Reviews

Review: ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ at Studio Theatre

When Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe planned to tackle the subject of depression, they decided to avoid more familiar approaches: plays about self-destructive superstars who are too far removed...

Review: ‘Ripcord’ at Keegan Theatre

The cute little old ladies are up to something at the sunny nursing home. They share the same room and enough wit to fight over the turf like two college roommates. If only we all could grow old with...

Review: ‘Byhalia, Mississippi’ at The Kennedy Center

The pivotal character in this profoundly moving comedy is Laurel, a young woman who has relocated from Jackson to Byhalia, Mississippi, to make a life with the young man she plans to love for the rest...

Review: ‘HERstory: Love Forever, Hip Hop’ at The Kennedy Center

I have to marvel at all the ways the national culture temple named for our 35th president reaches out to an audience that looks like America. There’s no such uniform audience, of course—no performing...

Review: ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ by Scena Theatre

I love Brecht. My heart and soul were ready for Scena Theatre’s production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (written during World War II but not produced in America until the late 1950s) – a play...

Review: ‘Falsettos’ National Tour at the Kennedy Center

The motley crew of neurotic and quasi-neurotic characters in Falsettos, now playing at the Kennedy Center, offers an eye-opening look at all-too-human dilemmas. The rituals of everyday life under...

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...

Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at Round House Theatre

Battle lines drawn. Cogent argument made. Can everyone be right at the same time? Does it matter in a world full of choices? Invigorating and decidedly bracing, the Round House production of A Doll’s...

Review: ‘Disney’s Beauty and the Beast’ at Creative Cauldron

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a popular show right now with several venues running it around the same time. Creative Cauldron makes a grand entrance with their version of Disney’s Beauty and the...

Review: ‘The Oldest Boy’ at Spooky Action Theater

Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy is a graceful meditation on motherhood: its joys, its sorrows, and its unforeseeable costs. Director Kathryn Chase Bryer offers a visually lovely and emotionally moving...

Review: ‘Forest Treás’ by Pointless Theatre Company

Pointless Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Forest Treás (pronounced ‘Triage’). Written by Navid Azeez, the play is based around the 2002 Beltway Sniper attacks and the effects the 22-day...

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,...

Review: ‘Gwen & Ida: The Object is of No Importance’ by Nu Sass Productions and Uncle Funsy at Caos On F

With the world premiere of DC playwright David Kessler’s fictional memory play, Gwen & Ida: The Object is of No Importance, Nu Sass & Uncle Funsy present an enlightening window into the lives and...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at Workhouse Arts Center

The Workhouse Arts Center rocks an audacious combination of classic rock, classic longing, and sci-fi horror show in a hyperkinetic presentation of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of...

Review: ‘Hello, Dolly!’ at The Kennedy Center

A matchmaker, dance instructor, legal counsel, and mandolin teacher (among other occupations), Dolly Gallagher Levi is a woman of countless talents and side-hustles in bustling, turn-of-the-century...

Review: ‘Grease’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre of Columbia

Grease can be a sad tale of peer pressure, teen pregnancy, insecure futures, and violence. Based on a book of the same name by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, the story was about greasers, pre-Beatles...

A Lively NSO Dazzles, Hinting of Still More Good Things to Come

Now that National Symphony Orchestra music director Gianandrea Noseda has nearly completed two full seasons – and has signed on to stay through 2025 – a clearer picture of the possibilities we can...

Review: ‘The Tale of Serse’ by The In Series

The In Series is a place for thought, debate, history, and innovation. With the noble goal to invigorate contemporary theatre, to create innovations in “opera and song,” to “reimagine these forms,...

Review: ‘Tartuffe’ by Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Tartuffe is a delightful rendition of Molière’s classic 1664 French comedy. Directed by Sally Boyett and performed in the outdoor courtyard of Reynolds...

Review: ‘A Misanthrope’ at WSC Avant Bard

The audience didn’t stop laughing all night. Between Matt Minnicino’s rhyming couplet- filled, witty, knowing, sometimes bawdy adaptation (or, as he would have it, “distillation”) of a Molière classic...

Review: ‘Tornkid’ by Cohesion Theatre Company and Baltimore Asian Pasifika Arts Collective

For its second show of the season, Cohesion Theatre Company has partnered with the recently-formed Baltimore Asian Pasifika Arts Collective to devise and produce the world premiere of Tornkid, by...

Review: Mark Christopher Lawrence at the DC Comedy Loft

Mark Christopher Lawrence is a comedian of myriad talents. Appearing at the Bier Baron Tavern’s Comedy Loft, Mr. Lawrence commanded the stage with an act that was multi-dimensional – and with many...

Review: ‘The Talented Clementine’ at Encore Stage & Studio

A new musical based upon Sara Pennypacker’s book “The Talented Clementine” debuted May 31 at Arlington’s Encore Stage & Studio. Adapted by writer-composer Paul Reisler and children from around the...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘Second Body’ at Synetic Theatre

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their exchange in...

Review: ‘Describe the Night’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Like Marcel Proust’s famous “madeleine moment,” Rajiv Joseph’s ambitious new play Describe the Night, in an exciting, Kafkaesque rendering by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, finds philosophical...

Review: ‘Stonewall 50’ by Rainbow Theatre Project

In the midst of Pride season, and in the 50th anniversary year of the Stonewall riots that defined the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, Rainbow Theatre Project presents a look at the...

Review: ‘The Pirates of Penzance (or the Rascals of the Rappahannock)’ at Riverside Center

Riverside Center of the Performing Arts reprises Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, a two-act comic operetta that was first produced in December of 1879, and remains in production to this...

In the Moment: ‘Last Out’ by The Heroes Journey

Last Out is a raw emotional journey with no illusions as its core value. It is an intense confessional about military service and the effects on family, told from multiple perspectives. It is no...

Review: ‘We’re Gonna Die’ by Flying V at The Writer’s Center

When Farrell Parker steps out onto the black box stage at The Writer’s Center in Flying V’s version of We’re Gonna Die, something explodes. Light and sound—literally—erupt. And while much of the...

Review: ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ by NextStop Theatre Company

How do you replicate perfection—especially when it involves dumping gallons of water onstage? Any theater company that undertakes a production of Singin’ in the Rain, the beloved movie musical about...

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre

All the familiar characters are there: Lizzy Bennet, her sisters and parents; suitors Darcy, Bingley, Collins, and Wickham; the de Bourghs and Charlotte. The basic plot lines and period setting are...

Review: ‘Antigonick’ and ‘The Fragments of Sappho’ by Taffety Punk Theatre Company

Antiquity is in the house and what’s old is new again. Taffety Punk is presenting two short theater pieces featuring its signature integration of dance, drama, and music based on voices from Ancient...

Review: ‘Ghost Light’ by Parlor Room Theater

A play is ephemeral. The written words momentarily dance off the page as they are given body and voice, transformed into experience, and witnessed by an audience. The conclusion arrives, the play is...

Review: ‘Queens Girl in Africa’ at Everyman Theatre

As the middle section of Caleen Sinette Jennings’ “Queens Girl Trilogy,” Queens Girl in Africa is presented in rotating rep with the first piece, Queens Girl in the World (read our review by Belle...

Review: ‘Klytmnestra: An Epic Slam Poem’ at Theater Alliance

Dane Figueroa Edidi is one of DC’s most original and multitalented theater artists. A dancer, actor, poet, playwright, and choreographer, she is also a teacher, novelist, political commentator as well...

Review: ‘10x10x10’ A Ten-Minute Play Festival at Fells Point Corner Theatre

Fells Point Corner Theatre’s 10x10x10, a collection of 10-minute plays by Baltimore-DC area playwrights in its seventh year, always succeeds in creating energy born of audience anticipation. For...

In the Moment: ‘Richard iii’ at Synetic Theater

Synetic Theater’s Richard iii is a potent conspiratorial theatrical experience for an anxious age such as ours. It is the ultimate in theatrical paranoia, set in a time out of joint. It’s as if...

Review: ‘Sooner/Later’ at Mosaic Theater Company

A rom-com about manhunting…at Mosaic? That’s probably not the sort of fare you’d expect from DC’s preeminent theatrical platform for social-justice programming. But who is to say that fair should have...

Review: ‘Richard iii’ at Synetic Theater

“The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” –William Gibson, author of Neuromancer. Synetic Theater, a beloved DC-area institution, has come up with a luxuriantly detailed...

Review: ‘NOC-tURNE’ by NFT Dance & Company at Atlas Performing Arts Center

The airy-fairy world of contemporary ballet takes a turn toward the macabre in Nancy Flores-Tirado’s darkly romantic NOC-tURNE, performed by NFT Dance & Company in follow-up to Atlas’ INTERSECTIONS...

Review: ‘I Am What I Am: The Music of Jerry Herman’ by The American Pops Orchestra

The American Pops Orchestra’s presentation of I Am What I Am: The Music of Jerry Herman was nothing short of spectacular. Maestro Luke Frazier created an uplifting and thrilling show, with a fresh...

Review: ‘Jubilee’ at Arena Stage

In 1871, Fisk University – an all-Black institution of higher learning in Nashville, Tennessee – was in dire financial straits. To raise money for the institution, Treasurer and Music Professor George...

WNO Gala Demonstrates America’s Solid Standing on Opera’s World Stage

From the nexus of divas, dollars, and diplomats at this year’s Washington National Opera Gala, there arose a thrilling truth: The finely frocked foreigners in attendance might question America’s role...

Review: ‘Mary Stuart’ at Olney Theatre Center

What does a 200-year-old literary classic have to do with the chaos of the US Congress today? A lot, according to Jason Loewith, Olney Theatre Center’s Artistic Director, who has adapted Friedrich...

Review: ‘Fame’ Is Full of Heart at GALA Hispanic Theatre

There is something very “meta” about Gala Hispanic Theatre’s production of Fame. See, you’ve got this group of scrappy young artists with talent, so much talent. And they are determined to show the...

Review: ‘The Member of the Wedding’ at 1st Stage

It was nearly 70 years ago that Carson McCullers adapted her beloved 1946 novel The Member of the Wedding into a prizewinning Broadway play. Set in a small Southern town, the story centers on two...

Review: ‘Variations on Myth’ at Rapid Lemon Productions

This weekend at Baltimore Theatre Project, Rapid Lemon Productions opened Variations on Myth, both the second show in RLP’s Season of Belief and the historic 15th annual production of The Variations...

Review: ‘Oliver!’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Oliver! is a fun, colorful treat. The 1960 musical by Lionel Bart, based on Oliver Twist, here directed by Donald Hicken and Sally Boyett, with...

Review: ‘On Air’ at Creative Cauldron

Dancing and singing over the wireless airways–how might it have happened? What might have been a dry history lesson is given delightfully appealing musical charm in Creative Cauldron’s world premiere...

WNO’s ‘Tosca’ Serves Up Classic Opera Comfort Food Done Right

The Washington National Opera’s (WNO) fine opening night performance of Puccini’s Tosca provided an opportunity for catharsis and reflection, two things our overwrought city needs right now. My...