Highlights from the Fall Arts Guide

Red Light Winter

To Sunday, Oct. 15

Theater this week

It’s sort of damning that the Studio Theatre had to dig all the way back to a review in the Chicago Sun-Times to find a decent teaser for its production of Red Light Winter. Chicago critics blinked Adam Rapp’s script out of existence, and New York critics took every opportunity to drop a steaming pile on the show’s off-Broadway run. Of course, Rapp is notable for striking the sort of defiant anti-establishment pose that irks our cultural gatekeepers: Red Light Winter’s funniest bit finds Rapp biting the hand that feeds him with an extended riff on theatrical concessions and merchandising. It’s hard to imagine that Big Apple audiences are much taken in with the playwright’s depiction of their city, either; Rapp’s New York is a bohemian dystopia of cramped studio apartments, space heaters, shared bathrooms, and lousy takeout, in contrast to the idealized form depicted in the snow globe that gets passed around between the play’s three characters. Still, it’s interesting to observe what happens when director Joy Zinoman pulls Rapp’s script out of the confines of New York and allows it to breathe. Red Light Winter is a play without a conventional structure, but Zinoman has always had a deft hand with pacing—and her staging is punctuated with short bursts of manic energy that accentuate the script’s seasick rhythm. Zinoman and her cast clearly want this play to be something more than a collection of sucker punches and sparkling bon mots about Henry Miller and shaved pussies; their desire makes the characters’ hearts beat faster. Deeper meaning eludes them, but the fact that they don’t find it is, in and of itself, a penetrating statement. The play runs at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and at 7 p.m. Sundays at 7 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees Saturdays and Sundays, to Sunday, Oct. 15, at the Studio Theatre’s Mead Theatre, 1333 P St. NW. $29–$55. (202) 332-3300. (Nick Green)

	Girl in the Goldfish Bowl runs to Sunday, Oct. 15, at MetroStage
	Nine Parts of Desire runs from Friday, Sept. 29, to Sunday, Nov. 12, at Arena Stage's Kreener Stage