Theater Minis

OPENING

• Belgrade Trilogy — Scena Theatre. Young Serbian immigrants are forced to seek out a new life after the NATO air war in this dark comedy by one of Europe’s leading playwrights, Biljana Srbljanovic. Opens tonight at the Warehouse Theater. 703/684-7990.

• Five by Tenn — The Shakespeare Theatre. Five one-acts by Tennessee Williams, part of the Kennedy Center’s Tennessee Williams Explored festival. Opens Wednesday at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. 202/467-4600.

• Rock On! — Round House Theatre. The rock ’n’ roll cabaret returns after two years of sellouts. Opens Monday for one night only. April 19. 240/644-1100.

• Waiting for Godot — Washington Shakespeare Company. Samuel Beckett’s classic about two men waiting for M. Godot. Opens tonight at the Clark Street Playhouse. 800/494-8497.

NOW PLAYING

• Cats — Toby’s Dinner Theatre — ***. Toby’s is one of the first theaters to try to re-create the kittenish allure of this Andrew Lloyd Webber warhorse, which premiered on Broadway in 1982. The intimacy of the space makes the show less of an empty spectacle and aligns it more closely with its source material, T.S. Eliot’s book “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” You do miss a complete orchestra as the keyboard-heavy 10-piece orchestra strives not to sound rinky-dink. Matters are helped by the emphasis on full-out choral singing. Costumes and makeup are captivating, and the actors give fetching portrayals of the show’s 26 cats. Through Aug. 8. 410/730-8311. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Elegies: A Song Cycle — Signature Theatre — ***1/2. This hauntingly beautiful production of William Finn’s latest musical, a tender tribute to the people he has loved and lost over the years, is a sung-through piece without any dialogue. The composer is eccentric and nontraditional without resorting to ironic distance, and a zippy neuroticism permeates his music. Director Joe Calarco’s five actors acquit themselves with polished, impassioned performances. Yet this glorious musical goes beyond mourning and looking back — it urges us to look up. Through May 9. 703/218-6500. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Fathers and Sons — Stanislavsky Theater Studio — . Turgenev’s 1862 novel raised in a still firmly czarist Russia the divisive issues of class structure, socialism and revolution: Two old Russian families are trapped in traditionalism even as their own sons, radical university students, rebel against them. Irish playwright Brian Friel’s adaptation, first performed in 1987, carves the essence out of the powerful tale. However, this yawn-inducing new production is more an endurance contest than a provocative evening of drama. Mr. Friel’s dialogue is windy and didactic, and director Andrei Malaev-Babel’s sense of pacing is funereal. “Fathers and Sons” is still best experienced as a novel. Through April 25 at the Church Street Theater. 800/494-8497. Reviewed by T.L. Ponick.

• Fences — Round House Theatre — **. August Wilson’s “Fences,” part of his 10-play cycle chronicling black American life in each decade of the 20th century, is a play of music, rage and coiled rhythm. Yet it becomes a pedantic harangue in this production. The bebop jangle of Mr. Wilson’s language reflects the zeitgeist of its era, the 1950s. Very little of this musicality comes through. By focusing on the anger of the main character, a talented baseball player in the Negro Leagues who never got a chance in the majors, this staging loses the beat poetry of Mr. Wilson’s dialogue along with its epic sense of tragedy. So the lead becomes not a hero, but just a nasty bully, and the play veers into melodrama, squabbling on the earth when it should be reaching for the stars. Through May 2. 240/644-1100. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• A Flag Is Born — American Century Theater — . Ben Hecht’s screed about the need for a Jewish homeland has not been produced in 56 years. After seeing this torpid production, you can only conclude that some works wither in obscurity for a reason. Unabashed, start-to-finish agitprop, this is a one-act dose of NyQuil distinguished only for its uniformly bad acting and staging that would make the Ice Age seem like a quickie. As a play, “A Flag Is Born” flies at half-mast. Through April 24 at Theater II, Gunston Arts Center. 703/553-8782. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Henry IV, Part 2 — The Shakespeare Theatre — **. “Henry IV, Part 1” examines the impetuousness and wastrel ways of youth. Its companion, Part 2, is often thought of as a richer experience because of its burnished treatment of old age. This production, directed at a processional pace by Bill Alexander, captures the long nap of aging and death almost too well. The gloomy wooden set does not do much to lift one’s spirits, nor does the uninspired staging. Thankfully, both plays feature the irascible figure of Falstaff, played with zaftig bonhomie by Ted van Griethuysen. In fact, the more seasoned actors run off with the play. So maturity rules, yet the staging would be better with some youthful spice. Through May 2. 202/547-1122. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

The three main characters in William Hanley’s compelling 1964 drama are on the lam — from their own false selves. All three wind up in a musty old candy store in Brooklyn late one night, and by dawn the three have killed the personas that cut them off from an authentic life. The characters learn there is “something better” out there than lives built on secrets and lies. Director Jennifer L. Nelson choreographs the play as if it were a jazz-fueled dance piece, and the actors dive in with relish. Yet the drama feels overlong and padded, and some of the flights of language, so wild and startling in the beginning, overstay their welcome. Through Sunday. 410/752-2208. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

• Yellowman — Arena Stage, Kreeger Theater — **1/2. Dael Orlandersmith’s bold, poetic two-person play examines the hierarchy of color in black society and how damaging it can be to equate lighter skin with attractiveness and superiority. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, the play gives us the dark, nappy-haired Alma and the light-skinned Eugene, both raised — in backwoods South Carolina households that are dens of booze and violence — by people who hate them for the way they look. The power of their love carries “Yellowman” to epic heights, yet in the second act, the play dissolves into an unwelcome and unnecessary blast of ghoulish melodrama, a glob of alcoholism, miscarriage and murder. Through Sunday. 202/488-3300. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.

MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS