Round House Theatre: Throw Me On the Burnpile and Light Me Up: Beth Hylton –Photo: Harold F Burgess II
For her latest work as a playwright, Lucy Alibar, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Beasts of the Southern Wild, has mined some of the more unforgettable aspects and experiences from her childhood — including Alibar growing up in a small farmhouse on a watermelon field in the Florida Panhandle, and helping her dad, a lawyer who defended death row inmates, by serving as his occasional part-time legal secretary when she was only a fourth-grader.
Alibar starred in Throw Me On The Burnpile and Light Me Up when the one-woman play premiered in Los Angeles in 2016. Five years later, Beth Hylton takes on all of the characters in a new digital production from Round House.
Directed by artistic director Ryan Rilette, the company calls the play, presented as a series of vignettes, a “heartfelt, irreverent, one-woman love letter to family, the South, and the belief that everyone deserves a defender.”
Sure to enhance the production if not steal the show outright with any number of signature extravagant costumes is Ivania Stack, part of a design team also including Paige Hathaway on sets, Matthew M. Nielsen handling sound, and Harold F. Burgess II overseeing lights. Meanwhile, well-known actor-about-town Maboud Ebrahimzadeh steps into the role of director of photography.
Throw Me on the Burnpile is the second of three offerings in Round House’s Spring Virtual Season, which launched with Colman Domingo’s A Boy and His Soul, a music-filled memoir and recipient of the GLAAD Media Award for Best Play that recounted the playwright and actor’s coming of age in 1970s West Philadelphia.
The season will conclude with Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die, helmed by Paige Hernandez, which streams for a month starting June 14. Part one-woman play, part live rock concert, the show features Regina Aquino as the Singer, with Jason Wilson as Bass Player, Laura Van Duzer as Keyboardist, Matthew Schleigh as Guitarist, and Manny Arciniega as Drummer — all backed by a real-life, four-piece indie-rock band The Chance Club.
Throw Me on the Burnpile and Light Me Up streams through June 13. Digital Access is $32.50 including fees. Call 240-644-1100 or visit www.roundhousetheatre.org.
Not since Hedwig and the Angry Inch have I so enjoyed a one-person musical about an internationally ignored female artist overshadowed by her famous male partner as much as I enjoyed Rebecca Simmonds and Jack Miles' enchanting In Clay.
Making its American premiere at Signature Theatre, following sellout runs in London, the jazz-infused portrait of early-20th-century French ceramicist and painter Marie-Berthe Cazin doesn't have too much else in common with hard-rocking Hedwig. Except that both shows are powered by a knockout batch of songs, and the galvanizing force of a woman reclaiming her time, her art, and her story.
Funny and devilishly astute, Sam Holcroft's Rules for Living, now at Round House, delivers a home-for-the-holidays dramedy where everyone has way more baggage than their carry-ons. Just as giggle-worthy as her slow-mo' car wreck of a family Christmas is her clever meta-juxtaposition of a few notions from cognitive behavioral therapy about the coping mechanisms most of us use to survive and/or evade home truths. The result is some big laughs, a few insights, and a well-timed shot across the bow as we all head into the holidays.
Originally written for British characters, this has been thoroughly "translated" for a stateside audience, which is an interesting choice considering the number of Americans who now spend their evenings tucked up in front of writ-for-Brits fare and managing just fine.
In 2015, it all seemed to be a novel concept. That's the year Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer Prize-nominated Marjorie Prime premiered Off-Broadway. Certainly, artificial intelligence had been developed, but in the ten years since, its sophistication and abilities have reached levels that are both beneficial and ethically questionable. Now, the piece has returned, this time on Broadway.
The use of AI rests at the center of Harrison's drama about Marjorie (June Squibb), an octogenarian who lives with her daughter, Tess (Cynthia Nixon), and her son-in-law Jon (Danny Burstein). Christopher Lowell rounds out the cast as Walter, a computerized version of Marjorie's deceased husband, known as a "Prime." With short-term memory loss and slight dementia plaguing Marjorie, the robotic form of her late spouse reappears in his thirties and relays information provided to him by Jon and Tess.
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