Each month DCist will review a few theater performances around the region and give you our critics’ verdict: whether you should see them, skip them, or at least think about it. Want to know what else is playing? Check out our monthly theater preview.

Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities
Review by Missy Frederick

January LaVoy is a revelation in Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, a chameleon who slips effortlessly in and out of more than 20 characters in this one-woman show running at Theater J.

She has big shoes to fill: LaVoy is taking on a role originally conceived, written, and performed by the iconic Anna Deveare Smith, who interviewed more than 100 people to create the work back in the early ’90s. The play captures the tensions erupting between the Afro-

Caribbean and Chabad-Lubavitcher Jewish communities in 1991 Brooklyn when a Black child was killed in a car accident by a Jewish man; after riots ensued, a white Jewish scholar unconnected to the accident was stabbed in retaliation.

LaVoy embodies a Los Angeles female rapper as naturally as a community activist or an academic scholar (Photo silhouettes and identifying subtitles are projected on a brick wall behind her during the play, co-directed by LaVoy and Adam Immerwahr, to further drive home the quick character transitions.)

Fires in the Mirror is most affecting when unraveling the observations and conclusions of the average people affected by the tragic events; a quiet Jewish housewife driven indoors by the violence, an anonymous Black witness who gets hindered by police, a young teen contrasting the cultural identities of her Black and Latinx classmates. It feels more unwieldy as it weaves in more imposing historical figures, from the Rev. Al Sharpton to noted feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin.

Fires heartbreakingly drives home how a narrative can twist and bend within a heightened emotional moment, depending on who’s telling the story and bringing their own anecdotes, nuances, and biases to the table. But even at a slim 100 minutes, the point gets made over and over again until it loses some of its bite.

Verdict: Consider it

Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities is at Theater J until July 3. Tickets are $35-$70. Run time is 100 minutes with no intermission.

Maz and Bricks
Review by Lori McCue

“I hate this guy,” I wrote in my notes the second Bricks (Jonathan Feuer) opened his mouth in the first minutes of Maz and Bricks, the new play from Solas Nua. Maz (Emily Kester) would agree with me — at the outset of the show, at least. The two young people meet on a Luas train to Dublin: She’s heading to an abortion protest, he’s picking up his young daughter from his ex’s house.

Despite the charming Frozen backpack he carries, Bricks doesn’t make a great first impression: He loudly brags on the phone about bedding a woman from the club last night, immediately hits on an uninterested Maz, and dopily tells her that as the father of a young daughter he adores, he’s against abortion. Maz comes with her own baggage. She’s incensed about the reason for the protest – a young woman has died during a botched, illegal abortion – and has her own troubled history that makes the issue personal for her.

But their prickly meeting on the train is the meet-cute at the beginning of playwright Eva O’Connor’s not-quite rom-com, set in recent years before Ireland struck down its abortion ban in 2018. After the protest, the two wander around Dublin, Before Sunrise-style, getting drunk and causing mayhem. Of course, the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn abortion rights seems to hover over the stage . But the real story here, as directed by Rex Daugherty, is about grief and coping with trauma, as both our characters finally figure out how to move on from their difficult pasts.

Between their scenes together, Feuer and Kester take turns stalking the spare stage, weaving around each other in dancelike movements (choreographed by Daugherty and Ashleigh King). As they do, they deliver long passages of rhythmic dialogue that feel more like slam poetry than monologues. (Not to mention, doing it all in thick Irish accents.) But the best scenes of Maz and Bricks show these two unlikely romantics together, sharing an electric chemistry. By the downtempo end of the show, you’re not sure if these two will be all right, but watching Maz and Bricks thaw each other out makes it a worthwhile evening spent with them.

Verdict: Consider it

Maz and Bricks from Solas Nua runs at Atlas Performing Arts Center through June 26. Tickets $45. Runs 75 minutes with no intermission.

Nollywood Dreams
Review by Nicole Hertvik

Round House Theater is closing out its season with Nollywood Dreams, a comedy by Jocelyn Bioh set in 1990s Nigeria at the dawn of the West African film industry.

Nollywood Dreams centers on Ayamma, a young woman who works with her sister Dede at their parents’ travel agency in Nigeria. When a well-known director announces an open audition for the female lead in his next film, Ayamma goes head to head with an aging film star (“the Nigerian Halle Berry with Tina Turner legs”) for a chance to act alongside national heartthrob Wale Owusu. Claws come out and drama ensues, but which leading lady will win the role?

In the hands of capable director Raymond O. Caldwell, the comedy moves at a fast clip, with the jokes landing just right, and actors harnessing the melodramatic flourishes of early Nollywood films: a shocked close-up here, a deep sigh there.

The ensemble cast turns out engaging performances and the chemistry between actors is palpable: the sisterly bickering between Ayamma (an adorable, wide-eyed Ernaisja Curry) and Dede (a hilarious Renea S. Brown), or the smoldering looks that ooze out of Wale (played with boy-band sexiness by Joel Ashur) each time he sees Ayamma. Jacqueline Youm stands out as the larger-than-life TV host Adenikeh, who sports stunning West African head wraps, thanks to costuming by Brandee Mathies.

The only disappointment in Round House’s Nollywood Dreams is Jonathan Dahm Robertson’s set. The large turntable rotates, but forces the performers toward the center of the stage, meaning people sitting on the sides of the auditorium miss parts of the action.

Bioh’s play School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play was a huge hit for Round House in 2019, and this latest effort reinforces her talent for crafting stories that highlight the richness, and humor, in African life.

Nollywood Dreams won’t change your life. But for a night of laughs, it is just the thing. And that might be the biggest takeaway from this comedic gem: Hollywood or Nollywood, when it comes down to it, we all just want to be entertained.

Verdict: See.

Nollywood Dreams runs at Round House Theatre until July 3. Tickets are $55-$78. Runtime is 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission.