Magic Time!

What’s ‘Once Upon a One More Time’ doing at the Shakespeare?

There’s got to be more to it than a cool chance to groove on the oeuvre of Britney Spears. | Column by JOHN STOLTENBERG

Whitney White on directing James Baldwin’s classic ‘The Amen Corner’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

A frank, in-depth interview about activating the actor, performance for the white gaze, the play’s queer narrative, and much more.

Mike Daisey mansplains

The master monologist takes an unblinking look at Scott Rudin, Andrew Cuomo, and himself.

Trans Lives and Theater as Change Agent: A Q&A with Dane Figueroa Edidi and Natsu Onoda Power

In observance of the the 12th annual International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31, 2021), we republish this in-depth conversation with two leading lights in DC-area theater. —John...

Tennessee Williams’s ‘Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers’ returns

Spooky Action Theater’s utterly charming production of The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers—a recently discovered early work by Tennessee Williams directed for puppets and people by Natsu...

A critic at play

During the past seven-odd years that I’ve contributed to DC Theater Arts, I’ve written about upwards of 600 shows—sometimes as the designated reviewer (when I followed criticism conventions) and...

Theatermakers of color call white theater to account for systemic racism

The cultural momentum powering protests that followed the May 25 murder of George Floyd has galvanized a national and local movement for transformational change in American theater led by Black,...

Another lost female genius found, in ‘Einstein’s Wife’ at ExPats Theatre

The history of science is studded with female geniuses snubbed by sexism. There’s biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, geneticist Nettie Stevens, chemist Alice Ball— And several such brilliant women’s...

“I want to make space for women who make mistakes”: A Q&A with Dani Stoller, author of ‘Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes’ at Signature Theatre

Dani Stoller’s world-premiere comedy Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes is funny and witty and in its own quirky way quite deep. Plus it puts the screw in screwball. Discovered in the SigWorks...

‘Boys Don’t Cry’ at Dance Place rejoices in macho detox

Boys Don’t Cry made this boy cry. It happened near the end. I had been watching a performance by the French dance company Cie Hervé KOUBI. Seven shirtless male dancers, all from different countries,...

Actor Mikéah Jennings unpacks his powerful performance in ‘Shipwreck’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 is an epic, scorching, and surreal satire of white liberalism in the era of Trump. It takes place at that ominous juncture in recent American...

Who is Black? Signature Theatre’s ‘Gun & Powder’ hits a national nerve

It may surprise you (as it did me) that the title of this melodic world-premiere musical does not refer to gunpowder. The word gun means there’s a pistol (which gets dramatically deployed). But the...

‘The Royale’ at 1st Stage bares a Black brother’s big heart

This play about a boxer packs so many emotional punches into its compact six rounds, you might not know what hit you. As fists fly, bells clang, terse words burst, and the cast claps out each...

Mosaic goes rom-com with ‘Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World’

This thoroughly delightful offering from Mosaic Theater Company has all the makings of a lighthearted rom-com. Boy picks up girl. He invites her to his place. She initiates sex. It’s hot. Though they...

In the ‘Pipeline’ at Studio Theatre, a Black son’s legacy of rage

The set for Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline at Studio Theatre could not be any whiter. Its white walls of freshly painted concrete blocks span the breadth of the stage and extend around the audience....

‘Sheltered’ at Theater J hits home in America right now

A gathering stormcloud looms over this exquisitely wrought play by Alix Sobler. “How bad is it going to get?” a character wonders aloud. No one can answer. “It can’t go on like this much longer, can...

Isabella Star LaBlanc, who plays Tiger Lily in ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company, on why Native stories matter

When Playwright Lauren Gunderson took on the challenge of adapting J. M. Barrie’s 1904 Peter Pan, she knew she had to fix what she has called the “deeply harmful misrepresentation of Indigenous people...

At Mosaic’s ‘Eureka Day,’ a class in laughs and spats is in session

The five adults seated onstage in a children’s classroom each have a kid enrolled in this private day school, which like the play we’re watching is named Eureka Day. These earnest parents are all...

5 reasons Christopher Boone liked ‘Curious Incident’ at Round House better than on Broadway

My name is Christopher Boone and I am 15 and I am brave and I can do anything. I know that because I traveled by train by myself from Swindon to London and I solved the mystery of a neighbor lady’s...

The bad romance at the heart of Studio Theatre’s ‘White Pearl’

Anchuli Felicia King’s White Pearl is a hilarious, fast-paced satire set in the Singapore office of a cosmetics startup called Clearday that sells skin-whitening cream to Asian women. As the play...

On tour in DC with ‘What to Send Up When It Goes Down’ by Aleshea Harris

Editor’s note: Woolly Mammoth Theatre, in conjunction with its staging of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, has brought to DC a show produced by the Harlem-based Movement Theatre Company that is...

Mosaic’s brazenly brainy ‘Theory’ is both a treatise and a treat (Magic Time!)

Academia has inspired several thematically penetrating plays featuring female protagonists—the two teachers falsely accused of being lesbian lovers, for instance, in Lillian Hellman’s 1934 The...

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Simon Godwin on conscience in ‘Everybody’ and himself

On the day after opening night of Everybody, the first show in Simon Godwin’s much-heralded first season as artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, I visited him in his office to ask him...

What’s magnificent and what’s muddled in ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ at Arena Stage (Magic Time!)

Right to Be Forgotten is a play written from the outside in. By that I mean, its intention is to illustrate a legal issue: the tension in U.S. law between privacy and freedom of speech, a tension...

A theater buff auditions the GalaPro app (updated)

How does that new GalaPro app work? How well does it work? And what’s it like to watch a show with it? This inquiring theatergoer wanted to know. Many Deaf and hard of hearing people are already...

The power of subversive design in ‘Day of Absence’ at Theater Alliance (Magic Time!)

To realize how much white America loved minstrelsy is a reckoning painful or shameful, depending on one’s ancestry. Minstrel shows were never meant for people of African descent to see; they were...

Magic Time!: A #MeToo Memory Animates ‘I Am Her’

Midway through this taut, fraught drama about sexual trauma, a woman named Ana, a wife and young mother, is suddenly triggered. We are not told exactly why. It might be the Kavanaugh hearings...

The Sorrow Beneath the Surface of ‘School Girls’ at Round House Theatre

Can one laugh heartily at a satirical comedy—be thoroughly engaged by the entertaining characters, story, and performances—and then after it’s over mourn what it was about? That was for me the...

Maria Manuela Goyanes on ‘Fairview,’ race, and what’s next at Woolly Mammoth

I saw Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview opening night at Woolly, and I cannot stop thinking about its originality—not only in form but in intent. I’m not writing about the production—my colleague Amy...

Magic Time!: ‘Blank’ at Theater Alliance

“There are holes in the script!” would be the deathblow for any more conventional work of theater, but in Nassim Soleimanpour’s Blank, the gaps are where the action’s at. As with Soleimanpour’s hugely...

Magic Time!: A Love Letter to ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

When Dear Evan Hansen debuted at Arena Stage four years ago, I was so moved by the show I wrote it a love letter, republished below. Now a Broadway hit, it returns to DC for a run at Kennedy Center...

Magic Time!: Why ‘A People’s History’ Is “Painful”: A Q&A With Mike Daisey

John: Before you brought A People’s History to DC, you performed all 18 parts three times—once through in Minneapolis and twice through in Seattle. I can imagine people could be picking and choosing...

Magic Time!: ‘The Boy from Troy’ (DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival)

One looks for hope where one can find it. And sometimes hope pops up on its own, unexpected. That kind of hope, not sought out, can catch in one’s throat, can even move one to tears. Such was what...

Magic Time!: The Mind-Blowing Stagecraft in ‘Twisted Melodies’ at Mosaic Theater

Twisted Melodies is a spectacular finish to Mosaic’s fourth season. Written by and starring Kelvin Roston, Jr., the show sweeps us into Donny Hathaway’s world of magnificent music-making and mental...

Magic Time!: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at Round House Theatre

How do I love this play? Let me count the ways. My colleague David Siegel’s review heaps accolades on the Round House Theatre production of Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, now playing at the...

Magic Time!: ‘The Oldest Boy’ at Spooky Action Theater

Sara Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy tells a gut-wrenching story serenely, almost gently. At the heart of it is the bond between mother and child, a tie that Ruhl knew intimately when she wrote the play,...

Magic Time!: ‘The Chibok Girls: Our Story’ at Georgetown University

One night five years ago, a horror happened in Chibok, North Eastern Nigeria. The Boko Haram—Islamicist terrorists who believe that Western education is evil—abducted 276 girls from the school where...

Magic Time!: ‘God of Carnage’ at Keegan Theatre

The set foreshadows the coming fracas. There’s a fault line down the middle where this living room seems sliced in two. And something’s out of whack. The halves do not align. Like two stressed...

Magic Time!: ‘Oslo’ by Round House Theatre

It is rare that theater seriously asks us to believe something far beyond itself. Typically we are asked to suspend disbelief about let’s-pretend that happens on stage. The gripping and inspiring play...

Magic Time!: 10 Questions for the Brains Behind ‘The Tarot Reading’

Even in this theater town abounding in innovation, The Tarot Reading stands out as an original. I can’t think of anything it’s quite like. After I saw an iteration last year (The Tarot Reading IV), I...

Magic Time!: Disrupting the White Comfort Zone: A Q&A about ‘P.Y.G.’ at Studio Theatre

I have an ongoing interest in how theaters in DC with predominantly white audiences raise and represent the issue of race. And one of the things I’ve been noticing is how the white comfort zone...

Magic Time: ‘Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son’ at Mosaic Theater Company

The splashy opening is spectacularly preconception-smashing. We know we’re about to see a play premised on a 1953 meeting in a Paris café between the literary lion Richard Wright and James Baldwin,...

Magic Time!: Inside the DC Jail with Liza Jessie Peterson and ‘The Peculiar Patriot’

Actor and Playwright Liza Jessie Peterson is an extraordinary artist/activist. Tucked inside her uproarious one-woman show, The Peculiar Patriot—which she performs through April 20, 2019, at Woolly...

Magic Time!: ‘Native Son’ at Mosaic Theater Company

When one has an overwhelming experience in the theater—as I did watching Native Son at Mosaic—it can take some time to process. This is especially so if the work is unlike anything one thought...

Magic Time!: ‘Queen of Basel’ at Studio Theatre

Queen of Basel by Hilary Bettis, now on the boards at Studio, is scathingly brilliant. One walks out gobsmacked. (I completely concur with my colleague Bob Ashby’s astute review.) But watching Queen...

Magic Time!: ‘Limits’ by Cirkus Cirkör at The Kennedy Center

The circus I fell in love with as a kid is gone. It was touted at the time as the greatest show on earth: a three-ring tented extravaganza that smelled of roasted peanuts, sawdust, and manure and...

Magic Time!: ‘Crying Hands’ by Teater Manu at George Washington University

We like to think that the Holocaust could never happen here. We want to believe that it shouldn’t so it couldn’t. And then comes along a work of theater like Crying Hands that screams out how...

Magic Time!: ‘The Brothers Size’ at 1st Stage

“You fucked up! You fucked up! You fucked up!” rails the older brother, berating the younger. “You fucked up! You fucked up! You fucked up!” he goes on, as if he cannot rage enough, as if he can’t get...

Magic Time!: ‘Twelve Angry Men’ at Ford’s Theatre

Cross-racial casting can be totally wrongheaded—as when white actors impersonate characters of color. It can also be speciously universalizing—as when actors of color play all the parts in a work...

Magic Time!: ‘Admissions’ at Studio Theatre

“Some of my best friends are white men,” says Sherri, the very liberal white woman who handles admissions at a small New England prep school. Avowedly antiracist, Sherri is on a mission to increase...