2018 CAPITAL FRINGE FESTIVAL

How to join the ‘Hamilton’ revolution

Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (ca. 1757-1804) was a key figure in the American Revolution, so it’s only fitting that the stage musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda (book, music, and lyrics)...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Sucks to be a Grownup’

In Sucks to be a Grownup, you’ll see every side of CJ. Her funny side, her angry side, and even her emotional side. You’ll see CJ laughing and interacting with her audience, and you’ll see her crying...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Country Co-ed’

If you’re a fan of double entendres and early-2000s raunchy teen movies, then chances are you’ll like The Country Co-ed, a modern re-imagining of William Wycherley’s 17th-century Restoration comedy,...

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: ‘A View From My Backyard’

Fringe is filled with stories, but few are as comfortably charming as the memories presented in A View From My Backyard. Sara Herrera presents her memories through a series of stories and dances,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ’52:15′

The melody may be unfamiliar, but the music that opens The 100th Monkey Theatre Ensemble’s 52:15 is immediately recognizable as a television news show open. A reporter, speaking to the news anchor...

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: ‘Ghosts’

A promising but flawed dive into the way we deal with death, Ghosts creates an interesting premise and delivers touching moments of emotion. Written by Elford Alley and directed by Kathleen Barth,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Burn Out Blessings’

Imagine a classroom decorated for a birthday party. On the table is a cake, party hats, paper napkins, and plates; a banner is tacked on the wall. Ambling back and forth in this classroom is Al Baker,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Chlamydia dell’Arte: MORE Sex-Ed Burlesque’

by Jill Kyle-Keith Two unconventional beauties take us on a wild ride through sex, politics, and the politics of sex. As the title implies, Chlamydia dell’Arte is a sort-of burlesque, with a sort-of...

2018 Capital Fringe Festival: ‘Show Business 201’

The XY Players have a delightful option at this year’s Capital Fringe: a farce on show business titled Show Business 201. It’s essentially a romp through the training, rehearsal, and performance work...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Two Woman Hamlet’

English majors, linguists, and Shakespeare lovers (and fearers) rejoice: the creative team behind Fringe’s A Two Woman Hamlet have broken one of theatre’s great masterpieces down to a comfortable...

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: ‘Flight of the Xenophobe’

Iamaman Productions, a start-up company focused on telling stories pertinent to African Americans, has chosen to present as its inaugural production, a tale of the recently-paroled 578 returning to...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Riot Brrrain’

By Hannah Sternberg Riot Brrrain is a punk-fueled, nonlinear tour through the life of Teddy as they revisit their past relationships after being diagnosed with neurosyphilis. Teddy is bisexual and...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hold The Tomato’

By Shawn Reilly Simmons Hold The Tomato is a comedy variety show featuring sketches, songs, and improv, written by Nancy Safavi and David Stauffer, and composed by Wesley Fox. We’re introduced to the...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Unscripted’

By Shawn Reilly Simmons “I don’t want to sit in front. I don’t want to get picked on,” a woman said to me nervously as we chose our seats, about to experience Unscripted, a two-man improvisational...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Blowin’ Off Steam’

Written and directed by Chuck DeLong, Blowin’ Off Steam takes you bench-side into the steam room of a men’s fitness club in the suburbs of New York City, where seven painfully straight men spend their...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Meet the Glory Wholes’

By Rebecca Kurtz If there is one thing to be said for Meet the Glory Wholes, it’s that the creatively minded Joey Maranto has contagious confidence. Sixty minutes alone onstage is no small feat, and...

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: ‘Heartbreak Hitman’

Capital Fringe Festival presents Heartbreak Hitman, an original rom-com by Leigh Giangreco. This DC-based piece follows the story of Jon (Walter Riddle), a man who makes a career out of outsourcing...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Movie Magic Live!’

You Win! presents Movie Magic Live!, an evening of silly, competitive fun for movie lovers! Hosted by Jason Fraley and Ally Jenkins, this is perhaps the most interactive show at the Fringe this year....

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Almost Full: A Young Woman’s Guide to Growing Up’

On July 6, 2018, six girls ages 13 to 17 came together and began composing poetry and choreography and a little music about their just-starting-out lives. Two weeks later they performed the 29 short...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Draupadi’s Arranged Marriage’

Drawn from an episode in the Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata, Draupadi’s Arranged Marriage imagines the protagonist as a woman of modern feminist views faced with a polyandrous arranged marriage to five...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Beauty and the Beat’

ORT Productions’ Beauty and the Beat begins with a trio of dancers (Kelly Hogan, Carrie Monger, and Amy Scaringe) entering in formation into the graffitied performance space of the Blind Whino,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘How to Fall in Love on a Warming Planet’

Rivers Wilder Green presents, How to Fall in Love on a Warming Planet for Capital Fringe 2018. Christopher B. Cox performs his original songs for this production, which can be described as a creative...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Coronado’

What’s worse than murder? What would God say? All the characters are “peddled out,” i.e. in dead-end jobs, down-on-their-luck, or near that, drinking Buds and doing shots at the bar, pulling guns at...

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: “14”

By Ellie Milewski Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Parkland. These are only a few names from a list of mass shooting in the United States. A list that is painfully and heartbreakingly long. Emma...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘PolySHAMory’

PolySHAMory, Capital Fringe veteran Kate Robards’ exploration of love, showcases theater’s ability to give stories meaningful emotion. The show is constructed around Robards’ story of being thrust...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘An Unhealthy Man Lectures You on Medical Issues’

Laughter really is the best medicine. As Vincent Clark assumes his place on stage for his one-person, multi-media comedy An Unhealthy Man Lectures You on Medical Issues, I immediately like this ailing...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Shopworn’

Race relations in the Deep South might not leap to mind as a promising topic for a laugh-out-loud comedy. But in Shopworn, premiering at Fringe, Playwright-Producer Derek Hills (who is white) has...

2018 Capital Fringe Festival: Black Confederates

by Isabel Echavarria Black Confederates by James F. Bruns and directed by David Allen Schmidt depicts a conversation between Jefferson Davis, played by Larry Levinson, and his wife Varina Davis,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: metamorphose

Jo Williamson is the creator and performer behind metamorphose, a solo production stitched together out of some musical storytelling and the patterns of Martha Graham-like modern dance. As its name...

2018 Capital Fringe Festival: (Super) Friends

There is a kernel of a great idea behind (Super) Friends, AnyStage Theater’s offering by Andrew Brockmeyer currently playing at Capital Fringe: Two superhero arch-nemeses, one ostensibly good and one...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Love in Three Scenes’

Love in Three Scenes, which opened during the second week of this year’s Capital Fringe, is not so much about love per se as it is about the lack thereof, particularly on the part of our political...

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: ‘Horse People’

By Beatrice Loayza Watching Lindsey Griffith’s one-woman performance Horse People, I can’t help but feel as if I’ve stumbled into a dream. Papier-mâché horse heads, large overhead projections,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hawaii Nei’

By Becca Kurtz The pair of plays that make up Paul Handy’s “Hawaii Nei” fit together nicely in a 90-minute, fact-packed commentary on the state – both past and present – of the reluctant 50th state....

Magic Time!: ‘O Monsters’ at Capital Fringe and the Limits of Criticism

I went to see O Monsters, the radically abstract production created by Philadelphia’s New Paradise Laboratories, now playing in the Kogod Cradle at Arena as one of five curated productions in 2018...

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: ‘Vengeance in My Heart’

By Beatrice Loayza Titus Andronicus is the little-known Shakespeare tragedy most reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino film. Bloody murder, sex, and violence galore, Andronicus is historically a work...

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: ‘Gilded’

By Bill Kamberger Conceived and choreographed by Kristen Brooks Sandler for Harlot Productions, Gilded depicts “a steampunk monarchy in decline,” including two illicit love affairs, Byzantine intrigue...

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...