Reviews

Urban Arias’ ‘The Roost’ takes a steamy look at a couple in quarantine

The Decameron Opera Coalition, a collection of different opera companies throughout the United States, has created a unique event, inspired by classic literature and modern necessity. Their Tales from...

In ‘American Dreams’ at Round House, it’s game on! for U.S. citizenship

“Every form of refuge has its price,” once sang The Eagles. That concept hasn’t changed as the ardent, emotion-packed American Dreams unfolds before audiences. American Dreams is Round House Theatre’s...

Fresh and funny ‘??‍???‍?’ from Solas Nua creates a flash community

There were a number of factors that led Solas Nua, the 15-year-old theater company dedicated to presenting contemporary Irish arts, to abandon their previous project, Being Here, and devise a new...

Vanessa Williams and Renée Fleming sing in a new era at the Kennedy Center

It goes without saying that things haven’t quite gone as planned this year in the DC performing arts scene. The recent pandemic shuttered many of the region’s stalwart venues in March and continues to...

A strange phone tree leads to hilarity in ‘Human Resources’ at Woolly Mammoth

When was the last time you enjoyed a funny, edgy Woolly Mammoth production while digging up stubborn weeds from your garden or taking a stroll through Rock Creek Park? Just when we thought our options...

Élan Ensemble’s ‘Arias for the Autumnal Equinox’ was a garden delight

Élan Ensemble’s outdoor concert, “Arias for the Autumnal Equinox,” was a delightful celebration of 17th- and 18th-century music, performed in the marvelously picturesque garden of the historic...

‘Macbeth’ as fast-moving radio drama from PG County Shakespeare in the Parks

How, exactly, does one make theater in the middle of a pandemic? People are sitting on the couch streaming The Umbrella Academy. Broadway is closed until January 3, 2021. Much of local theater is now...

Virginia Opera is all about Stayin’ Alive

With live performances shut down since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, artists unemployed, and income streams disrupted, performing arts organizations continue to face the hardest of times....

Pols and players perk up ‘Will on the Hill’ for Shakespeare Theatre Company

For one brief shining moment, there was bipartisanship in Washington. It occurred with the 2020 online edition of STC’s 18th annual Will on the Hill, broadcast on Monday, September 14, 2020. The...

Olney’s virtual ‘The Humans’ shines with fine performances

Olney Theatre Center’s virtual production of The Humans offers proof positive of the old adage: Necessity is the mother of invention. Just see how they have turned the pandemic’s crushing blow into a...

Loudon Arts Film Festival opens with a wrenching script by Chisa Hutchinson

It’s a relatively short drive—a few miles beyond the beltway on I-66, and then on to Route 50 for some 16 miles or so, past the charming town of Aldie, Virginia—to get to Drive-In Heaven. For the next...

A top-notch storyteller tells ‘Stories I May Not Tell’ at Best Medicine Rep

Theaters have gone dark during the pandemic, with little certainty about when or whether actors and audiences can again gather in the same space to tell and listen to stories that illuminate our...

A critic at play

During the past seven-odd years that I’ve contributed to DC Theater Arts, I’ve written about upwards of 600 shows—sometimes as the designated reviewer (when I followed criticism conventions) and...

Jessika D. Williams as Othello at ASC is a marvel to behold

By far one of the most exciting theatrical discoveries for me has been the work of the remarkable Jessika D. Williams. Those of us lucky enough to have seen her in the the American Shakespeare...

Theater J revives a 1910 hit comedy-melodrama

Sit back to indulge in a comedy-melodrama. A streaming Zoom reading of a rediscovered play first produced in 1910. It is a love letter, with sharp edges, to a bygone time. A time of tintype slides and...

Three ways to catch ‘Twelfth Night’ at The American Shakespeare Center

Theater is changing. It has to; and, as ever, to survive we need to respond creatively to one of the greatest threats it has faced in centuries. But hey, we’ve been here before—and if Shakespeare can...

A dynamic ‘Tears of the Soul’ dramatizes 1968’s BLM awakening

Racial unrest and violent protests in the streets. Social division and a nation on the verge of collapse. A nascent social movement confronting racial injustice and police brutality. Internal family...

A wonderfully manic ‘#txtshow’ from performance artist Brian Feldman

Brian Feldman puts a lot of faith in his virtual audience. His production #txtshow (on the internet), which he creates and performs, is based on the texts he receives in real time from his audience....

Update: Synetic Theater’s wonderfully inventive ‘Decameron’ is now all online

With all videos in The Decameron available through July, Amy Kotkin completes her original review with yellow-highlighted additions below. History always has lessons to teach during times of enormous...

Wrapping up and rating Round House Theatre’s ‘Homebound’

Well, here we are. The end of 10 episodes over 11 weeks. The first episode of Homebound, which revolved around Craig’s inability to turn back from a potato on Zoom, seems like it took place a long...

A heart-piercing tribute to frontline COVID responders in ‘The Line’ from The Public Theater

With the country hitting new daily highs as COVID-19 surges well beyond hot spots such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecituct, the Public Theater has produced a love letter to the medical community...

A Zoom critic takes a hard look at a BIPOC roundtable from Transformation Theatre

I want to carve out a new niche in the Bold New World of virtual online arts meetings. I want to become a Zoom critic! Why? Because I have been forced to hone my facilitator skills with this...

Youth respond to COVID-19 in heartfelt ‘Inside Voices’ film from Arena Stage

For school-age children, their world has turned upside down because of COVID-19. Over the past three months, children and youth have lived from a distance in a virtual world, lived with a muffled...

In ‘May 22, 2020’ from Arena Stage, a day in the life of the COVID DMV

“I read the news today, oh boy… / the news was rather sad…” That day was May 22, 2020. In a leap into film docudrama creation, Arena Stage’s Artistic Director Molly Smith chronicles a sad day in the...

NOVA playwright Soo-Jin Lee’s streaming ‘Peaches’ is bittersweet and affecting

With DMV theaters still shuttered because of COVID-19, there has been the opportunity to explore original streaming content written by local playwrights. One of those playwrights is Northern Virginia...

A void in live protest theater is a silenced cry of pandemic proportions

Once again, anti-Black violence strikes at the heart and soul of America. We are shocked and saddened to watch an unarmed, handcuffed Black man struggle to breathe as he lies helpless on the ground....

‘My Heart Goes Zoom’ tells a funny, relatable story of a COVID-era crush

Siobhan O’Loughlin is no stranger to unconventional performing arts spaces. For the past few years, her theaters have been neither proscenium nor black box. Instead, the venue for her interactive...

‘Henry IV, Parts I and II’ were stellar at American Shakespeare Center

The Shakespeare scene in and near Washington, DC, in the months prior to the virus’s intervention, was truly rich in character and ideas; so much so that even a certain fat braggart managed to strut...

‘A King and No King’ was a goodly one at American Shakespeare Center

Looking back on the last few months, each of us has our “Shoulda seen it/Shoulda been there” moments, events that we would have given anything to see live. So at the moment, imagine if you will that...

National Theatre of London streams an epic ‘Antony and Cleopatra’

As we ease into an impromptu season of watching live theater captured on video, it’s helpful to remember that there are challenges of scale. This is especially true in the case of webcasts from the...

In virtual ‘Borders,’ the radical realism of a gay meetup on Grindr

Borders, a play by Nimrod Danishman, tells the story of two young men—Boaz (Eli Schoenfeld), an Israeli, and George (Adrian Rifat), who is Lebanese—who meet on Grindr and fall in love despite their...

‘The Grapes of Wrath’ at The American Shakespeare Center strikes a haunting note

“It’s need that makes all the trouble” says (ex-) preacher Jim Casy in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. That, in a nutshell, is the ordeal of our times, as millions live without paychecks and...

The American Shakespeare Center’s streaming ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is a much-needed romp

Yes, it’s a drag to have to stay at home instead of seeing our favorite performers live—but then again, after a little adjustment, it’s amazing to get to see our favorite performers at home. Our...

Arena Stage’s ‘Celia and Fidel’ explores the influences on Cuba’s revolutionary leader

Part of Arena Stage’s ongoing Power Plays, the world premiere of Celia and Fidel transports the audience back to a time when Fidel Castro was not just a name in the history books, but a feared...

4615 Theatre’s world premiere ‘Museum 2040’: An extraordinary immersive installation

Museum 2040, a world premiere written by Playwright Renee Calarco and directed by Artistic Director Jordan Friend, is an extraordinary immersive installation, which confirms 4615 Theater Company’s...

Olney Theatre Center’s ‘The Amateurs’ is a comedy of ‘epidemic’ proportions

There is nothing like a good old-fashioned plague to get you pondering life’s big questions: the Bubonic Plague, the AIDS Crisis, COVID-19, really any epidemic will do. Of course, Jordan Harrison’s...

A harrowing ‘Pass Over’ powerfully performed at Studio Theatre

There is a drama on stage right now at Studio Theatre—Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu—so harrowing it will stop your heart. In it, Christopher Lovell and Jalen Gilbert give two of the most powerful...

‘Riffs and Relations’: WNO’s Cafritz Young Artists Program sounds so very American

You’d have to be dead not to enjoy a recital of the caliber given this past Sunday in the Phillips Collection Music Room by members of the current class of Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young...

Ancient mysteries astonish and delight at IN Series’ Women Composers Festival

‘Here Be Sirens’ is the phrase cartographers used for many centuries to warn sailors of marine dangers. Composer Kate Soper borrowed the name for her musically complex, theatrically rich opera, her...

Hexagon’s ‘One State Two State Red State Blue State’: A chuckle for a good cause

News got you nervous? Quaking over coronavirus? Morose about the stock market? Fed up with the Fed? Sick of the swamp? And yet, do you fear if you take your mind off it all for a second, things might...

Another lost female genius found, in ‘Einstein’s Wife’ at ExPats Theatre

The history of science is studded with female geniuses snubbed by sexism. There’s biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, geneticist Nettie Stevens, chemist Alice Ball— And several such brilliant women’s...

Monumental Theatre Company’s ‘Head Over Heels’ is a toe-tapping celebration of life, love, and self

After receiving a foreboding prophecy of loss and destruction, the King of Arcadia is determined to outwit the gods and save his kingdom’s “beat.” To do so, he takes his queen, two daughters, and...

‘Rasheeda Speaking’ is a ticking time bomb of workplace racial animus

Something struck me as incredulous about Rasheeda Speaking, a ticking time bomb about racial paranoia interlaced with the destructive power of office politics. But its recently deceased playwright...

IN Series’ ‘Dorothy Fields Cabaret’ honors first woman inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame

In my 20s, I lamented that despite being well-schooled in American literature, I’d ended up a failure at knowing much of our nation’s poetry by heart. But when I set out to entertain myself and a...

Plenty to chew on in ExPats’ thoughtful production of ‘Einstein’s Wife’

Ready for a dandy production about the complicated life with a child-like diva who happens to be a genius? Then consider Einstein’s Wife from ExPats Theatre. Written by Serbian playwright Snezana...

Fearless feminist dance takes the stage in Martha Graham Dance Company’s ‘The EVE Project’

On the eve of the day we learned that we still can’t elect a woman as qualified as Elizabeth Warren president, the Martha Graham Dance Company returned to the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater with...

Piano duo from Portugal work outward from their country’s folk melodies in Embassy Series visit to Washington

Taking music from a performer’s own culture and pulling it together with more familiar-sounding music into a coherent program for an American audience is often tricky business. If it comes across as...

‘Bandstand’ at the National Theatre is a musical love letter to veterans and their families

Bandstand, a heart-wrenching musical about a group of veterans returning home from World War II, with music by Richard Oberacker, and book and lyrics by Rob Taylor and Oberacker, is at The National...

WNO’s ‘Don Giovanni’ signals the cultural and healing power of Washington’s arts scene

The Washington National Opera’s current production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni confirms two important ideas. The first is that while opera is most effective when it entertains, its intrinsic value is...

Avant Bard’s finely-tuned ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ keeps the audience on its toes

Let us never forget that Tennessee Williams, for all his genius with poetic language, was one of the most fearless, gut-wrenchingly honest playwrights of the twentieth century. We have Blanche DuBois...