John Stoltenberg

Review: ‘Junk’ at Arena Stage

“When did money become the thing—the only thing?” asks an ambitious young financial journalist in her opening monologue. She then answers her own question: “The mid-eighties. 1985 to be exact…. It was...

Review: ‘Pinter Rep’ by Scena Theatre

When Pinter is performed with precision, with exacting attention to the text—as is the case with Scena Theatre’s razor-sharp Pinter Rep—the effect can be both unnerving and exhilarating. The tension...

Review: ‘Siwayul (Heart of a Womxn)’ by Nelwat Ishkamewe Two-Spirit Theatre

American theater blows off a lot of folx. Leaves out their voices. Doesn’t cast them. Isn’t interested in their stories. Two-Spirit indigenous transpeople, for conspicuous instance, are among the...

Magic Time!: ‘Native Son’ at Mosaic Theater Company

When one has an overwhelming experience in the theater—as I did watching Native Son at Mosaic—it can take some time to process. This is especially so if the work is unlike anything one thought...

Review: ‘columbinus’ at 1st Stage

There’s a lot that’s shocking and disturbing in this show, as well there should be—it’s based on the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. That massacre—during...

Review: ‘Dead Dog’s Bone: A Birthday Play’ by Nu Sass Productions

There is indeed a dog in this play, aptly named Dog, wryly performed by Karen Lange wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and neck bandana. At the top of Act One, Dog sings a country-westernish song, “[Taking...

Review: ‘Spills’ by Who What Where Theater Collective

We are seated on folding chairs in the living room of an actual house where two women and a man in their mid-twenties have agreed to meet up for a three-way. There’s a modest playing area for them and...

Magic Time!: ‘Queen of Basel’ at Studio Theatre

Queen of Basel by Hilary Bettis, now on the boards at Studio, is scathingly brilliant. One walks out gobsmacked. (I completely concur with my colleague Bob Ashby’s astute review.) But watching Queen...

Review: ‘Hexagon 2019: Romp in the Swamp’

Hexagon has been around for 64 years and never seems to age. Since 1956 the musical comedy theater group has been turning out original political satire that’s as of-the-moment as the news. Its latest...

Magic Time!: ‘Limits’ by Cirkus Cirkör at The Kennedy Center

The circus I fell in love with as a kid is gone. It was touted at the time as the greatest show on earth: a three-ring tented extravaganza that smelled of roasted peanuts, sawdust, and manure and...

Review: ‘Hands on a Hardbody’ at the Keegan Theatre

The title of this show, if you have never heard of it, doesn’t mean what you might think. It’s not about fitness. It’s not about sex. It’s a country-western musical about ten hard-up Texans trying to...

Magic Time!: ‘Crying Hands’ by Teater Manu at George Washington University

We like to think that the Holocaust could never happen here. We want to believe that it shouldn’t so it couldn’t. And then comes along a work of theater like Crying Hands that screams out how...

Review: ‘Blood at the Root’ at Theater Alliance

Raymond O. Caldwell kicks off his new Producing Artistic Directorship at Theater Alliance with a production of Dominque Morisseau’s Blood at the Root that is bursting with youthful exuberance,...

Review: ‘Separate Rooms’ at 4615 Theatre

“Will I be missed?,” the young man wonders aloud as he surveys the thirtysomethings who have gathered in his Manhattan apartment for a party after his funeral. “Did it matter that I was here?” They do...

Review: ‘Three Cheers to Grace’ at Young Playwrights’ Theater

“They call me a vegetable,” Grace tells us. “They call me a corpse.” In this nimbly comic and deeply moving new play by Josie Walyus, a 14-year-old named Grace is literally in a coma. That’s how all...

Review: ‘Reykjavík’ by Rorschach Theatre

The Reykjavík conjured up in Steve Yockey’s new play Reykjavík is not the family-friendly destination the Iceland tourist bureau might try to sell you. But if you’re 18 or older—and if you wish to be...

Review: ‘BLKS’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

BLKS is gonna be a blockbuster. Let’s get that out of the way. BLKS is a rapid-fire, laugh-out-loud comedy about a quartet of twenty-something black women in New York City who are roommates, gal pals,...

Review: ‘SHAME 2.0 (With Comments From the Populace)’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“You have to be a good Arab,” says Morad Hassan of the stigma he faces trying to have a career as an Arab actor in Israel—the very country where, he says, “we are the Jews of the Jews.” “FREE...

Magic Time!: ‘The Brothers Size’ at 1st Stage

“You fucked up! You fucked up! You fucked up!” rails the older brother, berating the younger. “You fucked up! You fucked up! You fucked up!” he goes on, as if he cannot rage enough, as if he can’t get...

Magic Time!: ‘Twelve Angry Men’ at Ford’s Theatre

Cross-racial casting can be totally wrongheaded—as when white actors impersonate characters of color. It can also be speciously universalizing—as when actors of color play all the parts in a work...

Review: ‘The Screwtape Letters’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre

When the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” comes on the pre-show soundtrack, it’s a tipoff that C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters is going to be a diabolically delightful evening of theater and...

Magic Time!: ‘Admissions’ at Studio Theatre

“Some of my best friends are white men,” says Sherri, the very liberal white woman who handles admissions at a small New England prep school. Avowedly antiracist, Sherri is on a mission to increase...

Magic Time!: ‘Jeffrey’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

If there’s such a thing as gay wit, Paul Rudnick’s got a load of it. Imagine Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward if they could be out about it. Yeah, Rudnick ranks with them and then some. As proof, check out...

Magic Time!: ‘ 19: The Musical’

It was “a century of struggle” before women in the United States won the right to vote in 1920, and the centenary of the amendment that cinched it, the nineteenth, is just around the corner. An...

Magic Time!: ‘Washington Magic’ at the Arts Club of Washington

When I was a kid, magic tricks and puppet shows were forerunners to my love of theater. They were like my gateway drug. I got hooked on the wonder and live storytelling. And to this day I associate...

Magic Time!: ‘Kings’ at Studio Theatre

“Laws are like sausages,” goes the adage. “It’s better not to see them being made.” As it happens, I have a good mental picture of how sausages are made, because for three summers during college I...

Review: ‘Oh, God’ at Mosaic Theater Company

Theater and theology have been boon companions for eons. Ever since religion was invented, humans have wanted divinities with drama. Way back in polytheistic antiquity, playgoers imagined gods as...

Review: ‘Crystal’ by Cirque du Soleil at Capital One Arena

Cirque du Soleil’s Crystal is staged on a slick sheet of ice where acrobats and skaters combine to create an amazing entertainment. A spectacular array of chills and charms to thrill and warm the...

Review: ‘Gem of the Ocean’ at Round House Theatre

There are only ever seven characters onstage in this majestic production—three of them former slaves—but it is as if multitudes of Africans lost crossing the ocean or sold in chains are evoked and...

Magic Time!: On Acting with a Conscience: A Q&A with Lianne Harvey, now appearing in ‘An Inspector Calls’

The character Lianne Harvey plays in J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, Sheila Birling, really fascinated me. Sheila stands out as no ordinary ingenue. During the course of the play, Sheila goes...

Magic Time!: ‘How to Keep an Alien’ by Solas Nua

I can’t recall seeing another play by someone who came to playwrighting from standup, but I’ll not soon forget how I laughed my feckin head off at Sonya Kelly’s How to Keep an Alien. Kelly, an Irish...

Review: ‘Watergate…with Puppets’ by AnyStage Theater

Fans of zany humor might remember when AnyStage Theater popped up in the Capital Fringe Festival with its ridiculous (and mostly fact-free) takes on Margaret Thatcher and Amelia Earhart. The...

Review: ‘Indecent’ at Arena Stage

The controversial scene that ends this “true story of a little Jewish play” has been foretold at length throughout the show and mentioned in much publicity, so it’s no spoiler to report that we all...

Review: ‘Barber Shop Chronicles’ at The Kennedy Center

“To let one’s hair down” is to open up, be freer than usual, be willing to share. The idiom is apt for what transpires in Barber Shop Chronicles, an extraordinary exploration of black masculinity, in...

Magic Time!: ‘An Inspector Calls’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

J. B. Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls—a drawing-room drama set in England in 1912 and written there in 1944—has landed in DC with uncanny currency. Now at Sidney Harman Hall in a touring...

Magic Time!: Mike Daisey’s 18-Part, 30-Hour ‘A People’s History’ at Seattle Repertory Theatre

I remember being so bored by my high school American history class that I got a D in it. This was not normal. My report cards always had A’s and B’s. So the kindly elderly woman who taught the course,...

Review: ‘The Choir of Man’ at The Kennedy Center

If you’re in a mood for some boisterous joy this holiday weekend—some soul-rousing solos and heartbreaking harmonies in the tenor/bass range—nab a ticket to The Choir of Man. The touring concert show,...

Magic Time!: ‘Cry It Out’ at Studio Theatre

Cry It Out—an exhilaratingly funny and touching comedy about new parenthood—is a joyous reminder that when a playwright of Molly Smith Metzler’s skill and compassion writes “close to home,” as she...

A Youthful Fresh Take on ‘Our Class’ at Georgetown University

Long before the recent shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Derek Goldman had planned to direct a production of Our Class with student actors at Georgetown University. It is a play...

Review: ‘The Agitators’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“Do you still believe there can be a country for all?” When that blunt question comes up in The Agitators—Mat Smart’s deeply affecting play about the friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick...

Review: ‘Long Way Down’ at The Kennedy Center

Long Way Down, adapted from the renowned young adult novel in verse by Jason Reynolds, is told in the voice of a 15-year-old named Will and performed by the prodigiously talented Justin Weaks. He is...

Magic Time!: ‘The Fever’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

If you’ve ever been in an acting class, a group-encounter session, a sensitivity training, or kindergarten, you’ll feel right at home in The Fever. Even if you’re by nature standoffish, an inveterate...

Magic Time!: ‘Actually’ by Theater J at Arena Stage

The vexing concept of consent in sex gets a seductively smart parsing in Anna Ziegler’s Actually. Now playing in an electrically well-acted Theater J production directed by Johanna Greunhut, Actually...

Magic Time!: ‘The Fall’ at Studio Theatre

There is so much to be blown away by in The Fall, the powerful and thrilling performance piece devised and performed by seven South African students. Their majestic musicality, their propulsive...

Magic Time!: ‘How I Learned to Drive’ at Round House Theatre

I’ve been wary of this play since it was first produced in 1997. I remember hearing that it was about a pedophile and his niece and that its treatment of the uncle was sympathetic. So I didn’t trust...

Review: ‘Blight’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Anacostia Playhouse

A few years ago, the teenage son of a single mom shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic, and now the nice suburban home they lived in is a blight. The house not only brings the neighborhood down; it...

Magic Time!: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ by Restoration Stage at THEARC

When three hours in the theater elapse faster than many a 90-minute performance, it’s a good bet you’ve been in the thrall of a master storyteller. And that’s what happens in Chocolate Covered Ants,...

Magic Time!: Actor Michael Kevin Darnall Opens Up About Being Open on Stage

When Michael Kevin Darnall plays a character who is the focus of a long scene and we can watch every nuance and shading of his emotional expression without interruption, he can be transfixing. When I...

Review: ‘Aida’ by Constellation Theatre Company at Source

Just before intermission in Constellation Theatre Company’s sparkling and stirring production of Aida, there comes a wonderful “Wakanda Forever” moment. The fearless Nubian princess Aida (a...

Review: ‘Anon(ymous)’ by Theatre Prometheus at the Silver Spring Black Box

Countless migrant children have been separated from home and family in war-torn parts of the world, and there is no way all their stories will be told. But Naomi Iizuka’s Anon(ymous)—just opened in a...