Reviews

The Mason Cabaret is in splendid voice with ‘The Great American Songbook!’ at GMU

With personality galore and voices full of pizzazz and warmth, The Mason Cabaret in Concert delivered a wonderful evening of Celebrating the Great American Songbook! Under the direction of James...

Carlo vs. Carlo clash in Best Medicine Rep’s ‘Comedy of Venice’

John Morogiello’s new “based-on-a true-story” play Comedy of Venice, having its debut performance at Gaithersburg’s Best Medicine Rep, centers on a feud between two 18th-century Venetian playwrights....

Fellowship for Performing Arts delivers with challenging ‘The Great Divorce’

C.S. Lewis is not for the fainthearted. While his Narnia series may have been the most successful in capturing the public imagination, his fascination with—and ability to articulate—advanced...

‘The Simon and Garfunkel Story’: beautiful sounds and rapt silence at the National Theatre

Success strikes like a cobra. It mesmerizes, then it strikes. It paralyzes its target, freezes it in the moment. Simon and Garfunkel found that cobra, that success, in 1966 as “Sounds of Silence”...

‘Grey Rock’ at the Kennedy Center spotlights the extraordinary in the ordinary

In Grey Rock, Playwright-Director Amir Nizar Zuabi invites us into the home of an ordinary Palestinian family in a small West Bank village. We soon recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary — the...

‘Next to Normal’ makes a triumphant DC return at the Kennedy Center

In 2020, isn’t all of DC just trying to get by with something “next” to normal? We’re going about our daily lives while there’s an impeachment trial going on. A foreign leader was recently...

‘Silent Sky’ at Ford’s Theatre celebrates early female astronomers who reached for the stars

Two generations before the African American space scientists immortalized in the film Hidden Figures propped up America’s nascent space program, another group of pioneering female “computers” huddled...

Round House’s ‘Spring Awakening’ captures the essence of teenage angst

With her green roots and sneakers that spout “fuck you,” Billie Eilish, who swept Sunday night’s pop Grammys, sings a new song for a new generation. Her 2020 teen angst recalls hardcore punk and rock...

‘Red’ by Compass Rose Theater asks provocative questions about art

Compass Rose Theater’s production of Red is a wonderfully powerful production. Set in New York during the 1950s, John Logan’s 2010 play is about the artist Mark Rothko, and it offers profound,...

Washington Stage Guild’s ‘Bloomsday’ is pleasurable, candid production for the heart

Washington Stage Guild’s Bloomsday is a flower of a production. One to gaze at, listen to, and revel in, enjoying the power of words, terrific acting, connections, and confessions. Written by Steven...

Prologue Theatre revisits the day after 9-11 in ‘Recent Tragic Events’

On September 12, 2001, after a stunning halt to nearly all normal activity, life resumed for most Americans. And yet, we knew that everything had changed. Our sense of security was shattered. More...

Clayton LeBouef’s dreamy ‘RS/24’ returns to Anacostia Playhouse

Summoning a galaxy of African American recording stars, this poignant one-act sometimes seems like a sublime dream with vintage music. There are ethereal visions, vivid Afrofuturist visitations, and...

‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ at Arena: women fighting their forever war

You will not this season see a more beautiful, emotionally wrenching portrayal of profound love than in Arena Stage’s production of Ursula Rani Sarma’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. Based on Khaled...

Updated for the 21st century, ‘Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures: Swan Lake’ soars at The Kennedy Center

As you enter The Kennedy Center Opera House, a muted image of a swan, wings spread, neck extended, warms the curtains. The theater darkens, the performance begins, and the movement of flight merges...

Getting a hometown kick out of ‘Kinky Boots’

Sizzle sells, or as Kinky Boots proved on Broadway in 2013, “The Sex Is In the Heel.” Why was the musical named Kinky Boots? Maybe Fetish Footwear didn’t have quite the same kick. … Sorry. Toby’s...

‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ at Folger Theatre: stellar comedy and groovy fashions

There are moments when art and life are so wittily and intimately entwined, you can feel the vibe without a word being said. Given the joyful display of color and power at this weekend’s Women’s...

Channeling chutzpah in ‘Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World’ at Mosaic

Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World—the award-winning play now enjoying its DC debut at Mosaic Theater—is as delicious a romp as any that’s come along in a while. Billed as a romantic comedy,...

Mosaic goes rom-com with ‘Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World’

This thoroughly delightful offering from Mosaic Theater Company has all the makings of a lighthearted rom-com. Boy picks up girl. He invites her to his place. She initiates sex. It’s hot. Though they...

In the ‘Pipeline’ at Studio Theatre, a Black son’s legacy of rage

The set for Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline at Studio Theatre could not be any whiter. Its white walls of freshly painted concrete blocks span the breadth of the stage and extend around the audience....

Mother and son fight to stay afloat in ‘Pipeline’ at Studio Theatre

The pipeline in the title of Dominique Morisseau’s play is the “school-to-prison pipeline” affecting young African-American men. Fueled, as Studio Theatre’s dramaturgical notes explain, by a...

Comedic twist on Hamlet, John Barrymore, and theater archetypes in ‘I Hate Hamlet’ at The Castaways Repertory Theatre

I Hate Hamlet invites the audience to spend an evening with a young man plagued by indecision in a marvelous modern re-telling of Hamlet’s own quandary. With ghosts that appear upon the clock striking...

American Pops Orchestra cleverly re-imagines ‘The Pied Piper’ at Arena Stage

The weather outside was surely cold and cranky. But the outside world could be quickly forgotten as the American Pops Orchestra (APO), led by Maestro Luke Frazier, gently took children and adults by...

Jazzmeia Horn makes her return in the new jazz club at the REACH

Jazz vocalist, Jazzmeia Horn, returned to her home at the Kennedy Center on Saturday evening to deliver the first performance in the REACH’s jazz club, Studio K. Perhaps there is no better artist to...

4615 Theatre’s gripping ‘A Measure of Cruelty’ rips open three men’s wounds

The casual cruelty that constructs men’s certainty they’re real men—and the cost of that violence to others and to themselves—comes under scathing scrutiny in Joe Calarco’s shattering one-act A...

Songs of love and war in UrbanArias’ brilliant ‘Glory Denied’

If your parents taught you that opera is the ultimate blend of words and music, where both elements are dependent on the other and that the end result is far more than the sum of its parts, and if you...

Pianist Yefim Bronfman dazzles, while NSO disengages under guest conductor Gemma New

Nature, nuance, or its lack thereof, were central themes when the National Symphony Orchestra welcomed conductor Gemma New, pianist Yefim Bronfman, and the young composer Salina Fisher to Washington...

‘Sheltered’ at Theater J hits home in America right now

A gathering stormcloud looms over this exquisitely wrought play by Alix Sobler. “How bad is it going to get?” a character wonders aloud. No one can answer. “It can’t go on like this much longer, can...

Theater J examines world history, good and bad, in ‘Sheltered’

Alix Sobler’s play Sheltered, based on real-life characters, is a rarity. It is a history play that doesn’t fall into the trap of portraying a period in history in such detail that it forgets to...

MLK’s final evening is imagined in NextStop Theatre’s ‘The Mountaintop’

The Mountaintop by Katori Hall is a remarkably affecting play full of humanity, faith, unexpected humor, and the Almighty. Strikingly directed by two time Helen Hayes award recipient Kevin S....

‘Grease’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts rocks and rolls

Grease is a musical that celebrates the changes born of the late 1950s era of rock n’ roll, drive-in movies, and James Dean–an era that sat on the cusp of the turbulent 1960s. Riverside Center for the...

Old dogs and new tricks: the Hermès Quartet and guests in performance at the Phillips Collection

Here’s a thought: Older virtuosi are boring. That’s not original to me, but to an audience member who offered his views during a concert intermission recently. We were at the Phillips Collection for a...

A Black boxing champion battles racism in ‘The Royale’ at 1st Stage

Black early 20th-century celebrity heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson has had as irresistible a pull on subsequent playwrights and filmmakers as he did on the public of his day. Already the...

Uplifting ‘Veils’ returns to Restoration Stage by popular demand

Four African American women address the audience as if speaking to a department store clerk. Each is shopping for a dress—a dress, they stress, that must be “special.” As they turn to the faces of...

WNO’s American Opera Initiative 2020 is an essential take on opera in America

“It’s a ridiculous thing to sing at the top of your lungs about your vulnerability,” American composer Laura Kaminsky observed to this year’s Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative...

‘NSO Pops: Diana Ross – Music Book 2020’ brings mesmerizing Motown royalty to the Kennedy Center

She’s mesmerizing, astounding, and accomplished beyond reason. I’m writing about world-renowned superstar recording artist Diana Ross. Ross, conductor Emil de Cou of the National Symphony Orchestra,...

Tchaikovsky’s vocal compositions attract audiences in DC and New York

It is often hard to determine what fills the seats in many performing arts genres, with counterintuitive surprises on both the negative and positive side. Count this one as a positive: While Peter...

‘Richard the Second’ at Brave Spirits Theatre: a tale of two kings

Brave Spirits Theatre (BST), led by Artistic Director Charlene V. Smith, has taken on a spectacular challenge: Shakespeare’s eight history plays. Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth Parts I and II,...

Dark Horse Theatre Company presents regional premiere of ‘The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later’

Located just 47 miles away from Washington, DC in The Plains, Virginia, Dark Horse Theatre Company creates some of the best theater in the DC area. Director Natasha Parnian continues a streak of...

IN Series’ ‘Le Cabaret de Carmen’ is opera for those unafraid of art’s raw power

“I want us to be in contention for a Helen Hayes Award,” IN Series artistic director Timothy Nelson told me last fall over coffee near his office in the Shaw neighborhood. We were discussing his...

‘A Jazz New Year’s Eve’ brought Branford Marsalis’ innovative style to the Kennedy Center

The Grand Foyer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts teemed with patrons sporting gowns swirling against the carpeted floor and tuxedos announcing an auspicious occasion, signifying...

Family friendly ‘Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage’s production of Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol is a fun, family-friendly take on Charles Dickens’ classic tale. Written by Ken and Jack Ludwig, this 2015 play has Tiny Tim and his...

A Powerhouse Performance of Handel’s Messiah by NSO at The Kennedy Center

At the outset, I will confess a bias: I much prefer listening to baroque pieces played in the style, and on the scale, of the time in which they were composed. Handel’s 1741 oratorio Messiah was...

A ‘My Fair Lady’ for today at the Kennedy Center

The character arc that carries Lerner and Loewe’s classic My Fair Lady belongs to Eliza Doolittle, as she rises from flower girl at Covent Garden to the belle of the embassy ball, from feral street...

‘The Magical Piñata’ at the Keegan Theatre celebrates Mexican culture and teaches about sharing

The concept of gratitude and sharing can be one of the hardest things for a child to learn. But in a world full of greed, these principles are vital to maintaining a semblance of peace and prosperity....

‘Jersey Boys’ rides the highs and lows of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons in melodious style

There’s a scene in the mind-blowingly good musical Jersey Boys in which erstwhile hoodlum and fast-talker Tommy DeVito, founder of the internationally known singing group The Four Seasons, tells...

The Claremont Trio triumphs with concert of female composers at the Phillips Collection

Concerts in private salons rather than formal concert halls dot the history of music-making. But they can give the impression of being secondary events where no real music history took place. That...

The ‘Long View’ glimpses inner life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

There has been plenty of backlash during this administration against what some critics have called “the cult” of RBG, aka, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Some are critical of the...

Step Afrika!’s ‘Magical Musical Holiday Step Show’ is a winter wonderland of joy

Now in its eighth year, Step Afrika!’s Magical Musical Holiday Step Show has established itself as the season’s most joyful and lovable family festivity in DC. Exuberant music, adorable humor, and...

‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ hits the road to 50

Jesus wears his hair in a man-bun and Mary Magdalene appears a bit like a millennial caught outside her “safe space”—but there’s still plenty of power and glory on display in the new 50th Anniversary...

‘Black Nativity’ inspires and uplifts at Anacostia Playhouse

There are many joyous traditions this time of year, but to my mind the most indispensable has become Black Nativity. With its spiritual values on its finely-woven sleeve, it’s a show that inspires...