John Stoltenberg

Magic Time!: ‘ “Master Harold”…and the Boys’ at Round House Theatre

One of the most quietly profound moments in Athol Fugard’s anti-apartheid play “Master Harold”…and the Boys—just opened in a powerfully moving production at Round House Theatre—happens in a simple...

Review: ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ at Constellation Theatre Company

With admirable nerve and imagination, Constellation Theatre Company has mounted an endlessly inventive production of a work by a playwright who dares us to enjoy him. Bertolt Brecht wrote plays to...

Magic Time!: Bedroom Talk with Actors Dimitri Gann and Ryan Townsend About ‘Top and Bottom’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

Top and Bottom is a new gay comedy by Kevin Michael West and directed by Christopher Janson. It’s set in a hotel room where James, a wannabe “dom,” has planned an S&M-ish hookup with Tommy, supposedly...

Review: ‘Luzia’ at Cirque du Soleil in Tysons

For a Cirque-head such as myself, anticipation of a new Cirque du Soleil show coming to town kicked in months ago. It had been two long years since Cirque last pitched its Big Top here, with Kurios –...

Magic Time!: ‘Roz and Ray’ at Theater J

This is an absolutely absorbing medical drama performed with full-on passion by two of DC’s top-tier actors. Susan Rome plays Roz, a hematologist dedicated to her role as healer, and Tom Story plays...

Review: ‘Between the World and Me’ at The Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, Samori, was 15 when his father wrote a book addressed to him, Between the World and Me. Before that book won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, it was a...

Magic Time!: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

“What the fuck was that?” a friend asked me at the opening night reception for this show at Woolly. To which, still reeling, I could only answer, “Yeah, what the fuck?” The cringe-inducing show we had...

Magic Time!: ‘Paper Dolls’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Paper Dolls has such an open heart and such largesse of spirit that you might well leave the theater verklempt with hope. The play with songs by Philip Himberg, directed by Mark Brokaw, tells an...

Review: ‘The Beckett Trio’ at Scena Theatre

Nanna Ingvarsson is so phenomenal in these three harrowing short plays by Samuel Beckett that one can easily imagine the Nobel Prize-winning minimalist—notoriously persnickety about his stage...

Magic Time!: ‘Nat Turner in Jerusalem’ at Forum Theatre

By coincidence, Nat Turner in Jerusalem opened at Forum Theatre the day that The Raid closed at Theater Alliance. The two plays seen in succession are powerfully connected. Idris Goodwin’s The Raid...

Review: ‘Chicago’ at The Keegan Theatre

With its snappy-saucy take on Chicago, The Keegan Theatre shows it knows how to give an audience the ol’ razzle-dazzle. And Keegan has done the durable musical proud. In fact in Keegan’s mounting of...

Review: ‘Breathe: The Musical’ at THEARC

Breathe is a brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed gospel musical that celebrates black resilience even as it revisits the traumas endured by the black family in a nation built on slavery. At...

Review: ‘The Tarot Reading (IV)’ at Anacostia Arts Center

Despite its occultish name, The Tarot Reading is not a cabalistic rite for mystics. It is actually an ingenious theater game for hipster questers who are psyched to play along. To be sure, the...

Review: Taylor Mac’s ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (Abridged)’ at The Kennedy Center

I doubt the Eisenhower Theater was ever more queered than the night Taylor Mac came to town. The outrageously gifted and fabulously attired theater artist brought “a radical fairy realness ritual...

Review: ‘That Part Is True’ at Rabble Crew Productions

Wouldn’t it be fun to be a young urban radical and cohabit with other young revolutionaries—in a cheap walk-up apartment that you all share—eating fast food, having polyamorous sex, doing recreational...

Review: ‘Hold These Truths’ at Arena Stage

There is a dramatic moment in Hold These Truths that comes as no surprise yet comes as a heart-stopping shock. We know going in that this moment is going to happen. We know that the U.S. Supreme Court...

Magic Time!: The Birth and Revelation of ‘Mom Baby God’: A Q&A with Playwright/Performer Madeline Joey Rose

Mom Baby God—a solo show written and performed by Madeline Joey Rose about the right’s attack on abortion rights—is as playful as it is powerful. The play centers on a fourteen-year-old girl,...

Magic Time!: Michael Urie Opens Up About His Hamlet at Shakespeare Theatre Company

When I had a chance to ask Michael Urie some questions about his performance as Hamlet, I learned he can hold forth as insightfully as the character he plays. Well, maybe minus the verse and plot. But...

Review: ‘The Raid’ at Theater Alliance

Can social justice happen without militancy? Can ideals of equality become real without resort to violence? These questions gnaw at the mind during Theater Alliance’s powerfully eloquent staging of...

Review: ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ at Spooky Action Theater (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Puppets, people, props, projections, and sci-fi pop up a lot on DC stages, but not often with the narrative verve, literary cred, and nonstop wit of The Lathe of Heaven. Adapted and directed by...

Review: ‘Translations’ at The George Washington University

There’s a lovely scene just before intermission that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It is 1833 in agricultural County Donegal Ireland, and two star-crossed lovers—Maire (Samantha Gonzalez), a...

Review: ‘Peepshow’ at dog & pony dc

“Who here is a feminist?” asked the Ring Announcer (Amelia Hensley). As she signed, wearing a bright red pantsuit and standing on a thick padded mat as used for a contact-sport match, a nearby hearing...

Review: ‘Familiar’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

When the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival comes to a close and the hits to emerge from it are tallied, Danai Gurira’s comedy Familiar will surely be on the shortlist. Gurira’s play Eclipsed—a...

Review: ‘Character Building’ at American Ensemble Theater

There is something heart-stirring and inspiring about this new one-man musical. In between excerpts from glorious hymns and spirituals, the great African American educator and orator Booker T....

Magic Time!: Katie Kleiger on Bonding and Being a Warrior in ‘The Wolves’ at Studio Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

The reason I asked to interview Katie Kleiger is that after I saw her in Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves at Studio Theatre, I realized I had seen her on the same fourth-floor stage in Lucy Prebble’s The...

Magic Time!: Gloria Steinem Talks About ‘Sovereignty’ at Arena Stage (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

“What Mary Kathryn Nagle has given us on stage tonight is the history we don’t learn,” said renowned feminist author and activist Gloria Steinem during one of the most buzzed-about talkbacks of the...

Magic Time!: ‘Jefferson’s Garden’ at Ford’s Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

A portrait of George Washington hangs in Ford’s Theatre on the presidential box where Abraham Lincoln was shot. When you stop to think about it, this is an odd disconnect. Presumably faithful to what...

Magic Time!: ‘The Trial’ at Synetic Theater

Kafka’s nightmare novel about a man named Joseph K—who is arrested, detained, and tried but never told what he has done wrong—would seem perfect for Synetic Theater’s magic touch. A promising...

Review: ‘Everything Is Illuminated’ at Theater J

A young Jewish American writer named Jonathan arrives by train in the Ukraine on a quest to find a woman named Augustine who helped his grandfather Safran escape the Nazis. He has only a faded...

Review: ‘The Skin of Our Teeth’ at Constellation Theatre Company

Thornton Wilder’s allegorical paean to humanity’s survival “by the skin of our teeth” has itself become a marvel of endurance. First staged in 1942, when times were decidedly dire, the determinedly...

Magic Time!: ‘Guilt’ at Scena Theatre

Sex and guilt were linked in superstition before institutional Christianity came on the scene, but thanks to the medieval Catholic Church they got hooked up with theology too. It was in the runup to...

Magic Time!: “Claim All of Your Selves”: Caleen Sinnette Jennings on Her ‘Queens Girl’ Plays (Womens’ Voices Theater Festival Productions)

Erika Rose’s performance in Queens Girl in Africa is awesome to behold. She plays the playwright’s teenage self, named Jackie, plus her parents, school friends, and others, with an incandescence that...

Magic Time!: Inside ‘Amazing Grace’ at the Museum of the Bible: A Q&A with Performer Joshua Simon

When I saw the musical Amazing Grace I praised it to the skies. A blurb being used to promote the show is lifted from my review: “A gorgeous production of a glorious musical! Heart-stopping,...

Magic Time!: ‘The Birds and the Bees: Unabridged’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“Let’s rethink sex” has suddenly become a thing. Well, not suddenly maybe. But it certainly has new pertinence in this era of full-frontal disclosure. Which made the themes of The Birds and the Bees:...

Magic Time!: Life Lessons of ‘The Real Americans’: A Q&A with Playwright-Performer Dan Hoyle

Dan Hoyle’s extraordinary solo show The Real Americans is based on his travels through small-town America and the folks he met, many of them part of Trump’s so-called base. When I reviewed the show, I...

Magic Time!: ‘The Last Night of Ballyhoo’ at Theater J

The production is lushly beautiful; the pacing, impeccable; the music between scenes, splendid; the acting, a delight in every detail. And the warm, piquant humor in this Jewish family drama has a...

Magic Time!: “My Job Is to Crack Open My Soul”: A Q&A with Justin Weaks, Now Appearing in ‘Curve of Departure’ at Studio Theatre

Justin Weaks was recently named by the Washington Post one of DMV’s 12 “stage dynamos,” one of “the best of an emerging cadre of younger regional talent.” He would have been on my short list too. I’ve...

Review: ‘Draw the Circle’ at Mosaic Theater Company

Draw the Circle is no ordinary one-man show. Nor is it an ordinary autobiographical play. Because Mashuq Mushtaq Deen—its transgender playwright and solo performer—has a singularly fascinating life...

Review: ‘Amazing Grace’ at the Museum of the Bible

A gorgeous production of a glorious musical in a grand new DC theater. What’s not to love? The new hall for performing arts is the 472-seat World Stage Theater, high up on the fifth floor of the new...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘The State’ by Forum Theatre at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their exchange in...

Review: ‘Misterman’ at Solas Nua

A tour de force performance by Thomas Keegan and masterful stage arts combine to make Solas Nua’s Misterman a jaw-droppingly good show. Directed and choreographed by Artistic Director Rex Daugherty,...

Review: ‘The Ugly One’ at Nu Sass Productions

The gutsy woman-centric theater company Nu Sass is notable for producing works that feature women in major roles, onstage and off, typically in a tiny second-floor space on F Street that seats only 30...

Review: ‘The Love of the Nightingale’ at The Catholic University of America

A play from the 1980s about revenge for a rape, based on an ancient story from Greek mythology, comes alive in a student production as though it was about now. As though everything in it about how...

Magic Time!: ‘Republic For Which We Stand’ at United States Capitol Visitor Center

For anyone who is more than a little unnerved that President Trump might go off half-cocked and trigger a war—which he could do with as little thought as he puts into a tweet—this civic-minded play...

Review: ‘The Real Americans’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“Why am I a stranger in my own land?” the preternaturally talented actor-writer Dan Hoyle asks during his solo excursion into the heartland of America. Having set forth several years ago by van from...

Magic Time!: ‘A Short Series of Disagreements Presented Here in Chronological Order’ at Studio Theatre

He might have had an interesting idea for a solo show. He hadn’t written it yet. but he told Studio Theatre, which had booked him, that its title would be A Short Series of Disagreements Presented...

Magic Time!: ‘Vicuña & The American Epilogue’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“Even monsters need clothing,” says the bespoke tailor Anselm, an Arab Jew and immigrant, defending why he will sew a vicuña suit for a Republican presidential candidate whom his intern Amir, a...

Review: ‘In the Red and Brown Water’ at Howard University

The wonder-filled stories that wend their way through In the Red and Brown Water were located by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney in “the distant present” in a fictional town in Louisiana. But in...

Magic Time!: ‘Hello, My Name Is…’ at The Welders

Having heralded five* Welders productions, I approached Deb Sivigny’s Hello, My Name Is… with both eagerness and wariness. Knowing that Sivigny had chosen as her subject a fact of her own...

Review: ‘God of Carnage’ at George Washington University

The big laughs in Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage come from watching grownups behaving badly, and the big joke is that four parents end up acting more like petulant, belligerent children than their own...