at Baltimore's Center Stage, but Lorraine Hansberry's trailblazing 1959 drama — the first Broadway play by a black woman and a cornerstone of American theater — casts a long, formidable shadow. The two plays being produced in Baltimore are Bruce Norris's Pulitzer-winning "Clybourne Park" and Kwame Kwei-Armah's new "Beneatha's Place. " The dramatists take liberties with...

NEW YORK — The Kennedy Center fell just short of achieving Tony glory Sunday night as its acclaimed production of " Follies ," considered by some the best musical revival of the Broadway season, lost in the category to a revised version of George and Ira Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess. " Still, in its third incarnation on Broadway, the 1970 musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman did receive one Tony, for Gregg Barnes's costume design. The $7.3 million show,...

You might say local stage fixture Mitchell Hebert has a flair for disappearing acts; one minute you see him, and the next he has been swallowed whole by any of an assortment of characters. Decadently devilish as Captain Hook at Olney and debonair, if punctilious, as Phileas Fogg at Round House, he also can conjure the heavy weight of heartache, transforming into a grief-stricken father in " Clybourne Park " at Woolly Mammoth. But now the recent Helen Hayes Award winner (" After the Fall ")

The Kennedy Center's production of " Follies " earned an impressive eight Tony nods, including one for best musical revival, in the nominations unveiled Tuesday morning in New York. The announcements, by actors Jim Parsons and Kristin Chenoweth, also revealed that Shakespeare Theatre Company will receive the special Tony Award that is given each year to an outstanding regional theater company. The Pulitzer Prize-winning " Clybourne Park ," which had a crucial...

BALTIMORE — Of all the nerve! Kwame Kwei-Armah, Center Stage's exuberant artistic director, believes theater is such a vital aspect of the culture that a Pulitzer Prize-winning play on the sensitive subject of race deserves to be answered — with another play. Where did he get such an idea? Not, surely, in this country, where theater practitioners tend to tiptoe gingerly around each other's work, like exhausted babysitters afraid of waking the kids. Oh, of course: Kwei-Armah is an Englishman, brought up in a land where,...

How inescapable is "A Raisin in the Sun"? It's not actually being performed as part of the bold two-play "Raisin Cycle" beginning Wednesday at Baltimore's Center Stage, but Lorraine Hansberry's trailblazing 1959 drama — the first Broadway play by a black woman and a cornerstone of American theater — casts a long, formidable shadow. The two plays being produced in Baltimore are Bruce Norris's Pulitzer-winning "Clybourne Park" and Kwame Kwei-Armah's new "Beneatha's Place. " The dramatists take liberties with...

BALTIMORE — For an artist from another land, Kwame Kwei-Armah is sure making himself comfortable here quickly. Just a few short months after arriving from London and taking over as artistic director of this city's flagship theater, Centerstage, the British-born artistic director has announced that his first full season of plays will include one by himself — a piece posing a direct challenge to the racial portraiture of last year's Pulitzer Prize...

Not until the odd couple in knit caps and bewildered looks wander wide-eyed into "The Language Archive" does a sense of attenuation escape Julia Cho's play, about the ramifications of mixed emotional signals and a rampant failure to communicate. Appearing as if they've just ended a shift as exhibitors at an ethnic festival representing some obscure Tyrolean republic, Kerri Rambow and Edward Christian enter Forum Theatre's Silver Spring space playing Alta and Resten, last known speakers of a...