Vincent

Remaining Performances:
All shows at 7:30 p.m.:
Friday, July 10th; Saturday, July 11th; Sunday, July 12th; Thursday, July 16th; Saturday, July 18th; Sunday, July 19th; Wednesday, July 22nd;Thursday, July 23rd; Friday, July 24th; Saturday, July 25th; Sunday, July 26th

They Say: “Paris 1890. In a moving effort to rescue his brother’s legacy, Theo van Gogh revisits Vincent’s turbulent life, offering insight into the world of the tormented artist. The world of the misunderstood genius is recreated in this poignant and intimate meditation.”

Glen’s Take: Yeah, pretty much. Especially the ‘intimate’ part.

In a tiny space tucked behind the DC Arts Center (up the stairs, then down the stairs, turn right), Theatre du Jour founder B. Stanley‘s delivering a precise, finely modulated performance as a heartsick Theo Van Gogh.

It’s barely a week after the passing of his beloved brother Vincent, and Theo just wants to clear up a few things, okay? As he paces Vincent’s abandoned studio (neatly evoked by a stark blank canvas and scattered tubes of paint), Theo addresses some lingering misconceptions—and outright lies—spread by ignorant townsfolk and that bastard, Paul Gauguin.

It might sound as if we’re in unreliable narrator territory here, but that’s not a game that playwright Leonard Nimoy (I KNOW, right?) seems much interested in playing. No, we’re meant to see Theo’s passionate protestations as straightforward testaments to just how much he loved his brother. After a while, you might find yourself hankering for things to get a bit more juicy, a bit more shaded with unspoken meaning, but Stanley’s performance is so grounded and sincere you can’t help but take the guy at his word.

See it if: You need a break from the hurlyburly, and are looking to sample some things from down on the quieter, more contemplative end of the Fringe salad bar.

Skip it if: You were kind of hoping this write-up would have some Spock jokes in it.

(Although to be honest, it was touch and go, right up to the end.)

They say: Who are you? Are you what you should have been? How did you become who you are? Can you face your inaction, your culpability, your own judgment? Peter Handke’s 1968 “speak-in” becomes an aural spectacle invading your awareness and permeating your experience.

Suzyn says: When I don’t understand something, I try to apply the best advice I ever got about law school. “When you think you’re drowning,” my favorite professor once said, “Grab a board. Just take something you understand and hang tight. Then try to get another board, and try to build a raft from there.”

The thing of it is, ‘Self Accusation’ doesn’t lack for boards. I understood every sentence. Indeed, I understood every word, except “orthography” and I looked that one up when I got home*. The play is essentially a recitation of acts and misdeeds the two everypeople (or two aspects of one everyperson) have committed, the vast majority of which are mundane “I ran towards something…I ran away from something” though a few are extremely odd, i.e. “I dealt in expired meat.” A few of the acts are patently evil, but most of them are violations of petty rules of society. (Oddly, “I eulogized Milosovic” didn’t make the list, but it would have fit right in.)

The delivery varies. It’s never quite in unison, even when the actors are speaking the same lines. The default delivery is reminiscent of the Lord’s prayer as recited by a congregation, though the tone varies substantially from this at times, with the characters lip-synching one another one minute and fighting sometime later. There was quite a bit of stage business with an umbrella, a pipe and a magazine, as well as a few bits of clothing the actors put on and later took off. I assumed that was more to break up visual monotony than anything else, and it did the trick.

I felt bad for Jerry Herbilla and Kris Roth, who struck me as the two hardest-working actors in Washington. (Present readership excluded, of course.) This was fifteen pages of dense, repetitive, filibuster and they made it entirely watchable. This was probably the only point in my day that I went 50 minutes without checking my cellphone, or having any desire to do so.

See it if: You were a philosophy major, or you’d like to know what it’s like to be that chick from “The Closer”

Skip it if: Seeing a guy put on a sweater and shoes while delivering oddly obvious lines with strange cadence will give you Mr. Rogers flashbacks.

*The study of writing in a particular language correctly, according to a particular method. Voilà!