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‘The Berlin Diaries' is a twisting and resonant search for lost family

Washington Post

10 hours ago

Entertainment
Washington Post

‘The Berlin Diaries' is a twisting and resonant search for lost family

Playwright Andrea Stolowitz is a central character in her own 'The Berlin Diaries.' She is played by Dina Thomas in a delicately moving production at D.C.'s Theater J — except when she's played by actor Lawrence Redmond, who also inhabits the long-dead grandfather whose inherited journals set the show's affairs in motion. Except when Redmond is stepping into the role of the playwright's Uncle David. Or one of a dozen other characters, based everywhere from Brazil to South Africa to New York to the Pacific Northwest. With me? Fret not: If the play's structural quirkiness initially feels adventurous to the point of mild madness, it quickly reveals a method, even as its novelty settles into something like normalcy. In fact the dialogue-juggling — in which the two actors often divide a thought mid-phrase while inhabiting the same character — deftly suggests the sort of wait-who-was-that? conundrums that any genealogist grappling with a knotty ancestral puzzle might get tangled in. For instance, I bear the same name as both my father and my grandfather, and there's another handful perched a few generations back in the family tree. This means that 'No, the Thomas who was killed when a branch fell on him in 1762 was a farmer; his son Thomas was the Presbyterian minister,' is the kind of thing I find myself clarifying mid-story, as if anyone other than a desperate family-history nerd could possibly follow. One intriguing dynamic with 'Berlin Diaries' is precisely that Andrea Stolowitz, or at least the character with her name, doesn't seem that sort of nerd at all. She's a mildly jaded playwright and teaching artist whose family isn't all that large or all that close, and who's not particularly interested in the diary her mother has been saving all this time. Yes, they're Jewish, and yes, they emigrated from Germany — but as Uncle David shrugs, 'Everyone made it here alive. … There's nothing to find out.' Unconvinced, but also under-inspired, and entirely uncertain what she's actually looking for, Andrea does what teaching artists do when confronted with things like old diaries: She writes a grant proposal and takes off for Europe. Unsurprisingly, she'll uncover rather more than Uncle David's shrug suggests, and in its clean 90 minutes 'Berlin Diaries' chronicles developments as concrete as confusion about a street address and as esoteric as the singular frisson that comes with stumbling across a headstone and knowing that a faded name on a dusty page really lived and died in this actual place, at that actual time. And its protagonist will confront the reality that even now, even after decades of diligent documentation, even given the famously meticulous recordkeeping that accompanied the Holocaust, it's possible for people — for whole swaths of whole families — simply to be verschollen, lost. Theater J's handsome production, steered with a light touch and admirable clarity by director Elizabeth Dinkova, deploys warm woods (in a set by Sarah Beth Hall) and plenty of papers (props are from Pamela Weiner), along with one of the most quietly lyrical visual vocabularies I've seen in a theater lately. (Colin K. Bills is responsible for the lighting, and Deja Collins the subtle and exquisite suite of projections.) Redmond and Thomas navigate a tricky script with the ease of veterans and a wry, low-key charm that helps find an appropriate unifying tone for a narrative that involves the soberest of considerations — but also at least one anatomical joke and (rather boldly) the employment of mild sarcasm in the vicinity of the words 'never forget.' And Stolowitz manages, without belaboring or dwelling on grim specifics, to convey the quiet horror of discovering the name of a lost relative in the same moment you realizing that that person's story is largely and irremediably lost. 'He who forgets what he cannot change is happy,' muses Andrea at one point, echoing a line from her grandfather's journal, though it's not clear she can bring herself to agree. 'The Berlin Diaries' will resonate, and vividly, with audiences who caught Tom Stoppard's similarly aching family chronicle 'Leopoldstadt' at the Shakespeare Theatre Company late last year – and I should imagine with any member of a Jewish American generation whose parents and grandparents simply couldn't bear to pass on the stories of the lost. The Berlin Diaries, through June 29 at Theater J. About 90 minutes without intermission.

‘Angry co-writer' compared Shakespeare to an upstart crow

Times

2 days ago

Entertainment
Times

‘Angry co-writer' compared Shakespeare to an upstart crow

William Shakespeare's co-writer for his first history play has been identified as the anonymous source who branded the playwright an 'upstart crow'. Textual analysis using artificial intelligence has fingered Thomas Nashe as the culprit behind the caustic attack on Shakespeare, in a 1592 pamphlet that suggested the fledgling playwright from the provinces had ideas above his station. A new academic paper has suggested that the pair's collaboration on Henry VI Part 1 could have prompted Nashe to dismiss Shakespeare in the pamphlet as one who 'supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you'. Nashe is thought to have written the first act and other segments of the play, which was first performed at the Rose Theatre in London in 1592 and quickly followed by two further instalments.

‘Long Days' play premieres at Legacy Theatre

Yahoo

14-06-2025

Entertainment
Yahoo

‘Long Days' play premieres at Legacy Theatre

BRANFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — A new play premiered at the Legacy Theatre in Branford, giving audiences a new look at legendary playwright Eugene O'Neill. Exhibition reshaping New Haven's art scene 'Long Days,' was created by Gabe McKinley about a group of actors putting on a production of O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey into Night,' according to the Legacy Theatre's website. The show's premiere began on Thursday and can be seen until June 29 at the Legacy Theatre in Branford. Tickets are available online. Watch the video in the player above. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For Hannah Moscovitch, writing her plays is like exploring herself with a knife

CBC

09-06-2025

Entertainment
CBC

For Hannah Moscovitch, writing her plays is like exploring herself with a knife

Social Sharing It's never easy for Hannah Moscovitch to reveal her most devastating experiences to strangers. Nonetheless, the Canadian playwright says the results are always worth it. "I'm prouder of the plays that I've written where I've taken a knife and I've explored myself," Moscovitch tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "I think that they expose truth more clearly." Her latest show, Red Like Fruit, tells the story of Lauren, a journalist covering a high profile domestic violence case. Over the course of the play, Lauren starts to reexamine her own past experiences with men. WATCH | Official trailer for Red Like Fruit: Moscovitch says she understands that #MeToo politics are messy — that's why her show is about asking questions, not telling the audience what to think. "I often want to do plays that leave you with ambiguities," Moscovitch says. "[Plays] that show you nuance and sophistication, and many points of view represented within them.… Especially in a piece like Red Like Fruit. I think a lot of people who have had similar experiences are actually struggling with the fact that it's not right or wrong. Or it's not clear to them. Or they don't know." When Moscovitch began her career, she wanted to make lighthearted entertainment, and she wanted to act. But that was not her destiny — she was raised by ardent social activists, and her drama school teachers quickly spotted that she was better as a writer than a performer. Now, Moscovitch is a Governor General's Award-winning playwright. Many of her works have been acclaimed for offering uncompromising insights into the unspoken experiences of women. She says she wasn't willing to delve into this complex territory at the beginning of her career — it took time to find the courage. "I got braver and I got older, and I got more willing to be vulnerable," Moscovitch explains. "I got willing to, you know, turn my own gaze on myself in a way that I wouldn't have been comfortable with when I was a younger writer." She's glad that she's found a way to push past her fears, and connect with people who need to be heard. "There's something original about anything that has never been spoken," Moscovitch says. "And then there's a whole audience out there that feels so relieved that it's being spoken for the first time. And they love you for it. And you feel good."

David Mamet Criticizes The Democratic Party As A 'Party Of The Elites' No Longer Representing American Workers

Fox News