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This week’s arts section opens with Jonathan L. Fischer‘s story on the Warehouse, a crucial venue for electronic and otherwise underground music in D.C., that was recently forced to shut down after a shooting. It’s not clear whether there’s another space can fill the niche Warehouse did—-there aren’t many places in this town you can do a show till 5 in the morning. With fire spinners.
Over on our arts grazer page, punk-rock historian Mark Andersen takes us on a fascinating walking tour of Ward 1’s punk-rock past. (It should give you food for thought next time you’re stumbling home from a house party on Irving Street NW—-just think, you’re stepping back into riot-grrrl history, people!) In One Track Mind, Aaron Leitko talks to local band Hand Grenade Job about the inspiration for their track, “Witchcraft”: teen misanthropy.
Esteemed critic Jeffry Cudlin unpacks the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit now showing at the National Gallery of Art, making the point that while Lichtenstein worked with comics and other ephemera, his work came from a drastically different place than Pop Art co-founder Andy Warhol.
In theater, Ian Buckwalter is surprised that Theater J’s Our Class—-a three-hour epic about Catholic and Jewish classmates who endure brutal atrocities in their Polish town and deal with the aftermath—-works at all. Without aging makeup or set and costume changes, it’s still richly told, and a real tearjerker to boot. Then Chris Klimek has mostly positive things to say about Scena Theatre’s production of A Clockwork Orange—-which may not make you vomit, unlike Kubrick‘s film adaptation.
Tricia Olszewski isn’t entirely enamored of Smashed, James Ponsoldt‘s film about an alcoholic gone sober; while she admires Mary Elizabeth Winstead‘s performance, she wonders whether kicking the booze really is as easy as the movie suggests. Our critic finds more depth in Sister, the tale of a troubled, ski-swiping 14-year old and his messed-up sis, who, it turns out, have important things to teach us about the meaning of family.
Eve Ottenberg follows with a fine review of David Ebenbach‘s short-story collection, Into the Wilderness. Ebenbach’s stories aren’t actually about the literal wilderness, but the metaphorical wilds of parenthood. And finally, Brent Burton has the goods on Rites of Spring‘s six-song demo, recently released on Dischord. It won’t necessarily explain how the tuneful band got to be so damn melodic, but it will make you wonder how Guy Picciotto was such a killer singer his first time in the vocal booth.