David Siegel

In the Moment: Billie Krishawn and ‘Emilie’ at Avant Bard

Avant Bard’s Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight with Sara Barker in the role of the whip-smart 18th century very real Emilie is a clear knock-out for critics and audiences alike....

In the Moment: ‘ReDiscovery Series’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

It was a festive, most satisfying evening of high-end arts entertainment and education. And it was totally free. What was it? It was a recent Monday evening at The Lansburgh with the Shakespeare...

Review: ‘Hello, My Name Is…’ at The Welders

Challenging theatrical conventions, Hello, My Name Is… by Deb Sivigny, directed by Randy Baker, and produced by The Welders is like no other theater production I have taken in, in recent memory. The...

In the Moment: Interview with Lighting Designer Andrew F. Griffin

Folger’s production of Antony and Cleopatra directed by Robert Richmond has garnered its rightful share of critical acclaim. Its lighting design is a critical component of the production’s striking...

In the Moment: ‘Jazz4Justice’ at Center for the Arts

Hardy, inspiring community engagement is vital for the continuing health of the performing arts. That is a given. With challenging times for arts funding; the changes in the acceptance of the...

Review: ‘An Act of God’ at Signature Theatre

I was healed. Aches and pains of the day disappeared. Headaches from paying too close attention to Presidential tweets vanished. I might have been saved too. Not sure of that just yet. Will have to...

In the Moment: ‘Are you now or have you ever been…’ at MetroStage

As I took in, with a notably racially diverse audience, MetroStage’s top-notch, tense, musically revealing production, Are you now or have you ever been…, so many questions challenged me. The...

In the Moment: ‘The Mistress Cycle’ at Creative Cauldron

Illuminating what has been in the shadows, or usually whispered about, Creative Cauldron has provided a delicately rendered musical about the harsh realities women have faced over the centuries when...

In the Moment: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Ford’s Theatre

“There’s just no spot for you,” is the terse way that Willy Loman’s “snotnose” boss-man Howard tells Loman he is fired. Just go and don’t look back, “cause you gotta admit, business is business.” With...

Review: ‘Stones in His Pockets’ at Keegan Theatre

Engaging with warm-hearted humor and disarming in the depth of scenes about lost boys and bitter men with their dreams crushed, the Keegan Theatre production of the Marie Jones’ Stones in his Pockets...

Review: ‘Bernstein on Broadway’ at The Kennedy Center

It was a glorious evening for Leonard Bernstein and musical theater fans at The Kennedy Center. It was the exceptional, one-night-only opening to the worldwide celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s...

In the Moment: Matt Haimovitz Brings Mobile Music to Northern Virginia

In these days of the end of the brick-and-mortar retail shops, and in these times when new audiences are less likely to purchase subscriptions to the performing arts as Baby Boomers once did, what can...

Review: ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’ at Peter’s Alley Theatre Productions

In these days of constant bombast and weaponized words, when sounding reasonable and wanting to be open to another person’s point of view sounds almost quaint, Peter’s Alley Theatre has taken a quiet...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at NextStop Theatre Company

What a combustible evening at NextStop’s production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. Under Thembi Duncan’s adroit direction and with fascinating casting, this in-your-face drama...

In the Moment: ‘Iola’s Letter: The Memphis Crusade of Ida B. Wells’ at Hill Center

So here we are in late 2017. And in the past several months, nooses have appeared in the Washington DC area, on the campus of American University, at the University of Maryland, inside the National...

In the Moment: ‘A Little Night Music’ at Signature Theatre

Opening in 1973, A Little Night Music was part of the muscular turbulence of those well-remembered primal days of rage. Rage that bred inhaled cynicism like a needed eye-opening drug into the arts for...

Review: ‘The Wizard of Hip’ at MetroStage

Yesterday may be far away for some; but a high-spirited comic primer of one male’s vainglorious attempts to be “hip” and his bewilderment at all things relating to women awaits from the exuberant,...

Review: ‘Whipping, or The Football Hamlet’ at Longacre Lea

What a rush. DC area playwright Kathleen Akerley has aced her way through the hottest of “au courant” identity politics in her newest work, the penetrating Whipping, or the Football Hamlet. With...

Review: ‘Bon Voyage! A Happenstance Escapade’ at Round House Theatre

Sunny and cheerful is how I felt after an hour or so with Happenstance Theater’s Bon Voyage! A Happenstance Escapade. The original production, currently at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, made this...

Review: ‘Empanada For A Dream’ at 1st Stage

Proust may have had his mother’s madeleine, but Juan Francisco Villa has his mother’s empanada to stir up memories of his gritty, hard scrabble childhood in New York’s City’s Lower East Side. It was a...

Review: ‘Hick: A Love Story’ at 1st Stage

What was hidden away as a purposefully invisible sidebar of decades-old history, is brought to well-deserved notice by 1st Stage’s inaugural Logan Festival of Solo Performances. With Hick: A Love...

Review: ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ at The Hub Theatre

Set in a fictionalized American magical kingdom, The Happiest Place on Earth, now playing at Hub Theatre, is a wonderfully bittersweet family saga that actor Tia Shearer crushes in her solo...

In the Moment: Report on ‘Declassified’ at The Kennedy Center

A hearty bro-hug to The Kennedy Center and to the National Symphony Orchestra’s (NSO) new Artistic Advisor, Ben Folds, for having the joint jumping at the recent late night Declassified event. It was...

In the Moment: Interview with Theatrical Designer Deb Sivigny Part II

Continuing the conversation we started in Part I of this interview with costume and scenic designer Deb Sivigny, we delve a bit more into Deb’s work as a designer. Maybe even with some reveals and...

In the Moment: Logan Festival of Solo Performance at 1st Stage

Under the leadership of Alex Levy, 1st Stage aims to be a cultural hub for the Northern Virginia community and beyond. Over the past year, 1st Stage has reached outside of theatrical productions to...

In the Moment Interview: Jordan Friend, Artistic Director of 4615 Theatre

A new generation of theater-makers are beginning to assert themselves in the DC area. They are the Millennial generation who have made DC their home over the past decade. Many are natives of the area,...

In the Moment: Interview with Theatrical Designer Deb Sivigny Part I

Deb Sivigny is one busy scenic and costume designer in the DC theater community. Just recently, she developed design elements for the Rorschach Theatre production of Forgotten Kingdoms. The 1st Stage...

Review: ‘Broken Glass’ at Theater J

Shards of unseen, but sharply-felt shattered glass, both of a collapsing marriage and the infamous Kristallnacht (Night of Crystal), are fused together in Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass, now playing at...

In the Moment: A Report on ‘How I Learned What I Learned’ at Round House Theatre

Reflections of a hard-headed son on the Round House Theatre production of August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned. As a theatrical production, August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned,...

Report: Source Festival 2017: ‘Best of 10-Minute Plays’

A destination awaits for theater-goers ready for a high-quality evening taking in a marketplace of intriguing 10-minute plays. The destination is DC’s ever-changing 14th Street and this year’s edition...

Review: ‘Flying V Fights: The Secret History of the Unknown World’ at Flying V Theatre

It was a day for the un-stuffy. I wanted to engage with something new and ambitious. I hoped to be left agog. Well, Flying V Fights: The Secret History of the Unknown is an overwhelming success in my...

Review: ‘Crazy Mary Lincoln’ at Pallas Theatre Collective

Crazy Mary Lincoln, has received an appealing, open-hearted, ardent regional premiere production from Pallas Theatre Collective. The musical focuses new light on the long, woe-filled life of Mary Todd...

Review: ‘King Lear’ at Avant Bard

The tempest in my mind / Doth from my senses take all feeling else. King Lear, Act 3, scenes 4–5. Avant Bard’s King Lear is a bracing, piercing production of a family and realm in heightening...

In the Moment: Interviews with Flying V’s Jason Schlafstein and Sydney Moore

With monikers like, Become Awesome and The Theatre for People Who Don’t Think They Like Theatre, Flying V burst onto the DC-metro area theater scene. In 2015, Flying V received the Helen Hayes Award...

In The Moment: A Report on ‘ReBirth of a Nation’ at The Kennedy Center

It was an evening like few others in the company of of hundreds at The Kennedy Center on a recent evening. What took place was a performance meant to strike a hot chord for cultural and political...

In The Moment: Interviews With the Creative Cauldron ‘Bold New Works in Intimate Space Artistic Teams: Laura Connors Hull, Matt Conner, and Stephen Gregory Smith

Creative Cauldron continues to dazzle critics and audiences with its “Bold New Works for Intimate Stages” – a series of premier musicals. It is certainly rare when a smaller professional theater...

Review: ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at Signature Theatre

Signature Theatre’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar is an impressive beauty of a rock opera. It successfully takes a Biblical phrase such as, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in...

In the Moment: Strauss Artist Grant Bestowed on Scenic, Costume, and Puppet Designer Margaret (Margie) Jervis

The Arts Council of Fairfax County announced a $5,000 Strauss Artist Grant award to Falls Church-based theater designer Margaret (Margie) Jervis. Jervis, a Falls Church native, is the resident Scenic,...

Review: ‘Timon of Athens’ at Folger Theatre

Undone by his own goodness? Ha! That is not what I took away as director Robert Richmond succeeded masterfully with his contemporary, blasting grenade of an interpretation for Shakespeare’s rarely...

Review: ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at Synetic Theater

Haunting is the word that quickly came to mind as I sat, mesmerized, rediscovering a classic of literature I thought I knew from reading print on a page and from the movies. But, oh my, Synetic...

In the Moment: ‘Roar: True Tales of Women Warriors’ to Benefit National Network to Prevent Domestic Violence

Launching an anthology of stories entitled Roar: True Tales of Women Warriors to benefit the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the professional story-telling group, Better Said Than Done will...

In the Moment: ‘In the Heights’ (Spanish Version) at GALA Hispanic Theatre

New theater voices, heard in their own language and accessible to a wide audience. In a world-class area full of strivers like the DC metro area, it is about time. This admiring column is based...

Review: ‘OR,’ at Round House Theatre

The revolution will not be televised. Nope, it is on stage at Round House Theatre with a playful, headlong charge of a wild comedy. The comedy is called OR, a fictionalized account of free-spirited,...

Review: ‘The Late Wedding’ at The Hub Theatre

Once again, Artistic Director Helen Murray and The Hub Theatre are producing a seductive play meant to kindle sparks for adventurous theater-goers. The Hub is constantly on the hunt for small gems...

Review: ‘Boeing Boeing’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Oh, what fine comic talent and an attuned director can do to bring pleasure. Under the sure hands of NextStop’s Evan Hoffmann and a talented six-member ensemble, there is enjoyable life to an old...

In the Moment: ‘Midwestern Gothic’ at Signature Theatre

The premise seems full of possibilities. With its moody Twin Peaks-like, arched eyebrow attitude, Midwestern Gothic tackles wasted lives, a randy adolescent woman who is questioning the “why” of her...

In the Moment: An Interview with Peter Meineck, Founder of Aquila Theatre, On Their Production of ‘Our Trojan War’

Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter. ― Homer, The Iliad, ‘Book 22’ (Tr. R. Fagles) Do ancient plays...

In the Moment: A Talk with the Pipeline Playwrights: Part Two: Patricia Connelly and Jean Koppen

This is the second installment of In the Moment columns focusing on the Pipeline Playwrights. Pipeline Playwrights is a small collective of accomplished Northern Virginia women playwrights. Pipeline’s...

In The Moment: ‘The Sound is the Kicker’ in Scena’s ‘The Night Alive’

Another superior night with Irish playwright Conor McPherson, this time at Scena Theatre under Robert McNamara’s illuminating, layered direction of McPherson’s earthy, sideward glance at damaged...

Review: ‘Ragtime’ at Ford’s Theatre

Glorious! Dazzling! Verve! Bursting at the seams with voices and stories of America’s humanity and originating dreams. These are the words I felt as Ragtime, now at Ford’s Theatre, unfolded before me....