Reviews

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘BOND: An Unauthorised Parody’

Presented by Tasty Monster Productions in association with Gavin Robertson, BOND: An Unauthorised Parody takes the audience on a wildly hilarious spy adventure that will leave fans young and old...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Blind Pug Arts Collective Presents: The Theatre of Self-Loathing Presents: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?’

This is a rare opportunity to see the avant-garde Theatre of Self-Loathing, bringing the best of Eastern European theatre to the DC audience. Eddie and Cassilda, winners of the 2003 CAPB Award, are in...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Barenaked Comedy’

Sometimes, you just have to lay it all out there. And yes, I am referring to body parts. Barenaked Comedy, advertised as DC’s premiere hybrid burlesque-standup comedy show, is certainly doing just...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Artful Justice’

History assumes that Adolf Hitler killed himself just before the end of World War II. But what if history were wrong? What if Hitler, acquitted of war crimes by a U.S. court and absolved of genocide...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Awake All Night’

Youth. Vivacity. Not words usually associated with a subject as ancient as Greek gods. Itai Yasur’s Awake All Night, however, presents a new Capital Fringe Festival musical with a young, fresh cast...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘To Err is Falstaff’

There’s nothing a Fringe audience loves more than remixed Shakespeare. And there’s nothing DC loves more than politics. To Err is Falstaff goes right for the jugular, hitting Capital Fringe with both...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Out of Sync’

What happens when memories of your past begin to sabotage your present? Doorway Arts Theatre Company tackles this question head on in Out of Sync, a new play by Katie Woods. In the first scene Nathan...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hero Complex’

Live Action Theatre more than lives up to its name in its recent production of Hero Complex. The Action starts right away, when aging superhero Eddie Lear (Peter Boyer) accounts his numerous exploits...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Dust to Dust’

This appealing musical is an engaging discovery, performed by The Class Act Players, a theater company of seniors from Robinson Secondary School and Oakton High School in Fairfax. Toby (Preston Kemp),...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Altered Archives’

Memories make us who we are today. Strange as it may seem, the tiniest object may trigger a memory and send us reeling into the past. As part of this year’s Capital Fringe Festival, the dancers of...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘American Lit’

You don’t have to be an English Major—or even a recent graduate—to enjoy this romp among literary giants in American Lit, a collection of five one-act plays, written and directed by James F. Bruns and...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Girl Versus Corinth’

Lights up and fog rolls over the stage. Television screens project images of stars glittering in the night sky. Three silhouettes appear in the eerie lighting and female voices begin to intone a...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Straight Faced Lies’

As is implied by the title of Mark Jason Williams’ bleak comedy Straight Faced Lies, the members of the oppressively dysfunctional Ryan family aren’t very good at this whole honesty thing. Nor are...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Shit Stories: The Best of Our Worst Moments’

As you can probably guess from the title, this is a show about shit. Mostly literal shit, but there’s some figurative shit thrown in for good measure. The 7 storytellers on Team McVey are full of it....

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘SONATA: The Naked Theatre Project’

“Hi. Yes. Okay. Sorry.” For the first three “movements” of the actor symphony SONATA: The Naked Theatre Project, written and directed by Solomon Haileselassie, these are the only words uttered by the...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: “Augustus The Sissy’

Close your eyes during Dana Scott Galloway’s performance of Augustus the Sissy you will be drawn in by his gravelly Texas drawl and the rhythmic pattern of the words he speaks. It’s like listening to...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Salvation Road’

Every year the Fringe produces a few real standouts among its more serious offerings. D.W. Gregory’s thoughtful and funny Salvation Road is an excellent example. Anchored by a talented young cast and...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Never Never’

Alexandra Petri’s Never Never is absolutely brilliant. It explores a heavy topic – pedophilia – without being overbearingly serious and dark. In fact, it was wildly funny. That said, Petri treated the...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Brothel’

Playwright Isa Seyran has told forthrightly the origin story of Brothel: Reading about the extreme gender imbalance of men to women in North Dakota resulting from an oil boom thanks to fracking,...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Girl With Two Belly Buttons’

The Girl With Two Belly Buttons, written and directed by Jeryl Parade, is a heartwarming story. A woman, Izzy, suffers from a rare muscular disorder which requires that she use a feeding tube. When it...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘How to Be a Good Mom… When You’ve got a Schizophrenic Mother for a Role Model’

With a title like How to Be a Good Mom… When You’ve Got a Schizophrenic Mother for a Role Model, Pamela Meek’s storytelling piece can seem intimidating at first. But spend 45 minutes with this...

‘Let Them Eat Chaos’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Remember that now-classic line from Jerry Maguire? “You had me from hello!” That’s how the audience felt about one minute into The Second City’s new production Let Them East Chaos, onstage at the hip,...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘After Eleven’

Once the lights are up, After Eleven is relentless. With persistent intensity, Rebecca Roy delivers a monologue that switches from a mother character to that of a child who suffers with mental...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Ambien Date Night’

From the moment I entered Atlas’ Lab II, I was primed to laugh and have a great time. An overly-friendly brunette demanded my attention and directed me toward my friend who was saving our seats. As...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘War and Peas’

By far one of the most politically incorrect terms of my 80’s childhood – that I can remember – was the use of the word “vegetable” to describe an inanimate person. Something about likening a human...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Great Awkward Hope’

The Great Awkward Hope displayed both the good, funny aspects of awkward, and the bad aspects of the word. The play follows a man, Jeff, as he tries to write a play about himself writing a play in...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Breaking Character’

From The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls to High School Musical and Glee, high school stereotypes have been the popular subject of numerous writers. But often this exploration is missing a very...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Domestic Animals’

“I have trouble distinguishing things that are real from things imagined.” This is the reality we enter when we meet Lori, the “lone wolf” of the deeply moving Domestic Animals. Beautifully directed...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Interconnected’

Written and directed by Brian Schwartz and Karen Snyder, Interconnected tells the twisted and complex story of three intertwined families. It is ripe with dramatic turns worthy of the soap operas but...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Death and the Mermaid’

HalfMad Theatre delivered an evening of love, heartbreak, mortality, and struggle deep in the belly of W.S. Jenks & Son hardware store. The three performers entered the stage and engaged the audience...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Roger (Not His Real Name)’

Did you know that Edward Snowden actually worked for NASA, not the NSA (the misunderstanding stems from a typo in a Washington Post article)? How about the fact that the Cold War was actually caused...

‘Venus in Fur’ at Silver Spring Stage

Venus in Fur directed by John Dellaporta opened last night at Silver Spring Stage, literally with a bang. The play opens during a thunderstorm that is a metaphor of the action to come, and takes place...

‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

“Just lots of goodwill and maybe one small thrill, but there’s nothin’ dirty goin’ on!” This concluding line from the honky-tonk song, “Lil Ol’ Pissant Country Place” perfectly captures the theme of...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Wombat Drool’

If you are not quite aware of what you are getting into before watching Uncle Funsy’s production of Wombat Drool, you may be a bit confused as the retired Zookeeper David S. Kessler begins to talk...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Tomato Beard’

Raunchy, irreverent, and just plain silly, Tomato Beard is a series of skits much like those early Saturday Night Live spoofs. This Pennydog production, billed as a “rock musical,” is a work in...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Neda Wants to Die’

You never expect to sympathize with the murderer and rapist. You expect to be repulsed and disgusted by them. That, however, would do a disservice to the complexity of life, particularly in war-torn,...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Paper Game’

Let’s play a game. The Game. It has an extensive set of rules. The point system is arbitrary. One of the rules is that all the rules can be broken. And you really cannot win. Sound like fun? Welcome...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Out of Silence: Stories from the 1 in 3 Campaign’

Abortion: A ten-ton word that sends shockwaves rumbling across a twenty food radius wherever it is uttered. But why? It’s a contentious political issue for sure, perhaps the most contentious, but it’s...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Paper Glass’

Movie star Bette Davis used to say that she always wanted a crack at playing the title character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. Davis thought Alice a spitfire like herself, not a sweet demure...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘DC Trash – Recycled!!’

In DC Trash – Recycled!!, the charismatic Ron Litman, star of this two man show, delivers a stirring commentary on the changes this city has gone through since his upbringing as the son of Deli owners...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘And Then I Woke Up’

Kris Noteboom is incredibly endearing. The fluffy, neurotic figure at the heart of And Then I Woke Up establishes very quickly that there’s little space between Kris the artist and Kris the character....

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Winter’s Tale’

Read a description of The Winter’s Tale, and you may think William Shakespeare imbibed a little too much while writing it. The absurdity of events seems outlandish, even for a man whose vast oeuvre...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘ALICE’

Alice was colorful, in every sense of the word. And that was good. Adapted from Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, Alice, directed by Haley Murphy was an explosive version of the story we all...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Witches’

Brookland Artspace’s intimate dance studio-turned theater mythically transforms into medieval mayhem. The real life heroes and sorcerers at Red Knight Productions’ conjure up Witches, a fractured...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘How to Quit Your Day Job’

Memo to Star Johnson, mastermind of OpenStage’s How to Quit Your Day Job: Quit your day job. It’ll be OK. Johnson’s merry musical comedy — staged bohemian-style in the Eastern Market home of sculptor...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Poe Whitman’-‘Song of Myself: The Walt Whitman Project’

“Stop and possess this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,” Walt Whitman demands of his readers of his most famous work, Song of Myself. Robert Michael Oliver and the...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hello Girls: Unknown Heroines of WWI’

Thank God for plucky women. While our society today continues to struggle with the question of gender equality, we sometimes forget to look back at the times when women were truly invisible. Hello...

‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at Howard County Summer Theatre

As a child, I spent many hours in my grandparents’ kitchen, as I visited with them, ate meals or finished homework. Occasionally, my grandmother would take a decorative bronze dustpan down from the...

‘Once’ at The Kennedy Center

Brilliantly blending theatricality and intimacy, the 2012 Tony Award-winning best musical Once officially opened last night at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, championing the awe-inspiring...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Family Reunion’

The words “family reunion” are bound to evoke mixed memories, no matter whose family it is. That said, I’d wager there are few whose mixture is as experientially eclectic—and as psychologically...