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Choreographer Cathy Marston Talks Kennedy Center Debut With San Francisco Ballet

In San Francisco, the Unbound Festival included twelve choreographers and was a massive undertaking filled with phenomenal risks, tremendous creative freedom and the excitement of new territory. For...

Interview: San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson Brings ‘Unbound’ to The Kennedy Center

In San Francisco, the Unbound Festival included 12 choreographers and was a massive undertaking filled with phenomenal risks, tremendous creative freedom and the excitement of new territory. For their...

Halloween Best Bets for DC Theatre Lovers

Looking to have a spoooooky good

Is ‘Beetlejuice’ a ‘Perfect’ Musical?

Beetlejuice opens at the National Theatre this month, featuring the work of a tightknit team of American theater professionals – and one Australian that none of them had ever heard of. The show’s...

Review: ‘Rooms: A Rock Romance’ at MetroStage

By Danny Romeo MetroStage is getting the band back together. Rooms: A Rock Romance celebrates the ten-year anniversary of its premiere this year, in the very theatre where the production had its...

Review: ‘Aida’ by Constellation Theatre Company at Source

Just before intermission in Constellation Theatre Company’s sparkling and stirring production of Aida, there comes a wonderful “Wakanda Forever” moment. The fearless Nubian princess Aida (a...

Review: ‘How I Learned to Drive’ at Round House Theatre

Twenty years ago, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive shocked audiences with its holistic examination of pedophilia. It takes a village to molest a child, Vogel believes, not just a perpetrator and a...

‘Perhaps He’s a Prodigy.’ How Walter ‘Bobby’ McCoy Went from High School to the Heights of DC Theater

Many students use their high school musical to dip their toes into the theater world. Walter “Bobby” McCoy, used it to launch himself into the deep end. When McCoy was a freshman, the new theater...

Photo Feature: ‘The Jonathan Larson Project’ at Feinstein’s/54 Below

The Jonathan Larson Project, performed at Feinstein’s /54 Below, was a fitting tribute to composer Jonathan Larson, who tragically passed away in 1996 just as his hit musical Rent arrived on Broadway....

Review: ‘Dracula’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

Local theatre gems exist everywhere and The Little Theatre of Alexandria is definitely one of the DC area’s theatrical treasures. An exceptional cast brought Halloween to Old Town Alexandria with its...

Review: ‘Anon(ymous)’ by Theatre Prometheus at the Silver Spring Black Box

Countless migrant children have been separated from home and family in war-torn parts of the world, and there is no way all their stories will be told. But Naomi Iizuka’s Anon(ymous)—just opened in a...

Review: ‘Sleepy Hollow’ at Synetic Theater

It is officially Fall and nothing says Halloween season like Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Synetic Theater has taken this American horror classic and adapted the story into their own...

Review: ‘The Jonathan Larson Project’ at Feinstein’s/54 Below

Before his untimely death in 1996 at the age of 35, composer and playwright Jonathan Larson created groundbreaking work that would become the touchstone of a generation and a watershed moment for new...

Review: ‘Les Misérables’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

The Hippodrome Theatre has bookended its 2018 season with a pair of heavy-lifting musicals about democracy and revolution. For openers, it has that 30th-anniversary touring production of Les...

Review: ‘La traviata’ by the Washington National Opera

Washington National Opera’s current production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata is a moving and heart-wrenching view of tragic romantic love in all its variations. Under the taut and astute direction...

Review: ‘Nevermore’ at Creative Cauldron

Creative Cauldron’s production of the musical Nevermore places the work of 19th-century writer, poet and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe at your feet. With music by Matt Connor, and Book by Grace...

Review: The Coil Project’s ‘Strange Tales: Paradise Motel’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Seasonally-themed evenings of short plays are a staple for smaller theater companies – and with Halloween just weeks away, The Coil Project offers up a quartet of violent and supernatural one-acts in...

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ by StillPointe Theatre

Ryan Haase, the wunderkind behind StillPointe Theatre Initiative, ends the pre-show announcement for his current production of the musical Spring Awakening by urging us to “forget the craziness...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

It’s the heartwarming story of a hapless boy and his exotic plant. No, wait, it’s a cautionary sci-fi allegory about human desire. Correction: it’s a fun doo-wop musical packed with archetypical...

Review: ‘The Comedy of Errors’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most popular works, so there is little point recounting the plot. One must only remember that it is the one with two sets of twins: one a pair...

Kelsey Hunt Dresses the Stars in Ford’s Frothy Revival of ‘Born Yesterday’

“Born Yesterday is a winner.” Those are the words of my colleague, David Siegel, whose review of the gloriously effervescent comedy that just opened at Ford’s Theatre is full of superlatives....

Review: ‘Labour of Love’ at Olney Theatre Center

Just when Americans think we have a monopoly on political rancor, along comes a show from across the pond to remind us that we aren’t the only ones dealing with extreme political partisanship....

Review: ‘Summerland’ at Washington Stage Guild

What began as a mundane two-hander focused on stiff argumentative males in an investigative procedural play, develops into something pleasingly knotty and intense. All it takes is one new character...

Magic Time!: ‘Safeguards’ by Brave Soul Collective at Anacostia Arts Center

Brave Soul Collective is a hidden gem of theatrical truthtelling about black men who are LGBTQ. Periodically the collective surfaces with a one-night-only showcase of work by local writing and...

Review: ‘Heisenberg’ at Signature Theatre

Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg, now playing at Signature Theatre, begins with two souls in hiding. Georgie Burns (Rachel Zampelli) hides whatever pains and losses she has suffered behind her frenetic...

Review: ‘Born Yesterday’ at Ford’s Theatre

What a sparkling production of Born Yesterday at Ford’s Theatre. Written in 1946 as the United States was standing powerful after the carnage of WWII, Garson Kanin’s script is delightfully subversive;...

Review: ‘Lincolnesque’ at the Keegan Theatre

In Lincolnesque, a play written by John Strand and directed by Colin Smith, the art of lying for one’s country succeeds in fusing a deceptively light touch and inside-the-Beltway political humor with...

Review: ‘Blueberries for Sal’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

Adventure Theatre MTC presents the world premiere musical Blueberries for Sal, written by Michael J. Bobbitt and Sandra Eskin, and featuring new music and lyrics by William Yanesh. Based on the...

Review: ‘The Last American Hammer’ by UrbanArias

Stick a right-wing conspiracy theorist, a curator at a Toby jug museum, and a rookie FBI agent in the same porcelain-filled room in a no-name town in rural Ohio, then make them talk over tea and...

An Interview with Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Producer, Programming Director, Author, and Dynamo!

Currently the Creative and Programming Director at Feinstein’s/54 Below, Jennifer Ashley Tepper has been responsible for curating and overseeing over 3500 shows to date at the world-class supper club,...

Review: ‘How to Win a Race War’ at the Klunch

How To Win a Race War—a whopping 3-hour, 15-minute ordeal—indulges in the world of white supremacy, wheels and deals in astoundingly racist and horrifying caricature, and expects a pat on the back for...

Review: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

One of the most beloved musicals in Broadway history, Fiddler on the Roof has made a smashing comeback in New York with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s Off-Off-Broadway production at the...

Review: ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may boast of owning “twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile,” but in Center Stage’s comparably rich...

Review: ‘Living and Dying with Tricia McCauley’ at Venus Theatre

Living and Dying with Tricia McCauley is a raw and personal journey through grief. Tricia McCauley, the local actress whose brutal 2016 murder rocked the theater community, was a personal friend and...

Review: ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ by the National Players

It seems particularly appropriate that the National Players should be mounting a production about an imperturbable, peripatetic gambler who takes every mishap in stride while journeying as far as it...

Magic Time!: ‘The Events’ at Theater Alliance

Theater Alliance’s The Events, now playing at Anacostia Playhouse, is one of several plays this season that deal with a mass shooting. (There’s also Pinky Swear’s Blight, coming October 20 to the same...

Tour de Theatres Bike Ride Combines Physical Exercise with Love of Theater

Halfway through the 2018 Helen Hayes Awards ceremony, a bike whizzed onstage, jolting the audience to attention. On the bike was Theatre J Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr, clad in bike shorts and a...

Magic Time!: ‘If I Forget’ at Studio Theatre

To paraphrase the famous Passover Seder line, “Why is this domestic drama different from all other domestic dramas?” Or, to put the impudent question another way, “What makes If I Forget a uniquely...

Review: ‘If I Forget’ at Studio Theatre

When I grew up in a small New Jersey shore town with a single synagogue to serve many surrounding communities, I recall a particular question uttered within my family and my own Jewish tribe. This...

Review: ‘The Events’ by Theater Alliance at the Anacostia Playhouse

A wrenching agitation pervades the gray clouded confines of The Events, in which a diverse chorus group is slaughtered by a gunman. Claire (Regina Aquino), the church chorus leader, is the sole...

Review: “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” by Theater J

Storytelling is one of the most ancient of the performing arts, distinct from that of the dramatic actor, and when Mona Golabek makes her entrance, it is not as an actor playing a character but as a...

Review: ‘The Wedding Singer’ at NextStop Theatre Company

A wedding singer spurned by love becomes unlikely friends with the waitress at the local banquet hall and, from dumping to dumpsters, finds that love might be worth another try. Celebrating their 30th...

Who Was Sir William Davenant and What Did He Do to ‘Macbeth’?

If you want to get yourself in the mood for the Folger Theatre’s current hit production of Macbeth – a famous adaptation from the 1660’s of William Shakespeare’s original tragedy, by his godson...

Review: ‘Turn Me Loose’ at Arena Stage

Long before Hannah Gadsby premiered her anti-comedy stand-up special Nanette, in which she lambasts the sexist entertainment industry and forces audiences to reckon with their own complicity, there...

Timothy Douglas: The Voice Behind ‘Small Mouth Sounds’ at Round House Theatre

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a disembodied voice floating above the seats at the Round House Theatre this month. The voice belongs to Timothy Douglas, an award-winning director whose work has...

A Really ‘Chill’ Interview with George Salazar

If you need an introduction to George Salazar, you haven’t been paying attention. Currently seen Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center in the sold-out smash-hit musical Be More Chill...

Review: ‘Macbeth’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

In January 1666, famed diarist Samuel Pepys saw a performance of the William Davenant Macbeth and called it a “strange perfection.” The production that just opened at the Folger Theatre is strangely...

Magic Time!: ‘Gloria’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Count on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins to leave you whiplashed and shell-shocked. He hits nerve after nerve then goes for the jugular. Whatever he writes, see it. Woolly’s previous productions of...

Review: ‘Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

The current offering from the justly renowned GALA Hispanic Theatre, Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water For Chocolate) is a veritable feast for the senses and a savory mixture of theatrical...

Review: ‘Gloria’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Director Kip Fagan opens this production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria with a clever conceit: Miles (Justin Weaks), an office intern, is at his desk, as the contrapuntal woodwinds and strings of a...