2018 Best of Capital Fringe

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘up your aesthetic’

Although it is aesthetically pleasing—beautifully designed and performed—up your aesthetic has nothing to do with aesthetics, per se. Instead, the production—which opened at the Blind Whino SW Arts...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Perfecting the Kiss’

This comedy about bad theater and inappropriate backstage behavior is just gobsmacking good. Laugh-a-minute is an underestimation. Don’t miss it. Perfecting the Kiss, a production from New York...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Mesa, Arizona or Something Like It’

By Becca Kurtz Raina Greifer’s new play, Mesa, Arizona, or Something Like It, produced by Purple Crayon Productions, is a tale of abandonment, friendship, and the teenage mind. It’s fitting for an...

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: ‘Through the Wall’

By Garinè Isassi Through the Wall is a dance story that sprang from an art experiment put together by Source Festival called the Artistic Blind Date Program. Artists from different disciplines were...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: “50 Ways…”

A woman (IO Browne) climbs out of bed, her lover still fast asleep, unmoved. She lays out on the floor, limber and sensual as she dances like a flower budding through a crack in the pavement. Another...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘How’s That Workin’ Out For Ya?’

By Ellie Milewski Four intelligent and gifted female playwrights/directors, three bold female actors and their marvelous male partner in crime, and a wonderful crew, walk into Arena Stage to perform...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Dangerous When Wet: Booze, Sex & My Mother’

Solo performances are among the most difficult in show business. Without other actors to parry dialog or set up jokes, the entertainer can easily end up putting an audience to sleep. Luckily for us,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘This Historic Night’

By Christina Kovac On the simple and appropriately bleak set, Seed Productions presents its premiere of This Historic Night, five short plays wound into one terrific show, written by local DC...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘God is Dead and April is Getting Married’

God is Dead and April is Getting Married: A show title that promises a lot and absolutely delivers. Written by A. A. Brenner, this Capital Fringe jewel opens with El (Anna Shafer) and Elliot (Colton...

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 Lives Left Behind’

In The Lives Left Behind, the Silver Finch Arts Collective presents four short, one-act, chamber operas, each by a different composer and librettist. The instrumental music for all four pieces is...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Aphrodite’s Refugees’

Monica Dionysiou gives audiences a bravura hour of solo storytelling in her Aphrodite’s Refugees, which is based on the experiences of her family during the warfare that consumed Cyprus in the...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Cold Rain’

We’ve all heard of the sage advice, “be careful what you wish for.” But it should be doubly heeded when there’s magic involved. In writer and director Craig Houk’s Cold Rain, a spell to summon love...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Slow Bullet’

I am so, so glad we’re finally talking about mental illness and suicide. According to the most recent CDC statistic, there are 800,000 suicides a year in the United States alone (that’s 123 people a...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Marx in Soho’

Marx in Soho is a one-man show written in 1999 by the late historian Howard Zinn. It was re-mounted by Iron Age Theatre for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2004, produced and directed by John...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Spook’

Actor-Writer-Revolutionary Meshaun Labrone has done it again. Two years ago he brought back Power! to Fringe. That drama about Stokely Carmichael I called “one of the best-written, best-acted, and...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘F*ck Tinder: A Love Story’

By Ellie Milewski What takes more courage than getting up on a stage by yourself and doing a one-man show? How about getting up on stage and doing an unscripted one-man show about the details of your...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Sobriety of Fear’

Count Shaun Michael Johnson among the stunning new talents to be discovered at Capital Fringe. His solo show, Sobriety of Fear, is a tour-de-force of empathic acting. With breathtaking emotional...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Barococo’

Happenstance Theater, the much-lauded purveyors of cheekily sophisticated whimsy, have brought another original devised work to Fringe, and if it doesn’t tickle your funny bone, you might want to have...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The City Of…’

By Beatrice Loayza Directed by Patrick Pearson and written by Matthew Capodicasa, The City Of . . . is an ambitious work self-described as inspired by the metaphysical wrestlings of Jorge Luis Borges,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Vandal’

The Vandal, which opened to a sold-out audience on the first weekend of the 2018 Capital Fringe, is a comedy about loss. It’s also a bittersweet riff on death, performed by a trio of talented DC-area...