DC

Spine: Love and Menace in ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Early Pinter is marked by menace. The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming leave a chill in the air, and in the audience’s agitated brain. We are disturbed as much by what we don’t know as by...

Review: ‘Blood at the Root’ at Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts

Hard to imagine a dramatic work more perfect for undergraduate actors or more pertinent to the racial tensions of our times than Dominique Morisseau’s trenchant Blood at the Root, now playing in a...

Review: ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The pairing of a director and a playwright is a mysterious thing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But sometimes, as here, it is a perfect marriage. The Lover and The Collection by Harold...

Magic Time!: ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The great Irish actor Lisa Dwan is in town doing something with the playwright Harold Pinter right now at the Lansburgh Theatre that is utterly amazing. She is both doing Pinter and undoing Pinter....

Interview: Dominic North Discusses ‘The Red Shoes’ and Life As a Dancer with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures Company

Based on the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Red Shoes comes to The Kennedy Center October 10 – 15, 2017. The Red Shoes received two...

Terrace Theater to Re-Open with Series of Events at the Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will officially re-open the Terrace Theater on Friday, October 6, kicking off a month-long suite of performances that highlight the theater’s unique...

Magic Time!: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

This is a most peculiar play, but in a very good way. It’s more about its form than its content. And that’s what makes it one of Forum Theatre’s most fascinating offerings. The famously unorthodox...

Review: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Ford’s Theatre

It’s hard to believe that nearly 70 years have passed since Arthur Miller penned his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece, Death of a Salesman; the perennially relevant social drama seems as timely as ever in...

Review: Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Performance of ‘EroSpace’ and ‘When Snails Collide’ at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

It’s often difficult to shake off the pre-conceived notions and expectations of what a particular dance concert is going to be like. I am not exactly clear on what I expected with from EroSpace and...

Review: ‘The Wild Party’ at Constellation Theater Company

In 1928, Joseph Moncure March wrote a racy narrative poem that was received quite successfully, despite a ban resulting from its controversial content, called “The Wild Party.” And in 2000, a musical...

Review: ‘Stones in His Pockets’ at Keegan Theatre

Engaging with warm-hearted humor and disarming in the depth of scenes about lost boys and bitter men with their dreams crushed, the Keegan Theatre production of the Marie Jones’ Stones in his Pockets...

Report: ‘National Symphony Orchestra Season Opening Gala Performance’ Conducted by Maestro Gianandrea Noseda and Featuring Yo-Yo Ma and Cynthia Erivo

Listen up, DC! There is a new Maestro in town. Maestro Gianandrea Noseda, whose impressive resume ranks him as one of the world’s most sought after conductors, opened his inaugural season as music...

Review: The In Series: Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ at the D.C. Scottish Rite Temple

If you’re a Mozart fan – and if you aren’t, you should be – you probably have your favorite ‘conspiracy theory’ about why the composer met his untimely death at the age of 35. Thanks to Peter...

Review: ‘Bernstein on Broadway’ at The Kennedy Center

It was a glorious evening for Leonard Bernstein and musical theater fans at The Kennedy Center. It was the exceptional, one-night-only opening to the worldwide celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s...

Review: ‘How I Became a Pirate’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

A few days ago, you might have heard more than your fair share of “scallywags” and “lily-livered land lubbers” if an acquaintance or loved one elected to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘Lela & Co.’ by Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center

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...

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

In a recent satire published on Medium, the San Francisco writer/actor/comedian Alison Page listed five dozen “Honest Theatre Awards.” Among them was one that struck me as an apt accolade for the...

Event: ‘MUCHO KLUNCHO TALENT SHOW a Parade of Raw Ridiculousness’ Presented by The Klunch

Opera singers, jugglers, tango dancers, strippers, puppets, and way more gather for the Mucho KlunchoTalent Show! An epic assemblage of talent, the likes of which DC hasn’t seen in centuries;...

Review: ‘Native Gardens’ at Arena Stage

Native Gardens is a bloomin’ hysterical comedy at Arena Stage Need something to boost you up? Perhaps something to make you, temporarily, forget the current political and social climate? Or, the...

Review: ‘Respect! A Tribute to Aretha Franklin’ at the American Pops Orchestra

Five fabulous divas joined the innovative new American Pops Orchestra to celebrate the music of Aretha Franklin at the Arena Stage’s Fichandler Stage on September 16. An energized audience sang,...

In the Moment: Matt Haimovitz Brings Mobile Music to Northern Virginia

In these days of the end of the brick-and-mortar retail shops, and in these times when new audiences are less likely to purchase subscriptions to the performing arts as Baby Boomers once did, what can...

Review: ‘Lady M’ – A Co-Production of Collective Eleven, Women from Mars and Gitana Theatre at Atlas Performing Arts Center

In the first scene of LadyM, a show devised by Francesca Chilcote, Rachel Hynes, Vanita Kalra, and Anastasia Wilson, a woman dressed in white dumps an entire bottle of ketchup onto a burger. She tears...

Review: ‘I Killed My Mother’ at Spooky Action Theater

Andras Viskey’s I Killed My Mother, now in production at Spooky Action Theater, is a challenging bit of business. Its wordless opening is several minutes of wandering by various members of the company...

Review: ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’ at Peter’s Alley Theatre Productions

In these days of constant bombast and weaponized words, when sounding reasonable and wanting to be open to another person’s point of view sounds almost quaint, Peter’s Alley Theatre has taken a quiet...

Review: ‘Clover’ at Ally Theatre Company

But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters, they want to know which tools; They never ask why build. — Anne Sexton, “Wanting to Die” Laura Rocklyn and Ty Hallmark’s new work, Clover, now...

Review: ‘Lela & Co.’ by Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center

The story of Cordelia Lynn’s Lela & Co. is a universal story, told across many borders and many nationalities, ethnicities, and races; during wartime and peacetime, at Super Bowls, World Cups, and...

Magic Time!: Refinding the Soul of ‘Word Becomes Flesh’ at Theater Alliance: A Q&A With Director Psalmayene 24

Winner of five Helen Hayes Awards last season, Theater Alliance’s production of Word Becomes Flesh is now playing at Anacostia Playhouse in an encore presentation that is garnering even more acclaim....

Theater Alliance Launches Word Becomes Action Festival

By Natalie Graves Tucker The theater that brought you the Helen Hayes Award–winning show Word Becomes Flesh last year is walking the talk and following up with the Word Becomes Action Festival. Before...

Review: ‘The Arsonists’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Woolly Mammoth’s The Arsonists is not so much an entertainment, even though I laughed frequently, psychotically–and loud, as it is a paratheatrical event during which an absurd play is presented. The...

News: The Round World Presents ‘Tales from the Round World: The Log of the Salty Pearl’

The Round World is excited to present Tales from the Round World: The Log of the Salty Pearl, the second in their series of live radio plays with variety acts interspersed to raise money for great...

News: Two Years After Launching Mosaic, Ari Roth Reflects

This piece, “Two Years After Launching Mosaic, Ari Roth Reflects” by Marilyn Millstone was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on September 12,...

News: ‘Olityelwe (The Forgotten)’ Returns to DC in Full Production for Two Performances Only at Theater Alliance

I reported on this extraordinary play when it was a staged reading at Theater J last June and said at the end: “Somebody needs to pick this one up and bring it back.” Well, that’s exactly what Theater...

Review: ‘Word Becomes Flesh’ at Theater Alliance at Anacostia Playhouse

The Word, in spiritual parlance, is the creative power of God made audible and visible through His Son. It is the energy of the divine dynamic made manifest through Self-revelation. True to principle,...

Spine: What’s Left of America’s Makers, ‘Skeleton Crew’ at Studio Theatre

Lord, in a bourgeois town It’s a bourgeois town I got the bourgeois blues Gonna spread the news all around Any Washington theatregoer who craves a working class show, where the characters are...

Review: ‘Aida’ at Washington National Opera

Eternal, romantic love conquers all — even a jealous rival — in Verdi’s ravishingly melodic Aida, now being presented by the Washington National Opera with splendid work from all involved. Verdi’s...

Review: ‘In Cabaret We Trust’ by TBD Immersive at Blind Whino

Tradition Be Damned Immersive has taken over a desanctified church at 700 Delaware Street, SW, Washington, DC. Known as the Blind Whino, or better by the fanciful colors that electrify the church’s...

Review: ‘Skeleton Crew’ at Studio Theatre

Even before the houselights go dim, sparks fly. That vision — of fire blazing from a riveter’s gun in a factory in Detroit — is emblematic of what is to come in Skeleton Crew, Dominique Morrisseau’s...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at NextStop Theatre Company

What a combustible evening at NextStop’s production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. Under Thembi Duncan’s adroit direction and with fascinating casting, this in-your-face drama...

Review: ‘Don Juan Tenorio’ at GALA Theatre

While Don Juan, the character, is a recognizable archetype of insatiable lust, the GALA Theatre’s Don Juan Tenorio, is an elegant, at times humorous, meditation on the psychic toll abject narcissism...

Review: ‘Noah: Apocalypse’ at LiveArtDC

We will now consider Amanda Quain’s latest play, Noah: Apocalypse, currently playing through September 18 at a bar in Petworth. Now is as good enough a time as any other to find oneself thinking about...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: Six Short Plays from Playwrights Collaborative

Some of the most interesting new plays unveiled at this year’s Page-to-Stage Festival–held over the Labor Day weekend at the Kennedy Center–were among those offered by Playwrights Collaborative, a...

In the Moment: ‘Iola’s Letter: The Memphis Crusade of Ida B. Wells’ at Hill Center

So here we are in late 2017. And in the past several months, nooses have appeared in the Washington DC area, on the campus of American University, at the University of Maryland, inside the National...

DCMetroTheaterArts Announces New Editor-in-Chief, Joel Markowitz Named Editor Emeritus

As Founding Editor Continues to Endure Debilitating Effects of ALS, Revitalized Staff Regroups to Carry Forward His Vision Metro DC (September 7, 2017)—DCMetroTheaterArts (DCMTA)—the website that...

Review: ‘Neverwhere’ at Rorschach Theatre

In 1582, a village parson heard the deathbed confession of a man named Richard Barley, who had married his butter churn. Barley claimed he had been bewitched into matrimony by a fairy called Apron Jon...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: ‘Blind Spots’ by Brave Soul Collective

Skipping puddles on my way to The Kennedy Center, I reminisced: “It’s a rainy day. The sky is gray. I think I’ll smile anyway.” My childhood friend, Nancy, taught me that and it has stuck with me for...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: ‘Queens Girl in Africa’ at Mosaic Theater

Any doubts about the future of the American Theatre were put firmly to rest on Labor Day Weekend, when more than 60 DC-area companies presented excerpts from some of their newest plays at The Kennedy...

Interview: Nicole Atkins on Performing at The Hamilton on September 12, 2017

“It was just so fun,” Nicole Atkins says about the recording process for Good Night Rhonda Lee, her fourth studio album. “We recorded it live, and everything was really in the present moment,...

Review: ‘Julius Caesar’ at Scena Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center

Diamond Julesy Gets It Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has recently become a cause célèbre. When Caesar was portrayed in a Public Theater production with a Trump-like costume and wig, there were protests....

Spine: Bessie Smith and ‘The Devil’s Music’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Fresh from World War I and a devastated Europe, The Roaring Twenties indeed roared across America. In the midst of a raging economic boom fueled in no small part by the advent of film and radio,...

Preview: Women Playwrights Set to Take Page-to-Stage by Storm

Want to see some really cool plays with women at the helm of the production? We’ve got great news for you! Women playwrights and women-led theater companies are ready to entertain you at the Kennedy...