Robert Michael Oliver

Spine: Love, Greed, and Bigotry in The Folger’s ‘District Merchants’

There’s no question that Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a problem play, fraught with old hates that were once considered justified and old beliefs that have long lost their hold on the European...

Review: ‘Midlife’ at Single Carrot Theatre

Ben Hoover’s Midlife explores that most difficult of theatrical terrains, human subjectivity. Not that subjectivity expressed by human babble, i.e., talking, of which America’s logocentric culture...

Spine: ‘An Octoroon,’ ‘The Octoroon’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

An Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ re-imagining of Dion Boucicault’s pre-Civil War classic The Octoroon, opened last night at Woolly Mammoth. Postmodern, hip, sardonic, farcical–An Octoroon deals...

Review: Ireland 100: ‘Tiny Plays for Ireland and America’ by Fishamble: The New Play Company

Fishamble: The New Play Company opened its “Tiny Plays for Ireland and America” last night as part of Ireland 100. Act I consisted of 20 short, Irish plays in 90 minutes, and each play shed some light...

Review: Ireland 100: ‘The Plough and the Stars’ at The Kennedy Center

Make no mistake about it. World War I kicked the crap out of patriotic idealism. Just ask Wilfred Owen. His “Dulce et Decorum et” is one of the most powerful denunciations of the concept of “the...

Review: ‘Hedda Gabler’ at Studio Theatre

Hedda Tesman, aka., Hedda Gabler, has it all: beauty, grace, status, ambition, wit, and feminine mystique. And, per usual, it’s the mystique that does her in. Studio Theatre’s Hedda Gabler, in a new...

Review: ‘Phaeton’ at Taffety Punk Theatre Company

Phaeton, now on stage at Taffety Punk’s Capital Hill Arts Workshop, is a world premiere. Inspired by the Greek myth, the man-god Phaeton is granted one wish by his Helios father: he demands to ride...

Spine: Becoming Leila Buck’s ‘Hkeelee’ at Mosaic Theater Company

In The Protean Self, Robert Jay Lifton explores the wonders of human resilience in times of profound disturbance and change. In Hkeelee (Talk to Me), a theatrical memoir of sorts, writer and performer...

Review: ‘Journey to the West’ at Constellation Theatre Company

Mary Zimmerman has mastered the stage adaptation, particularly of the classic tale, freely blending cultural forms and styles with hypnotic brilliance. Her Metamorphoses and Arabian Nights are shining...

Review: ‘The Mystery of Love & Sex’ at Signature Theatre

Do you want to feel good? Do you want to forget for a couple of hours the political hate speech that’s currently filling the airways, or the vast economic inequality and the rise of a political...

Spine: ‘The Nether’ and its Virtual Revolution at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

In the middle of Jennifer Haley’s beautifully poetic The Nether, now playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the detective quotes Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time:” Dark, dark my light, and...

Review: ‘The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord’ at Washington Stage Guild

In the beginning was the Word–In the beginning was Reason–In the beginning was the Spirit. In the beginning was… Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy (he renounced his “Count” status)...

Review: ‘After the War’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

When you decide to be a dissident artist–think Paul Robeson–you’d better be willing to suffer the consequences. When you challenge a nation’s founding mythology, an emotional backlash is guaranteed....

Review: ‘Moment’ at The Studio Theatre

Family dramas are not rare; in fact, they are abundant; in fact, they dominate the theatrical landscape. Quality family dramas are rare, however: those that resound beyond their domesticity to signify...

Spine: One ‘American Idiot’ to Another, at The Keegan Theatre

Let me admit this right from the start. I’m 60 years old. I don’t go to concerts much. I had heard of Green Day (I’ve worked with teenagers for decades), but had not listened intentionally to their...

Review: ‘1984’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Prepare to be assaulted! Head-on by Headlong Theatre’s 1984, now on stage at STC’s Lansburgh Theatre. George Orwell’s novel has become the iconic symbol of the totalitarian surveillance State. Big...

Review: Vân-Ánh Võ’s ‘The Odyssey: From Vietnam to America’ at The Kennedy Center

Vân-Ánh Võ’s The Odyssey: from Vietnam to America conjures, to a Western audience, images of Odysseus, returning from victory at Troy, being punished by the gods, losing his army, his loot, his...

Review: Laurie Anderson’s ‘Language of the Future: Letters to Jack’ at The Kennedy Center

Cellist Rubin Kodheli joins the legendary performance artist Laurie Anderson on stage at The Terrace Theater for a presentation of her new multimedia work, the memory-haunting Language of the Future:...

Review: ‘Crimes of the Heart’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Before there was Desperate Housewives, before there was Sex in the City, before there was Thelma and Louise, there was the play, Crimes of the Heart. Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize winning play opened...

Review: ‘Promised Land’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

On rare occasions the world of theatre and the world in which we live converge: the subject of the theatre we witness on the stage and the subjects we hear on the streets and on the news harmonize,...

Review: ‘Constellations’ at The Studio Theatre

Nick Payne’s Constellations embraces String Theory and its multiverses as it takes its intimate, in-the-round, Stage 4 audience on an emotional rollercoaster ride through the courtship, breakup,...

Review: ‘Legacy Street’ at The Catholic University’s Department of Drama

Legacy Street, a new play by Lauren Jane Redmond, an MFA Playwriting candidate at The Catholic University of America, premiered last night at the Callan Theatre. A gritty look at violence in the...

Spine: ‘Guards at the Taj’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj, now playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, provokes its audience with grand flamingo visions, with horrific buckets of blood, with aesthetic debate on the role of...

Spine: “I Shall Not Hate” Mosaic Theater’s Journey to the Gaza Strip

Visit the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Sprenger Lang Theatre over the next few weeks and you’ll find Gaza. “He who looks at the sea does not know the sea, He who sits on the shore does not know the...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at WSC Avant Bard

Each year, Shakespeare is the most frequently produced playwright in America, and his A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the Bard’s most frequently produced plays. So if you’re going to produce it,...

Review: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ at Restoration Stage

Chocolate Covered Ants, a new play by Steven A. Butler, Jr., and now on stage at the Anacostia Playhouse, is that rarity of theatrical experience in that it explores the psyche of the African American...

Review: ‘Exit the King’ by 4615 Theatre Company at the Classroom at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

From what I can gather, 4615 Theatre Company consists of actors, directors, and designers who are, by their own declaration, under 25 years old. They select a play, find a space (basement, rehearsal...

Review: ‘The Critic’ & ‘The Real Inspector Hound’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The theatre critic might well be the focus of the satiric lampoon, now on stage at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre, but it is the entire Theatrical Industry that gets speared. Witty...

Review: ‘Wrestling Jerusalem’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Aaron Davidman’s deeply personal solo performance, Wrestling Jerusalem, the opening gambit in Mosaic Theater’s Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival, takes its audience deep into the...

‘Javon Jackson and Sax Appeal’ at the KC Jazz Club at the Kennedy Center

With Sax Appeal, no other “appeal” is necessary. The soul is satisfied. What happens when you bring four world-class saxophone players, a phenomenal pianist, a fingers-flying bass player, and a young...

‘Bright Star’ at The Kennedy Center

Bright Star officially opened last night in its pre-Broadway engagement at The Kennedy Center. And there is plenty for audiences to like and enjoy. Let’s start with that banjo. Steve Martin co-wrote...

Spine: Mosaic’s ‘The Gospel of Lovingkindness’ and a Call for a Better World

Mosaic Theatre Company’s second offering in its inaugural season is the emotionally rich The Gospel of Lovingkindness by Marcus Gardley. In it Gardley tackles the loss of innocence by the gun and with...

‘Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind’ by the Neo-Futurist at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

I’m blind. No, actually, during a merciless chanting of “God, God, God, God, God…” in a piece entitled “Two Minutes of Organized Religion,” I put my head between my legs and held a silent scream while...

‘Glory Us’ by Rabble Crew at The Fridge

Conceptual Art: “the notion that the essence of art is an idea, or concept, and may exist distinct from and in the absence of an object as its representation.” Conceptual Theatre: Glory Us, a new play...

‘Catone in Utica’ by Opera Lafayette at The Kennedy Center

In Opera Lafayette‘s Catone in Utica, which opened last night at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, the greats have come out to sing. And Antonin Vivaldi’s opera bursts with beauty and excitement....

Spine: ‘Pericles’ by Oregon Shakespeare Festival at Folger Theatre (Review #2)

The rarely performed Pericles by William Shakespeare, now on stage at Folger Theatre, is that even rarer of manuscripts: a folk play with epic plot, with virtuous storytelling and song, and without a...

Spine: ‘Appomattox’ Cracks the Color Line at The Kennedy Center

Appomattox, the world premiere opera now playing at The Kennedy Center Opera House in a new production by the Washington National Opera, tackles that most epic of America’s sins, “the color line.” And...

‘See Between The Lines’ by Jane Franklin Dance at Dance Place

Jane Franklin Dance presented three performance pieces last night at Dance Place: “Incidence,” “Nested, and “Wash Over You, Part 1.” As a whole, they are entitled See Between The Lines. Rooted in...

Dorado Schmitt and the Django Festival All-Stars at The Kennedy Center

Dorado Schmitt and the Django Festival All-Stars came to The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater last night. And for a beautiful 80 minutes, the terror of the day vanished, syncopated out of existence by...

Spine: JOY and Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour

Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour came to the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre last night. Four pieces: two short “Fanfares,” a Preludes and Fugues, and a Yowzie. And the stage was aflutter with...

Spine: Studio Theatre’s Apple Family Cycle, ‘Sorry’ and “Us”

One of the most frequently read quotes about Richard Nelson’s four play Apple Family Cycle comes from Ben Brantley’s article, “One Man, 10 Shows, Guvnor.” (Dec. 13, 2013, New York Times.) Speaking of...

‘Regular Singing’ in Repertory with ‘Sorry’ at Studio Theatre

Regular Singing, the 4th play in Richard Nelson’s Apple Family Cycle and now playing in repertory with Sorry (the 3rd play) at Studio Theatre, is a 2-hour dirge, a threnody if you will, with much...

Spine: Mosaic Theater Company’s ‘Unexplored Interior’: A ‘Theatre of Conscience’

The Mosaic Theater Company has arrived, and Washington’s dense theatrical geography has a different colored star on the horizon. Its inaugural production, the world premiere of Unexplored Interior by...

‘World Builders’ by Forum Theatre at Woolly Mammoth

I first saw Johnna Adams’s World Builders this summer, when it premiered at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. I was immediately struck by the ingenuity of its...

‘The Metal Children’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage does it again. With Adam Rapp’s The Metal Children, now playing at the Stage through November 21, they once again venture outside DC’s theatrical “safe space” and offer Washington...

Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘Darius & Twig’ at The Kennedy Center

Darius & Twig, now playing at The Kennedy Center’s Family Theater, tackles issues confronted by inner city kids throughout the country. And it does so with a mixture of hope and hard truth that is as...

Spine: Is ‘Avenue Q’ Just What the Doctor Ordered? Constellation Theatre’s Marvelous Production

Let me be absolutely clear. I loved Constellation Theatre Company’s production of Avenue Q, which opened last night to a packed, laughing audience. Fast paced, precisely choreographed and executed,...

Bowen McCauley Dance 20th Anniversary Celebration at Dance Place

Bowen McCauley Dance is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary season with a four-piece retrospective. All choreographed by Lucy Bowen McCauley, the opening number takes the audience back to the...

Spine: ‘Raw’ and Revolution at Venus Theatre and Women’s Voices Theater Festival

Revolution is in the air. As Arab Spring lies bloodied beneath military dictatorships in Egypt and religious extremists in Libya and the same ol’ same ol’ dictatorship in Syria (plus Islamic State,...

‘Tiny Island’ at Washington Stage Guild

As the audience waits for the Washington Stage Guild’s Washington premiere of Michael Hollinger’s Tiny Island to begin, they look curiously at two humongous carbon-arc movie projectors posed stage...