Amy Kotkin

Fugard’s ‘My Children! My Africa!’ at WSG still speaks urgently

Washington Stage Guild revives the extraordinary play written just before the end of apartheid in South Africa.

Mosaic’s searing ‘Keffiyeh/Made in China’ now a single video on demand

Originally seven short episodes, Dalia Taha’s trenchant play about Palestinian life under occupation has been re-released as a 75-minute virtual production.

Two rival sisters feud in intense and surreal Adrienne Kennedy drama

Round House Theatre, in association with McCarter Theater Center, concludes its festival of works by celebrated playwright Adrienne Kennedy with the world premiere of Etta and Ella on the Upper West...

Adrienne Kennedy festival replays a painful drama from her own life

When Ohio State University invites the distinguished author Suzanne Alexander back to her alma mater, she is asked specifically to lecture on the theme of violence in her works. Brace yourself, Ohio...

A Black son’s assault by police, powerfully told in the Adrienne Kennedy festival

Twenty-nine years before George Floyd was murdered on camera and 18 years before Black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested for “breaking and entering” into his own home, Antioch College...

Adrienne Kennedy festival opens with haunting letters between lovers

Round House Theatre, in association with McCarter Theatre Center, has launched its digital series of works by Adrienne Kennedy with the enigmatic He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, directed by Nicole...

A strange phone tree leads to hilarity in ‘Human Resources’ at Woolly Mammoth

When was the last time you enjoyed a funny, edgy Woolly Mammoth production while digging up stubborn weeds from your garden or taking a stroll through Rock Creek Park? Just when we thought our options...

Olney’s virtual ‘The Humans’ shines with fine performances

Olney Theatre Center’s virtual production of The Humans offers proof positive of the old adage: Necessity is the mother of invention. Just see how they have turned the pandemic’s crushing blow into a...

A wonderfully manic ‘#txtshow’ from performance artist Brian Feldman

Brian Feldman puts a lot of faith in his virtual audience. His production #txtshow (on the internet), which he creates and performs, is based on the texts he receives in real time from his audience....

Update: Synetic Theater’s wonderfully inventive ‘Decameron’ is now all online

With all videos in The Decameron available through July, Amy Kotkin completes her original review with yellow-highlighted additions below. History always has lessons to teach during times of enormous...

All under one roof in Signature Theatre’s ‘Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes’

Marian’s cheery Florida home – an over-decorated retirement nest she shares with second hubby Richard – has become a tropical haven for two adolescents in crisis. Richard’s pregnant niece Kitty, whose...

‘Silent Sky’ at Ford’s Theatre celebrates early female astronomers who reached for the stars

Two generations before the African American space scientists immortalized in the film Hidden Figures propped up America’s nascent space program, another group of pioneering female “computers” huddled...

Prologue Theatre revisits the day after 9-11 in ‘Recent Tragic Events’

On September 12, 2001, after a stunning halt to nearly all normal activity, life resumed for most Americans. And yet, we knew that everything had changed. Our sense of security was shattered. More...

The Second City’s ‘She The People: The Resistance Continues’ levels the playing field with humor

The good news? The Second City’s sharp-witted She The People: The Resistance Continues is back at Woolly Mammoth for another rollicking production of top-notch sketches and witty songs. The bad news?...

Washington Stage Guild delivers skillful production of Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’

Like many of Charles Dickens’s sprawling novels, Hard Times chronicles the lives and times of multiple characters dwelling in England’s mid-19th-century industrial chaos. But unlike the elaborate...

Review: ‘West by God’ at The Keegan Theatre

The economic and social plight of America’s white rural working class has been the subject of recent blockbuster books from J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to Educated, by Tara Westover. Now this...

Review: Pulitzer-Winning ‘Fairview’ Jump-Starts Woolly Mammoth’s New Season

The Woolly Mammoth Theater Company has rocket-launched its 40th anniversary season with a searing production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama....

Open To All: The Kennedy Center’s New Addition Encourages Community Engagement

Sensuous and just a bit sly, the smooth white pavilions of the Kennedy Center’s new REACH complex wink at us amidst undulating grassy berms. One rises up from the green lawn, curling like an oncoming...

Review: An Audacious and Urgent ‘Assassins’ at Signature Theatre

Nearly thirty years after its premiere, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins still astonishes. An audacious meet-up of nine successful and would-be presidential assassins – from the narcissist John Wilkes...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hold the Tomato’

Back at the Fringe Festival after their successful 2018 appearance, Laugh Index Theatre’s production of Hold the Tomato strikes a number of funny bones during its fast-paced series of comic sketches....

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘That’s Not How It Happened’

Funny, sweet, and poignant, Colleen Hindsley’s one-woman show, That’s Not How It Happened, will resonate with anyone who misses their parents, has endured the torture of older siblings, or nearly...

Review: ‘God of Carnage’ at Keegan Theatre

Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning God of Carnage is a cautionary tale for modern times. Written in French and translated into English by Christopher Hampton, Reza’s razor-sharp black comedy has...

Review: ‘Resolving Hedda’ by Washington Stage Guild

What if your favorite dramatic heroine could – just for once – alter her tragic fate? That’s the question posed by playwright Jon Klein in the Washington Stage Guild’s production of Resolving Hedda....

Review: ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ at Synetic Theater

Edmond Rostand’s tale of a consummate wordsmith achieves profound new eloquence in Synetic Theater’s wordless production of Cyrano de Bergerac. As they have done in so many previous productions, from...

Review: ‘From U Street to the Cotton Club’ by The In Series

Rising from its roots in the Deep South, African American music journeyed north with the Great Migration, invigorating urban culture with rhythms derived from shouts to spirituals, work songs and...

Review: The Second City’s ‘Love, Factually’ at the Kennedy Center

The Second City lights up the Kennedy Center’s holiday season again this year with their new production, Love, Factually. Featuring a top-rate cast directed by Frank Caeti, The Second City delivers a...

Review: ‘Cry It Out’ at Studio Theatre

In the bleak Long Island backyard that serves as their coffee-klatch confessional, neighbors Lina and Jessie chat daily about the alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching emotional terrain of new...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at the Kennedy Center

It has taken more than 35 years for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s iconic musical Little Shop of Horrors to reach the Kennedy Center. But it’s been worth the wait! The Kennedy Center’s Broadway...

Review: ‘How I Learned to Drive’ at Round House Theatre

Twenty years ago, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive shocked audiences with its holistic examination of pedophilia. It takes a village to molest a child, Vogel believes, not just a perpetrator and a...

Review: ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ at Rockville Little Theatre

Anne Frank’s immortal words about love, fear, and hope come alive once again at Rockville Little Theatre’s new production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Based on the words of World War II’s most famous...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘50 Ways to Date Your Aubrey’

Aubri O’Connor lights up the tiny stage at Caos on F, drawing us into this quirky, funny, and poignant play within a play starring her alter ego, Aubrey. During a 70-minute romp through Aubrey’s...

Review: ‘Other Life Forms’ at the Keegan Theatre

When asked recently what he hoped audiences will get from watching Other Life Forms, playwright Brandon McCoy answered, “I hope they laugh, and I hope they have a really good time.” Mission...

Review: ‘Master Harold…and the Boys’ at Round House Theatre

On a rainy afternoon in 1950, two middle-aged black servants slowly scrub the floor and wipe tables in an empty South African tea room. They banter about an upcoming ballroom dance competition and the...

Review: ‘Migratory Tales’ at GWU Corcoran School of the Arts & Design

The inspiration for Migratory Tales comes from multiple sources, according to the play’s creator and director, Leslie Jacobson. Our current and painfully divisive debate on immigration was foremost...

Review: ‘The Great Society’ at Arena Stage

Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 margin of victory – nearly 16 million popular votes and a lopsided total of 486 electoral votes – is almost unimaginable today. Armed as well with a 68-32 majority in the Senate,...

Report: ‘Yoga Play’ at Mosaic Theater Company Workshop Series

Yoga Play, a new work by Dipika Guha, was presented as part of Mosaic Theater Company’s 2018 Workshop Series at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on Monday, January 29th. The play was commissioned and...

Review: ‘An Irish Carol’ at Keegan Theatre

Now in its seventh year, the Keegan Theatre’s annual production of Matthew J. Keenan’s An Irish Carol has become a favorite Washington DC holiday tradition. It’s easy to see why. A quintessentially...

Review: ‘Twist Your Dickens’ at Second City

If you’re yearning to kick off your holiday season with goodnatured hilarity, get thee to the Kennedy Center and grab a seat at the Theater Lab, where The Second City’s Twist Your Dickens is holding...

Review: André Watts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore Music Center

André Watts brought an ecstatic audience to its feet after his magnificent performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s beloved Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. Playing with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra...

Review: ‘Little Women’ at American Univeristy

Louisa May Alcott’s evergreen tale of female fortitude and family virtues beams its inspiring message once again at American University’s lovely new production of Little Women, the musical. A talented...

Review: ‘Respect! A Tribute to Aretha Franklin’ at the American Pops Orchestra

Five fabulous divas joined the innovative new American Pops Orchestra to celebrate the music of Aretha Franklin at the Arena Stage’s Fichandler Stage on September 16. An energized audience sang,...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Words She Gave Me’

The Words She Gave Me, Solia Bickersteth’s ambitious multimedia project, is a bighearted and moving exploration of how African-American women have shaped one another’s concept of womanhood. Sisterhood...

Review: ‘Jean and Dinah – The Play’ at The Essential Theatre

A disheveled bedroom in Port of Spain, Trinidad — home to the nearly incapacitated Dinah – is playwright Tony Hall’s incubator for an important and wide-ranging drama about the destructive effects of...

Review: ‘The Magic Play’ at Olney Theatre Center

In the art of magic, Andrew Hinderaker has found a vivid metaphor for the dynamics of honesty, trust and control that underpin our most important relationships. His immensely entertaining and profound...

Interview: Michael Bloom, Director of Lisa Kron’s ‘Well’ at 1st Stage

Amy Kotkin recently had a chance to interview Michael Bloom about his upcoming production of Lisa Kron’s Well at 1st Stage. Amy: What initially attracted you to this play? Have you directed it...

Review: ‘Coolatully’ at Solas Nua

In the fictional village of Coolatully, a quartet of characters grapple with the effects of Ireland’s newest mass emigration. The brief and heady era of the Celtic Tiger was over; a mass exodus was...

Review: ‘The River’ at Spooky Action Theater

Jez Butterworth’s The River does not yield itself to easy interpretations. Uncertainty flows through the story, jostling us repeatedly. Its questions about truth and morality are specific and seismic...

Review: ‘Last Train to Nibroc’ at Washington Stage Guild

On a train rumbling eastward from Los Angeles in 1940, a young man in uniform invites himself to sit down next to a pretty young woman absorbed in her book. As it turns out, they are both from...

Review: ‘The Hard Problem’ at The Studio Theatre

No shrinking violet when it comes to exploring humanity’s most complex questions, playwright Tom Stoppard takes a deep dive into the frontiers of neuroscience, human nature, and the existence of God...

In Context: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at The Keegan Theatre

John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation was widely admired as an ingenious, penetrating look at contemporary society when it premiered in New York back in 1990. Based on a true story, it concerns a...