Reviews

Review: ‘Street Scene’ by Virginia Opera

Kurt Weill’s varied score, Langston Hughes’ eloquent lyrics, a powerful book by playwright Elmer Rice, and a quality ensemble cast combine in Virginia Opera’s production of Street Scene, to create the...

Review: ‘Ghostchasers’ by Encore Stage

By Andy Arnold You know you’ll have a bad day at work when the guests at the Hangtown Asylum for Extremely Tense People lock up the staff and take over the business. As it happens, the asylum is built...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

It’s the heartwarming story of a hapless boy and his exotic plant. No, wait, it’s a cautionary sci-fi allegory about human desire. Correction: it’s a fun doo-wop musical packed with archetypical...

Review: ‘2018 Marian Anderson Vocal Award Winner: Ryan Speedo Green in Concert’ at the Kennedy Center

Ryan Speedo Green is a man with a story. Many opera fans first learned his name through Daniel Bergner’s 2016 book Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family. The New York Times journalist...

In the Moment: ‘Heisenberg’ at Signature Theatre

With notes at the top of his work Heisenberg, playwright Simon Stephens gives undecorated, clear direction to theater companies for his expectations when producing the play: The present day. The stage...

Review: ‘The Comedy of Errors’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most popular works, so there is little point recounting the plot. One must only remember that it is the one with two sets of twins: one a pair...

Review: ‘The Comedy of Errors’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Sally Boyett, is a hilariously funny and inventive reimagining of Shakespeare’s early play, combining physical comedy,...

Review: ‘Night, Mother at the Strand Theater

In his classic acting guidebook Audition, Michael Shurtleff observed, “A murderer kills just one. A suicide kills the whole world.” Marsha Norman acknowledges as much in her Pulitzer Prize-winning...

Review: ‘She Stoops To Conquer’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Hurry to see a vibrant and uproariously funny production of a classic comedy. Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, “at home” in a converted downtown bank building, which, for historic reasons, retains...

Review: ‘Labour of Love’ at Olney Theatre Center

Just when Americans think we have a monopoly on political rancor, along comes a show from across the pond to remind us that we aren’t the only ones dealing with extreme political partisanship....

Review: ‘Summerland’ at Washington Stage Guild

What began as a mundane two-hander focused on stiff argumentative males in an investigative procedural play, develops into something pleasingly knotty and intense. All it takes is one new character...

Magic Time!: ‘Safeguards’ by Brave Soul Collective at Anacostia Arts Center

Brave Soul Collective is a hidden gem of theatrical truthtelling about black men who are LGBTQ. Periodically the collective surfaces with a one-night-only showcase of work by local writing and...

Review: ‘Heisenberg’ at Signature Theatre

Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg, now playing at Signature Theatre, begins with two souls in hiding. Georgie Burns (Rachel Zampelli) hides whatever pains and losses she has suffered behind her frenetic...

Review: ‘Born Yesterday’ at Ford’s Theatre

What a sparkling production of Born Yesterday at Ford’s Theatre. Written in 1946 as the United States was standing powerful after the carnage of WWII, Garson Kanin’s script is delightfully subversive;...

In the Moment: ‘Lincolnesque’ at the Keegan Theatre

Separating a theater company’s production from the playwright’s script is crucial when evaluating a performance. After all, an engaging full production can do the old razzle-dazzle to cover a script’s...

Review: ‘Lincolnesque’ at the Keegan Theatre

In Lincolnesque, a play written by John Strand and directed by Colin Smith, the art of lying for one’s country succeeds in fusing a deceptively light touch and inside-the-Beltway political humor with...

Review: “Ain’t Misbehavin'” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

The joint is jumping, and the stars are strutting to legendary jazz great Thomas “Fats” Waller’s exuberant melodies at Toby’s Dinner Theatre with an all-embracing musical revue of 30 soul-stirring...

Review: ‘Blueberries for Sal’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

Adventure Theatre MTC presents the world premiere musical Blueberries for Sal, written by Michael J. Bobbitt and Sandra Eskin, and featuring new music and lyrics by William Yanesh. Based on the...

Review: ‘The Last American Hammer’ by UrbanArias

Stick a right-wing conspiracy theorist, a curator at a Toby jug museum, and a rookie FBI agent in the same porcelain-filled room in a no-name town in rural Ohio, then make them talk over tea and...

The American Pops Orchestra ‘You’ve Got a Friend: A Singer-Songwriter Celebration’ at Arena Stage

The American Pops Orchestra kicked off its fourth season with You’ve Got a Friend: A Singer-Songwriter Celebration featuring a diverse lineup of local and national talent at Arena Stage. Maestro Luke...

Magic Time!: ‘How to Win a Race War’ at The Klunch

I know from my feminist antipornography activism that there is plenty of misogynist hate literature around. (The hard-core stuff is brutal, sadistic propaganda marketed to men arousing them to violate...

Review: ‘How to Win a Race War’ at the Klunch

How To Win a Race War—a whopping 3-hour, 15-minute ordeal—indulges in the world of white supremacy, wheels and deals in astoundingly racist and horrifying caricature, and expects a pat on the back for...

Review: ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may boast of owning “twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile,” but in Center Stage’s comparably rich...

Review: ‘Living and Dying with Tricia McCauley’ at Venus Theatre

Living and Dying with Tricia McCauley is a raw and personal journey through grief. Tricia McCauley, the local actress whose brutal 2016 murder rocked the theater community, was a personal friend and...

Review: ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ by the National Players

It seems particularly appropriate that the National Players should be mounting a production about an imperturbable, peripatetic gambler who takes every mishap in stride while journeying as far as it...

Review: ‘Voytto Tech: a scifi fable’ at InterAct Story Theatre

Ready for some out of this world fun that will teach your kids about good global citizenry? InterAct Story Theatre’s current production, Voytto Tech: A scifi fable, takes audiences to the far-off...

Magic Time!: ‘The Events’ at Theater Alliance

Theater Alliance’s The Events, now playing at Anacostia Playhouse, is one of several plays this season that deal with a mass shooting. (There’s also Pinky Swear’s Blight, coming October 20 to the same...

Review: ‘Viva V.E.R.D.I. – The Promised End’ by the In Series

Theater can be many things: challenging, and then restoring; transcendent, and yet—fundamental. A platform for the cutting-edge and a welcoming home-fire for the familiar. Rarely does a single show...

Magic Time!: ‘If I Forget’ at Studio Theatre

To paraphrase the famous Passover Seder line, “Why is this domestic drama different from all other domestic dramas?” Or, to put the impudent question another way, “What makes If I Forget a uniquely...

Review: ‘If I Forget’ at Studio Theatre

When I grew up in a small New Jersey shore town with a single synagogue to serve many surrounding communities, I recall a particular question uttered within my family and my own Jewish tribe. This...

Review: ‘The Events’ by Theater Alliance at the Anacostia Playhouse

A wrenching agitation pervades the gray clouded confines of The Events, in which a diverse chorus group is slaughtered by a gunman. Claire (Regina Aquino), the church chorus leader, is the sole...

Review: “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” by Theater J

Storytelling is one of the most ancient of the performing arts, distinct from that of the dramatic actor, and when Mona Golabek makes her entrance, it is not as an actor playing a character but as a...

Review: ‘Pramkicker’ by Taffety Punk Theatre Company

Imagine a pram catapulting down the stairs and the sweet instant of satisfaction that the kick initiates. A fragment of a second later, the realization of the tumble hits home. The kick is, after all,...

Review: ‘The Wedding Singer’ at NextStop Theatre Company

A wedding singer spurned by love becomes unlikely friends with the waitress at the local banquet hall and, from dumping to dumpsters, finds that love might be worth another try. Celebrating their 30th...

Review: ‘Turn Me Loose’ at Arena Stage

Long before Hannah Gadsby premiered her anti-comedy stand-up special Nanette, in which she lambasts the sexist entertainment industry and forces audiences to reckon with their own complicity, there...

Review: ‘Cirque De Nuit’ by PrioreDance at Atlas Performing Arts Center

Figures emerge into the light. They are remarkably similar and without guise, and as the bodies accumulate in number; it is as if one has been multiplied by ten. The variations are obvious but the eye...

Review: ‘Putin On Ice (that isn’t the real title of this show)’ by Single Carrot Theatre and The Acme Corporation

By Brandon Block We’re in a long, dark, monastic chamber. A white marble bust of Putin sits against dark red drop-banners that are just barely not swastikas, instead featuring a black outline of a...

Review: ‘Macbeth’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

In January 1666, famed diarist Samuel Pepys saw a performance of the William Davenant Macbeth and called it a “strange perfection.” The production that just opened at the Folger Theatre is strangely...

Magic Time!: ‘Gloria’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Count on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins to leave you whiplashed and shell-shocked. He hits nerve after nerve then goes for the jugular. Whatever he writes, see it. Woolly’s previous productions of...

Review: ‘Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

The current offering from the justly renowned GALA Hispanic Theatre, Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water For Chocolate) is a veritable feast for the senses and a savory mixture of theatrical...

Review: ‘Gloria’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Director Kip Fagan opens this production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria with a clever conceit: Miles (Justin Weaks), an office intern, is at his desk, as the contrapuntal woodwinds and strings of a...

Review: ‘Engaging Shaw’ at Best Medicine Rep

There is an engaging sub-genre of theater, that one might call the battle of wits or the comedy of intellect, that takes some of the greatest minds in history and brings them to life, with all their...

Review: ‘Hand to God’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

So what sort of play is Hand to God? Dysfunctional family drama? Teen coping with angst saga? Angry satire on a particular style of Christianity? Scenario for a horror movie? Raunchy sex comedy?...

Review: ‘Hero’s Welcome’ at 1st Stage Theatre

Hero’s Welcome at 1st Stage is the area premiere of British playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s 79th play. While Ayckbourn might be best known for his uproarious comedies, the humor here is darker than...

Review: ‘Sweeney Todd’ by Rep Stage

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street presented by Rep Stage, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by High Wheeler, took to the boards this week at Howard Community College....

Review: ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ at Everyman Theatre

True magic happens not when we’re convinced that an illusion is true, but when we realize that it can’t be so yet still refuse to believe it isn’t. Such a spell is cast over the audience at Everyman...

Review: ‘South Pacific’ at Olney Theater Center

No one is from there. Espiritu Santo, the main island setting of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical drama and the James Michener novel (Tales of the South Pacific) that inspired it, is not the dreamy...

Page to Stage 2018: Tastings from a Buffet (Part Two)

Kennedy Center’s annual Page to Stage Festival is always chock full of tempting offerings, and the challenge of deciding what to see is daunting. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet…except you really...

Review: ‘Small Mouth Sounds’ at Round House Theatre

“You have everything you need within you to be human,” says an unseen guru on the god mic. He is speaking in sonorous tones to six seekers who now sit rapt in a row facing us the audience. They have...

Page to Stage 2018: Tastings from a Buffet (Part One)

Kennedy Center’s annual Page to Stage Festival is always chock full of tempting offerings, and the challenge of deciding what to see is daunting. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet…except you really...