Reviews

Review: ‘King John’ at Folger Theatre

King John is so rarely performed (indeed, it’s been a decade since I last saw it staged) that the current Aaron Posner-directed production at the Folger Theatre opens with a primer on the players and...

Review: ‘Venus in Fur’ at 4615 Theatre Company

One of the most remarkable things about D.C. theater is its abundance of good plays, professionally produced and performed, yet often staged in places that are, to put it mildly, a bit odd. Nowhere is...

Review: ‘The Agitators’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“Do you still believe there can be a country for all?” When that blunt question comes up in The Agitators—Mat Smart’s deeply affecting play about the friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick...

Review: ‘Sheila and Moby’ by Flying V at the Writer’s Center

Sheila and Moby is a show about a young woman and a friend she thought she’d left behind forever. It’s also about personal responsibility as a member of the community, doing the thing that works when...

Review: ‘Sweat’ at Everyman Theatre

Lynn Nottage last year became the first woman to win a second Pulitzer Prize for Drama thanks to her play Sweat, a dramatization of the collapse of the American unskilled labor market circa 2000, now...

Review: ‘La Cage aux Folles’ by ArtsCentric

“It’s rather gaudy, but it’s also rather grand,” the title song of La Cage aux Folles asserts of its titular drag club, and the same may be said of the musical that is set there, now receiving a...

Review: ‘Long Way Down’ at The Kennedy Center

Long Way Down, adapted from the renowned young adult novel in verse by Jason Reynolds, is told in the voice of a 15-year-old named Will and performed by the prodigiously talented Justin Weaks. He is...

Review: ‘A Chaste Maid in Cheapside’ by The Baltimore Shakespeare Factory

Moved by an impulse analogous to the original instruments movement in early music, Baltimore Shakespeare Factory (BSF) is dedicated to mounting the Bard’s plays and those of his contemporaries in the...

Review: ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ at Brave Spirits Theater

Words have lethal consequences in the clear-eyed, unflinching production of The Duchess of Malfi from Brave Spirits Theatre. Under the sure-handed direction of Casey Kaleba, The Duchess of Malfi is...

Review: ‘East of Eden’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Can one escape the sins of their ancestors? Can one choose their own course and overcome an evil background? These questions are explored in NextStop Theatre Company’s glorious new adaptation of John...

Review: ‘Sing To Me Now’ by Rorschach Theatre Company

What happens when human imagination runs dry? When the concept of artistic expression and creativity is stifled in a world that has become overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and despair? That is the...

Review: We Happy Few’s ‘A Midnight Dreary’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Entering the black box theater space at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, it is clear that We Happy Few’s A Midnight Dreary is not a normal theatrical adaptation of classic literature. A simple paint...

Review: ‘Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ at George Mason University

Big River is the musical adapted from the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. With music and lyrics by Roger Miller and a book by William Hauptman, the 1985 production on...

Magic Time!: ‘The Fever’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

If you’ve ever been in an acting class, a group-encounter session, a sensitivity training, or kindergarten, you’ll feel right at home in The Fever. Even if you’re by nature standoffish, an inveterate...

Magic Time!: ‘Actually’ by Theater J at Arena Stage

The vexing concept of consent in sex gets a seductively smart parsing in Anna Ziegler’s Actually. Now playing in an electrically well-acted Theater J production directed by Johanna Greunhut, Actually...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at the Kennedy Center

It has taken more than 35 years for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s iconic musical Little Shop of Horrors to reach the Kennedy Center. But it’s been worth the wait! The Kennedy Center’s Broadway...

Review: ‘The Fever’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Audience participation can so often be a painful and unwelcome component of a night at the theater, especially if, like myself, you’re prone to minor panic attacks at the thought of being randomly...

Review: ‘Illyria, or What You Will’ by Avant Bard

Illyria is fabulous, darlings. The clothes are to die for. The décor is out of its 1980s mind. The music is as eclectic as it is electric. And plot elements and characters drawn from Twelfth Night fit...

Review: ‘Actually’ by Theater J at Arena Stage

The idea of sexual consent might seem simple: no means stop and yes means carry on. In practice, however, nothing could be further from the truth. The predicaments stemming from this issue that so...

Magic Time!: ‘The Fall’ at Studio Theatre

There is so much to be blown away by in The Fall, the powerful and thrilling performance piece devised and performed by seven South African students. Their majestic musicality, their propulsive...

Magic Time!: ‘How I Learned to Drive’ at Round House Theatre

I’ve been wary of this play since it was first produced in 1997. I remember hearing that it was about a pedophile and his niece and that its treatment of the uncle was sympathetic. So I didn’t trust...

Review: ‘Henry V’ by Faction of Fools

A current exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library explores Winston Churchill’s admiration for Shakespeare, above all the World War II-era patriotic inspiration of Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V....

Review: ‘Blithe Spirit’ at Other Voices Theatre

This Halloween season, Other Voices Theatre is conjuring up a delightful evening of comedy in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, brilliantly directed by Susan Thornton. Wishing to observe the behavior of...

Review: ‘Blight’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Anacostia Playhouse

A few years ago, the teenage son of a single mom shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic, and now the nice suburban home they lived in is a blight. The house not only brings the neighborhood down; it...

Review: ‘Figaro in Four Quartets’ by the In Series

From behind tall blank panels, a cast of characters drawn from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro emerge, dressed in all white period garb, staging vignettes of frustrated and consummated love punctuated...

Magic Time!: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ by Restoration Stage at THEARC

When three hours in the theater elapse faster than many a 90-minute performance, it’s a good bet you’ve been in the thrall of a master storyteller. And that’s what happens in Chocolate Covered Ants,...

Review: ‘Masters of the Italian Baroque’ by the National Chamber Ensemble

For those of us who are fans of the Baroque period, it’s no secret that the Counter Reformation served as one of the most fertile periods in European art history. With the advent of opera and the...

Review: ‘The Changeling’ by Brave Spirits Theatre

Sex, sin, retribution, and vengeance are only starting points for the simmering cauldron that is Brave Spirit’s amped production of The Changeling, a four centuries old Jacobean drama by Thomas...

Review: ‘Frankenstein’ by We Happy Few

A giant, wheezing monster, many feet tall and wide, a formless head towering over the audience, bathed in green light, with a voice made of dust and despair. That’s just one of the many fabulous...

Review: ‘Let the Right One In’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

Sweet innocence with a mature danger underneath – that is Let the Right One In at Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET) in a phrase. If you are a fan of the horror and vampire genres, you have likely heard...

Review: ‘She Like Girls’ at University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Here’s a slick, snappy, lively show that’s timely, relevant and fun. It’s She Like Girls, and it’s got dance and music and diversity and authenticity. The best thing about this show is how the...

Review: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ by Restoration Stage at THEARC

Hurt people hurt people: a cliché, yes, but one that helps understand many of the characters in Steven A. Butler, Jr.’s Chocolate Covered Ants, revived in Restoration Stage’s gorgeous new home in...

In the Moment: ‘How I Learned to Drive’ at Round House Theatre

The latest data from the Child Welfare League of America indicate that in Maryland in 2015, there were over 51,000 referrals for child abuse and neglect. Of those, nearly 21,000 reports were referred...

Review: ‘Steel Magnolias’ by L.A. Theatre Works at George Mason University Center for the Arts

Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias is a heartbreaking story that exemplifies the female bond and illustrates the resilient strength that bolsters six women from a small southern town through times of...

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...

Review: ‘The Fall’ at Studio Theatre

A passionate purity burns bright in The Fall. The incandescence of young people with hearts on fire contending against oppressive institutions burns bright in the 2015 South Africa portrayed in The...

Review: ‘Dirty Pictures’ at Rapid Lemon Productions

Closing its 2018 season with a World Premiere by a Local Author, Rapid Lemon debuts Dirty Pictures at Theatre Project. Pucker up: it’s about sex and love and ambition and alcoholism and bad choices...

Review: ‘TSVETAEVA’ by the Russian Chamber Art Society

The Russian Chamber Art Society (RCAS) has been bringing Russian chamber music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Washington audiences for more than a decade, so its decision to expand...

Review: ‘New Guidelines for Peaceful Times’ at Spooky Action Theater

It is mid-April, 1945. The war in Europe is nearly over. However, neither a proper armistice nor formal surrender has been signed by the Allies with the former Nazi regime. It is an unsettled time...

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...

In the Moment: ‘Sleepy Hollow’ at Synetic Theater

As if inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or even Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Synetic’s highly original production of Sleepy Hollow, performed without dialogue, is an adult...

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: ‘Venus in Fur’ at Compass Rose Theater

It is hard to describe Compass Rose Theater’s production of Venus in Fur except as awesome in the original sense of inspiring awe. Written by David Ives and first appearing off-Broadway in 2010, then...

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...