Robert Michael Oliver

Spine: An Interview with Playwright Jennie Berman Eng on ‘Whenever You’re Near Me I Feel Sick’ and The Women’s Voices Theater Festival

The Women’s Voices Theater Festival, more than fifty world premiere plays written by women — now that’s a happening! I am as excited by the notion that stories from a woman’s perspective will dominate...

‘Solomon and Marion’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Anacostia Playhouse hosts “dog days of summer theater festival” this August 2015 and for its mid-August show they have Solomon and Marion, Lara Foot Newton’s touching drama about the search for...

Spine: Review of ‘On Clover Road’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival

A mother has lost her child to a cult; its leader has taken her as his divine bride. A de-programmer, whose own child died mysteriously, has come to the mother’s aid, for a kidnapping and breaking of...

Spine: Review of ‘We Are Pussy Riot’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival

Pussy Riot, punk truth tellers and guitar playing agitators and feminist rabble rousers who stood up to the Russian State and its Church affiliates under Vladimir Putin. They went into Moscow’s...

Spine: Review of ‘World Builders’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival

We are all populated by the images of main stream culture. Whether you’re 80 and still want Sam to play it again, or 50 and still believe in the Force or 30 and still imagine yourself at Hogwarts with...

Spine: Review of ‘Everything You Touch’ at the Contemporary American Theater Festival

Beauty culture is a mess; fashion culture is the messiest, starving the human body, while forcing it into impossibly harsh postures, all in the name of aesthetics: ribs might not be damaged for that...

Spine: Review of ‘The Full Catastrophe’ at the Contemporary American Theater Festival

Michael Weller’s The Full Catastrophe, based on a novel by David Carkeet, is a comedy, a comedy about marriage and those longing for marriage. It is light-hearted and fun, well acted and directed, and...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Journey of a Bombshell: The Ina Ray Hutton Story’

Journey of a Bombshell: The Ina Ray Hutton Story offers audiences a rare glimpse into the big band culture of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s — from a female bandleader’s perspective. Written and performed by...

New Play Reading: ‘THE LOATHING’: This Monday, July 20th at 7:00 p.m., at Iona Senior Services

On Monday, July 20, at 7:00 p.m., The Playwrights Forum will present a public reading of Robert Michael Oliver‘s new play, The Loathing. Iona Senior Services will host the reading. They are located at...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Giant Turnip’

Beech Tree Puppets The Giant Turnip is a gentle retelling of an old Ukrainian folk tale, presented by two classically trained singers with a flare for lyrics and miniature sets. Using rod puppets and...

‘Blue Straggler’ at Source Festival

The Source Festival is a showcase of new works; not world premieres but workshops of 3 full-length works in progress (the 12 ten-minute plays are icing on the cake, so to speak). For example, last...

Spine: ‘In Session’ by La Petite Noiseuse Productions

Mónica López-González’s new play, In Session, now playing at Johns Hopkins’ Swirnow Theatre, ripples with ideas — rich ideas, fascinating ideas on such subjects as artificial intelligence (nay–life),...

‘Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love’ at The Studio Theatre

Mallery Avidon’s Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love, now playing at Studio’s Milton Theatre, is many things. It is a poetically funny exposé on 21st century culture. It is a lyrical landscape on the lonely...

Source Theatre Festival 2015: ‘Love & Botany: 10-Minute Plays’

Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire (later turned into a PBS documentary of the same name) explored the world from the point of view of four plants: apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. If you ever...

Source Theatre Festival 2015: ‘Mistakes & Media: 10-Minute Plays’

Youthful energy is bursting out all over at Source Theatre Festival 2015, which began last night with its first round of six 10-minute plays, roaring in under the banner Mistakes & Media. This opening...

‘Jarry Inside Out’ at Spooky Action Theater

The author of the infamous Ubu Roi, the play which proudly proclaims high culture as but “pshit” sculpted into attractive façades, Alfred Jarry is now the subject of a new script playing at Spooky...

SPINE: ‘Zombie: The American’ — the Citizen, the Government Official, the Theatre-goer — at Woolly Mammoth (Review)

“Only dead men tell the truth,” said Mark Twain. And Zombies. Robert O’Hara’s Zombie: The American opened last night at Woolly Mammoth and, save for one errant scene–saved perhaps for a love of sex...

Spine: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ at Folger Theatre (Article)

I first read Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead back in 1974. It was but one of many plays I devoured as part of my thirst for the absurdist perspective. It’s now playing at Folger...

Spine: ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ at The Studio Theatre

Life’s endless struggles — from the daily variety, like getting your mates to behave appropriately, to the emotionally cataclysmic, like the death of a loved one — such is the subject of Tom Wells’...

‘Tramp’s New World’ at Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint

In 1949, Pulitzer Prize winning author and film critic James Agee wrote a screenplay treatment for Charlie Chaplin, that has since been titled Tramp’s New World. Four years following the horrific mass...

‘The Blood Quilt’ at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater

America used to be defined by its communities. Communities of ethnic and national identity, of urban migration, of rural affiliation, of blood and toil. Today, America is defined by its latest pop...

Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ by Alliance for New Music-Theatre at Trinidad Theatre (Capital Fringe)

Lovers of 20th century literature know Kafka and his darkly dangerous worlds of angst and hopelessness. And they know Metamorphosis, it’s tale of the demise of the man-turned-bug frequently acts as a...

Spine: ‘Closet Land’: “A Lie Told Often Enough Becomes the Truth (Lenin, Vladamir)” by Robert Michael Oliver

Radha Bharadwaj’s Closet Land is not for the faint of heart. At least, not how it is done by Rick Hammerly of Factory 449 at the Anacostia Arts Center, where audience members walk into a closet, hear...

Spine: ‘The Revolutionists’: Women One and All (Article)

The coming revolution will truly be remarkable. True equality for all men … and women; in fact, the woman’s revolution, when that barbarous testosterone is finally put in its place, which is not in...

Spine: ‘Murder Ballad: Liquor and Love, with Child’ by Robert Michael Oliver

There’s nothing like hot sex to get the blood pumping. There’s nothing like lasting love to swoon the heart. There’s nothing like a child to turn the world upside down. And there’s nothing like a...

Spine: ‘The Margins’ at Molotov Theatre Group by Robert Michael Oliver

David Skeele’s The Margins opened this Saturday at Adams Morgan’s DCAC with its own brand of intimate terror. Take the small theatre — and I mean 45-person tiny; put 4 psychics around a table; throw...

‘Lights Rise on Grace’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Lights Rise on Grace, the world premiere by Chad Beckim, now playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, has all the elements of a compelling drama. The play takes us into the dynamics of an intricate set of...

‘utopia parkway’ at Single Carrot Theatre

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution (Paul Cezanne).” Today, that carrot is Charles Mee’s Utopia Parkway. On his website, the playwright Mee offers up...

‘Passion Play’ at Forum Theatre

During the Roman times, theatre was a savage sport: need a crucifixion, grab a slave. During the Dark Ages, theatre disappeared under the cloak of Catholicism: better to have no fun, if having fun...

‘Ode Maritima’ at The Iberian Suite Festival at The Kennedy Center

Lovers of poetry! Lovers of the long line! From his deck on The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre, Diogo Infante calls, “Ahoy!” And the spirit of Alvaro de Campos, aka Fernando Pessoa, rises from an...

‘The Originalist’ at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater

Over 2500 years ago, Aristophanes put “living” contemporary power-brokers into his comic masterpieces and then skewered them with their own foibles. The results were scandalous and provocative. Then...

‘Laugh’ at The Studio Theatre

To be sure, name a play Laugh and the gauntlet is thrown. Laugh or die trying. The Studio Theatre’s world premiere production of Beth Henley’s new play, based on the antics of silent films from the...

‘The Revelation of Bobby Pritchard’ at Iron Crow Theatre Company

Sex. Love. God. Truth. People risk everything for them. They are eaten by lions. They are burned at the stake. They die on crosses. And did I mention politics, the arena where such questions do...

IBERIAN SUITE: Concha Buika with Iván “Melon” Lewis & Continuum Quartet at The Kennedy Center

Last night the audience at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall was blessed with Buika. If being blessed by Buika wasn’t more than enough for a single evening, the audience at the Concert Hall had another...

‘The Mundo Perfeito’ (Perfect World) As part of the Iberian Suite at the Kennedy Center.

The Mundo Perfeito (Perfect World) has arrived in DC’s America. As part of the Iberian Suite. At The Kennedy Center. Presenting a full evening of theatre, Mundo Perfeito offers two productions: Three...

Spine: ’33 Variations’ at Silver Spring Stage

The Creation of Art. The Wrestle with Death. 33 Variations, Moisés Kauffman’s Tony nominated play, juxtaposes those two turbulences. In one — circa 1820 in Vienna, Austria — Ludwig van Beethoven...

‘Back to Methuselah’ at Washington Stage Guild (Review)

George Bernard Shaw wrote Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) during World War I, with its assassination, its trench warfare, its chemical attacks, its all-too-human brutality unleashed —...

Imago Theatre: Frogz at Presented by The Music Center at Strathmore

Strathmore brings a wide variety of performances to its spacious Music Center each month, from the Tango Buenos Aires: Song of Eva Perón, which performs there tomorrow, to the Annapolis Symphony...

‘Cherokee’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Review)

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about t’ expound this dream.” Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream To say...

‘King Hedley II’ at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater

Make no mistake about it. August Wilson is one of America’s greatest dramatists. Authentic, historically rich, and dramatically insightful — few playwrights have the gifts and the talent to create...

‘Frozen’ at Anacostia Playhouse

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell writes: “The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.” And, to be sure, in...

‘Arlo Guthrie: Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary Tour’ at Hylton Performing Arts Center

Fifty years ago this coming Thanksgiving, Arlo Guthrie and company take a truck load of garbage out of a friend’s house near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Finding the local dump closed for the holiday,...

‘Dunsinane’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

As the guerilla war in Dunsinane intensifies, Siward, the English commander sent to Scotland to bring peace to the warring clans, admits to burning to death a village’s captured adult males. In light...

Spine: The Enlightened World of Folger’s ‘Mary Stuart’

Frederic Schiller’s historical drama, Mary Stuart (1800), gives us two potent, yet vulnerable women, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It gives us religious fanaticism — no, not Sunni versus Shia...

‘Dizzy Gillespie™ Afro-Cuban Experience’ at The Kennedy Center

I write about theatre because I know theatre, intimately and over many years. I’m writing about Jazz because I love Jazz, the way a man might love a goddess, fleetingly and in hot pursuit. If you have...

Spine: ‘In Love and Warcraft’ and all the Mythologies in Between

In the hit TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon, Howard, Leonard, and Rajesh regularly play the on-line fantasy role playing game World of Warcraft. They also like to play dress up in the real...

‘References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot’ at Single Carrot Theatre

The great Chinese poet-philosopher Zhūangzi (370-287 BC) wrote: “Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” In José...

‘In Praise of Love’ at Washington Stage Guild

You may not have heard of Terence Rattigan, British playwright whose heyday soared in the late 1940s and early 1950s; but whose more conventional fare was then swamped by the British bad boys of John...

Spine: ‘Diner’ at Signature Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

In 1982, when Barry Levinson’s Diner (the film) opened nationwide to positive reviews, the Reagan Revolution had just begun, the Vietnam Syndrome was about to be dispelled with the invasion of...

‘Terminus’ at The Studio Theatre

No one should ever accuse The Studio Theatre of bowing to the pressure of getting into the holiday spirit. In this time of Islamic State and relentless “drones,” torture reports and rectal feedings,...