Ian Thal

‘In Your Shoes’: A Theatrical Experiment in Fostering a Democratic Ethos at Georgetown University

In the Devine black box theater at Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center, nine casually dressed undergraduate students, seated in chairs or on the floor take turns telling the story of...

Review: ‘The Peculiar Patriot’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

A klaxon sounds. A video montage of “Betsy” LaQuanda Ross (actor and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson) passing through the visitor entrance at a correctional facility plays in black and white on the...

Review: We Happy Few’s ‘Macbeth’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Taking their seats in the black box theater, the audience is confronted with three immobile figures cloaked in chiaroscuro, as small, gold-leafed picture frames faintly reflect tiny boxes of light. A...

Faction of Fools’ Paul Reisman on Commedia dell’Arte Day and ‘Bravo, Zan Angelo!’

February 25 is a special day for fans of physical comedy: Commedia dell’Arte Day! Founded in 2010 in order to petition that the Italian art form known for slapsticks and masks be recognized as a World...

Review: ‘Kleptocracy’ at Arena Stage

A young Vladimir Putin (Christopher Geary) steps onto the stage, wearing a 1980s tracksuit, quoting a passage from the Soviet absurdist and surrealist writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) “How a Man...

Review: ‘Talley’s Folly’ at Theater J

As Talley’s Folly opens, 40-something-year-old, self-described “hairy Jewish accountant” Matt Friedman (John Taylor Phillips) steps onto the stage and informs the audience that he has 97 minutes to...

Review: The Welders’ ‘In This Hope: A Pericles Project’ at Spooky Action Theater

From the moment the audience enters the large square room that is Spooky Action Theater’s church basement home, Environmental Designer Colin K. Bills has already communicated to the audience for In...

Review: ‘Our Class’ at Georgetown University

Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class opens in 1926 in a kindergarten classroom in a small town in northeastern Poland. Whereas most of Europe’s Jews had experienced a long history of expulsions and...

Review: ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay!’ at Nu Sass Productions

Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay! (one of several English language renderings of the original title, Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!) opens as Antonia (Francesca Marie Chilcote) and her friend...

Review: ‘King John’ at Folger Theatre

King John is so rarely performed (indeed, it’s been a decade since I last saw it staged) that the current Aaron Posner-directed production at the Folger Theatre opens with a primer on the players and...

Review: We Happy Few’s ‘A Midnight Dreary’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Entering the black box theater space at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, it is clear that We Happy Few’s A Midnight Dreary is not a normal theatrical adaptation of classic literature. A simple paint...

Review: The Coil Project’s ‘Strange Tales: Paradise Motel’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Seasonally-themed evenings of short plays are a staple for smaller theater companies – and with Halloween just weeks away, The Coil Project offers up a quartet of violent and supernatural one-acts in...

Review: ‘The Comedy of Errors’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most popular works, so there is little point recounting the plot. One must only remember that it is the one with two sets of twins: one a pair...

Review: “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” by Theater J

Storytelling is one of the most ancient of the performing arts, distinct from that of the dramatic actor, and when Mona Golabek makes her entrance, it is not as an actor playing a character but as a...

Review: ‘Gloria’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Director Kip Fagan opens this production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria with a clever conceit: Miles (Justin Weaks), an office intern, is at his desk, as the contrapuntal woodwinds and strings of a...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ’52:15′

The melody may be unfamiliar, but the music that opens The 100th Monkey Theatre Ensemble’s 52:15 is immediately recognizable as a television news show open. A reporter, speaking to the news anchor...

Review: ‘The Theory of Theories’ at District of Columbia Arts Center

An unnamed academic (Cristen Stephansky), in town for a conference, lounges on a sofa taking notes for her presentation. Her host, (Karoline Troger) a similarly unnamed Austrian scholar now teaching...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Truth*’

An ancient professor (Mikey Hays) ambles into the lecture hall, his collapsed posture and bowlegged, turned-out stance recalling Pantalone of the commedia dell’arte (he even wears the mask). He is a...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Beauty and the Beat’

ORT Productions’ Beauty and the Beat begins with a trio of dancers (Kelly Hogan, Carrie Monger, and Amy Scaringe) entering in formation into the graffitied performance space of the Blind Whino,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Roko’s Basilisk’

As the audience enters to see Roko’s Basilisk produced by Reliant Theatre, they are handed not a playbill, but a flyer, whose relevance is not immediately apparent. Its text simply states that “In the...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Accidental Pilgrim’

Theatre Du Jour’s The Accidental Pilgrim is an ensemble-devised work, directed by company co-founder B. Stanley. The ensemble’s style is heavily indebted to such twentieth-century theater innovators...

Review: ‘Trayf’ a World Premiere at Theatre J

New York, 1991: Zalmy (Tyler Herman) and Shmuly (Josh Adams) are two young men, best friends since childhood, excited to get behind the wheel of their newly acquired RV. What makes them different from...

Review: ‘An Iliad’ at Atlas Performing Arts Center

The setting (designed by Daniel Prosky) is not a battlefield in Anatolia in modern day Turkey, but what appears to be the office of an academic – perhaps a classicist. There is no computer on the...

Review: ‘The Cherry Orchard’ by Faction of Fools

Though it has commonly been staged as a tragedy or psychological drama since its Moscow premiere, Anton Chekhov always insisted that The Cherry Orchard was a comedy. A story about an aristocratic...

Review: ‘Use All Available Doors’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Dupont Underground

Sherry (Lady Davonne), a WMATA train driver, starts her day at Shady Grove in Derwood, MD. She has a word with the lead car of her train, “Forty-Twenty”: a soon to be decommissioned vehicle which she...

Review: ‘Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre)’ at American University’s Greenberg Theatre

Though he had a wide stylistic range, in America, Federico García Lorca’s fame as a playwright is mostly limited to his rural tragedy, Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) which was originally staged in...

Review: ‘Cabaret Noir’ by Happenstance Theater

The phrase “film noir” evokes both a particular sub-genre of the crime film as well as a particular era. Inspired by the moody expressionist dramas of the silent era that had come to an end a...

Review: ‘410 [Gone]’ at Rorschach Theatre

A young Chinese-American woman identified in the playbill as “Twenty-one” but named Jamie (Linda Bard) is attempting to use her MacBook to contact her dead younger brother through a video chat app....