Magic Time!

‘Magic Time!’ ‘The Second Shepherds’ Play’ at The Folger Theatre

Watching the Folger Consort’s robust and warmhearted staging of this medieval mystery play, I was struck by how curiously it connects us today to the audiences who first saw it performed. Here we were...

Review #1:’Copenhagen’ at Perisphere Theater

The storytelling in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen—which won the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play—is ingeniously done. The play’s three characters are deceased. They are actual historical figures whom Frayn...

Magic Time! ‘Arguing with God’ at Woman’s National Democratic Club

Always on the lookout for provocative theater in improbable places, I went to the one-night-only DC premiere of a politically edgy and surprisingly funny send-up of Yahweh, the God of the Old...

Magic Time!: ‘The Christians’ at Theater J

A debate about the existence of hell is combusting in the nation’s preeminent Jewish theater. And that particular drama in that particular venue could not be more anomalous. There is in Judaism no...

Magic Time! ‘Straight White Men’ at The Studio Theatre

Playwright Young Jean Lee’s audacious title refers to the particular—the white widowed father (Ed) and his three grown sons (Drew, Jake, and Matt) who are on stage for most of this naturalistic...

Magic Time! ‘(Re)Acts: Where Do We Go From Here?’ at Forum Theatre

“We certainly didn’t prepare ourselves for this,” said Forum Theatre Artistic Director Michael Dove Monday night at the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre. He was addressing a packed house of folks who...

Magic Time: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at The Keegan Theatre

Having been watching a con man on the national stage for too long now, I found myself last night watching a con man on a local theater stage from an unusually timely point of view. To put it simply:...

Magic Time! ‘Milk Like Sugar’ at Mosaic Theater Company

This beautiful play about black teenagers with bleak futures left me with such a melancholy sadness that two days later (on what was then Election Day), it had not gone away. I share that not to keep...

Magic Time! ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

There comes a scene in Rameau’s Nephew at Spooky Action Theater when Robert Bowen Smith playing He (the titular character) coughs an aria. Literally. Just like an opera singer except without music or...

Magic Time! Mike Daisey on Playing ‘The Trump Card’ in the Turbulence of Trump

You might say The Trump Card keeps getting dealt one new hand after another. Since Mike Daisey’s monologue played to acclaim in August at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Donald Trump’s campaign for...

Magic Time! ‘The Gulf’ at Signature Theatre

One measure of the quality of a play is how it stays in one’s mind the next few days. Or the next weeks or months or years. Not just how it plays on stage. How it remains in the brain. There are no...

Magic Time! ‘How To… Sex Education’ (Weekend Two)

Having enjoyed the first weekend of Rabble Crew Productions’ How To… Sex Education, I went back for seconds—another set of four short plays on the ever popular theme of sex…and the never popular topic...

Magic Time! ‘How To… Sex Education’ at Rabble Crew Productions

Rabble Crew Productions has a proclivity for mounting edgy, sex-themed theater in fringey places around town. Last December they did Madeline Farrington’s Glory Us at The Fridge in Eastern Market, set...

Magic Time! ‘The Last Schwartz’ at Theater J

What is it that’s so tried and true about plays about siblings? Must be something universal, because there are so gosh darn many of them. Structurally they obviously make for auspicious cast lists,...

Magic Time! ‘Cloud Nine’ at The Studio Theatre

Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, which premiered in London in 1979, is rightly considered a landmark play. It is pivotal for me personally as well, ever since I saw the legendary Tommy Tune production...

Magic Time! ‘Come From Away’ at Ford’s Theatre: ‘A show on its way to Broadway that’s so moving and inspiring I would see it again in a heartbeat’

When I saw this new musical on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, there were no more than ten minutes during it when my eyes were dry. They welled up from the first scene. Sure, I know I tear up...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: Brave Soul Collective and African-American Collective Theater

Two of DC’s most important independent theater collectives bearing witness as black artists to #BlackLivesMatter are Brave Soul Collective and African-American Collective Theater (ACT). Both...

Magic Time! “I Think About How Badly I Can Break a Heart Today”: A Q&A with Audrey Cefaly, Author of ‘The Gulf’ at Signature Theatre

John: I first discovered your writing when I saw Maytag Virgin during the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, and as I said when I interviewed you back then, “it was one of those experiences of an...

Magic Time! ‘Satchmo at the Waldorf’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

It is the morning after I saw a compelling and telling bioplay about Louis Armstrong just opened at Mosaic Theater Company, Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf. I have my earbuds in; I’m logged...

Step Afrika! Announces Free ‘Step Xplosion’ Tour August 24 – September 10, 2016

Step Afrika! will present free performances in all eight wards of DC from August 24 to September 20, 2016. The full schedule of 2016 tour dates is available online. Here is John Stoltenberg’s...

Magic Time! Kathleen Akerley’s ‘Fear’ at Longacre Lea

There’s a good chance that watching FEAR—Kathleen Akerley’s playfully subversive new comedy at Longacre Lea about a troupe of actors in the throes of performing Shakespeare—will change your perception...

Magic Time! ‘The Lonesome West’ at The Keegan Theatre

In real life, when we are spectators to two grown men facing off in dead-serious combat—right in front of us; with words, fists, lethal weapons, whatnot; unmediated by movies and such—our natural...

Magic Time! ‘Notes on My Theatergoing in London’

My four days in London last weekend offered time slots to see six plays—four evenings and two matinees. My strategy was to seek intriguing, fresh writing in a mix of West End, Off West End, and Fringe...

Magic Time! ‘(Re)Acts: #Orlando’ at Forum Theatre

Live theater is not where we turn to learn the news in real time. We have TV and Twitter and plenty other frenzied feeds for that. But live theater may be the most potent and important form we have...

Magic Time! A Report on ‘Double X’ at Schools Without Walls

S. Ann Johnson’s Double X—an exquisitely crafted choreopoem exploring the multicultural distinctions and connections among seven women—had its DC debut Saturday after appearances in Baltimore, New...

Magic Time! The Studio Theatre’s ‘Hand to God’: A Puppet Chat

So this strange thing happened. I was sitting at a table in a church basement that happened to be on the fourth floor of The Studio Theatre, and I was waiting to see a show called Hand to God. And...

Magic Time! ‘Blood, Sweat & Fears: A Grand Guignol Sick Cabaret’

As the local go-to theater company for carrying on the Grand Guignol tradition, Molotov Theatre Group mounts some of the most interesting combos of style and substance in town. There are a few other...

Updated July 12, 2016: On Parenting and a Play: Director Shirley Serotsky Talks About ‘Another Way Home’ at Theater J

I have admired Shirley Serotsky’s work as a director on such shows as Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy at Theater J in 2014 and Rapture, Blister, Burn at Round House Theatre in 2015. Shirley also serves as...

Magic Time! 5 Reasons Capital Fringe Is a DC Treasure

The future of the Capital Fringe Festival has been uncertain since its brilliant and brave inception in 2006, but back in July 2013 its fate was especially iffy. The festival’s fabulously funky Fort...

Magic Time! Left-Handed Complement: Liam Forde on Acting With a Puppet in ‘Hand to God’ at Studio Theatre

Studio Theatre’s fourth floor has been turned into an amazing facsimile of a Lutheran church basement, complete with inspirational posters on the walls and seating at folding tables as if for a...

Magic Time! ‘Another Way Home’ at Theater J

You know you’ve just seen a play that hits a nerve about the distress of parents who have a troublesome, troubled son (whom they love but don’t know how to cope with) when you’re reading the paper the...

On Parenting and a Play: Director Shirley Serotsky Talks About ‘Another Way Home’ at Theater J

I have admired Shirley Serotsky’s work as a director on such shows as Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy at Theater J in 2014 and Rapture, Blister, Burn at Round House Theatre in 2015. Shirley also serves as...

Magic Time! ‘An Octoroon’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon wears irony on its sleeve with the same effrontery that three of its characters wear red, white, and black greasepaint to dissemble “race.” Just opened at Woolly...

Magic Time! Theater Against Type: A Q&A With Actors Jeremy Keith Hunter and Shravan Amin About Performing ‘When January Feels Like Summer’

After I saw When January Feels Like Summer—Cori Thomas’s counter-stereotypical romantic comedy at Mosaic Theater Company—I found myself thinking back to what happens between two particular characters....

Magic Time! A Report on ’24/7′ at African-American Collective Theater

For the 24th year, the African-American Collective Theater marked DC Black Pride Weekend with readings of seven short plays, collectively titled 24/7, all written and directed by Alan Sharpe, whose...

Magic Time! ‘Hedda Gabler’ at Studio Theatre

Watching Julia Coffey’s feline and feral performance in the title role of Studio Theatre’s sleek and stark staging of Hedda Gabler is to witness the trainwreck that is Ibsen’s enigmatic character in a...

Magic Time! ‘The Beauty and Ugliness of Martin Luther’: A Q&A With Playwright Chris Cragin-Day

On October 31, 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther nailed a list of 95 theses to a cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany. It was a hammering heard round the world. On the eve of the 500th...

‘Talking Shop and Taking Stock With Ari Roth’ by John Stoltenberg and David Siegel

There was a buzz of high energy as we walked into Ari Roth’s office at the Atlas Performing Arts Center to meet with the Founding Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company of DC. We wanted to talk...

Magic Time! ‘The Nether’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Playwright Jennifer Haley has seen the future and it’s The Nether, her cerebrally chilling thriller about future tech and future sex. Just opened at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in a fantastical...

Magic Time! ‘After the War’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

“A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house,” said a certain prophet of Nazareth long ago. Subtract the word “prophet,” swap in...

Magic Time! The Cathartic Comedy of Martin McDonagh: A Q&A with Yury Urnov, Director of Forum Theatre’s ‘The Pillowman’

Martin McDonagh is one my favorite living English-language playwrights and I’m not really sure why. His plays are hilarious and horrific at the same time. And I experienced that counterintuitive combo...

Magic Time! ‘Falling Out of Time’ at Theater J in Verse

There is so much sorrow in this show Nine fine actors playing nine parents All mourning dead children Searching to see them again Seeking to be with them one more time Speaking words of unspeakable...

Magic Time! “Moment’ at The Studio Theatre

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” as Leo Tolstoy famously said. Had Tolstoy seen Studio Theatre’s penetrating production of Deirdre Kinahan’s lacerating...

Magic Time! ‘1984’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Shakespeare Theatre Company has missed no opportunity to issue advisories to audiences about to attend the spectacularly intense Headlong production of George Orwell’s 1984, now on stage at the...

Magic Time! OpenStage New Works Showcase

The theater term “packed house” took on all new meaning for me the night I caught this month’s OpenStage New Works Showcase. Not only was there no empty folding chair; the show went on stage in what...

Magic Time! ‘They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!’ at Ambassador Theater

In politics, the expression “Marxist farce” could well be a slur hurled by some puerile and petulant presidential hopeful (you never know these days). In theater, however, the term “Marxist farce” has...

Magic Time! ‘Promised Land’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

At a point in Mosaic Theater’s Promised Land—a powerhouse of a play performed inside an intimate space that’s more like a concrete bunker than a black box—we see the searing image of people fenced...

Magic Time! A Conversation with Manu Kumasi About ‘Lost in the Stars’

“The situation in 1940s apartheid South Africa is very similar to what was seen in 1940’s America, 1960’s America, 1980’s America, and even what we see in the present day.” I was talking with Manu...

Magic Time! ‘Backstage with the Women of ‘The Sisters Rosensweig’ at Theater J’

When I recently read Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, which opened in 1992, I sensed it was written in response to the women’s movement at the time. Wasserstein’s 1988 The Heidi Chronicles,...

Magic Time! ‘Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)’ at Round House Theatre

The production of Suzan-Lori Parks’ acclaimed three-part saga now having its regional premiere at Round House Theatre is some of the most amazing storytelling I’ve seen on stage. Amazing on account of...