DC

Review: ‘War Virgin’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

In honor of Veterans’ Day, I took in a showing of War Virgin. I first met the playwright, West Point grad and Iraqi War veteran Laura Westley, at the Army/Navy game in Philadelphia several years ago....

Magic Time: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at The Keegan Theatre

Having been watching a con man on the national stage for too long now, I found myself last night watching a con man on a local theater stage from an unusually timely point of view. To put it simply:...

Review: ‘Carousel’ at Arena Stage

Life happens. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s, Carousel, is a timeless interlude that explores the human spirit’s indomitable will to go forward no matter life’s circumstances. Director Molly Smith’s...

The American Pops’ “I’ll Be Seeing You-A World War II Love Story” Tonight at 8 PM at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium

TONIGHT, Friday, November 11th at 8:00 PM LUKE FRAZIER AND THEAMERICAN POPS ORCHESTRA PRESENT “I’LL BE SEEING YOU – A WORLD WAR II LOVE STORY” FOR VETERANS DAY TO OPEN THEIR ALL-STAR SECOND SEASON....

Daisy Eagan: From Her Tony Award-winning Mary Lennox to Playing Martha in ‘The Secret Garden’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

I rarely see a show twice, but I saw the Broadway production of The Secret Garden with Daisy Eagan 12 times. What a thrill it is to chat with her as she prepares to star as Martha in Shakespeare...

Composer/Librettist Andrew Earle Simpson on ‘The Outcasts of Poker Flat’, His New One-Act Chamber Opera Playing at Catholic University Through Sunday 11/20

New opera: The Outcasts of Poker Flat at Catholic University (Or, “Two Prostitutes, a Thief, and a Gambler Walk into a Bar…”) This month, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, a 70-minute one-act chamber opera...

“It’s Our Most Jewish Play This Season”: A Q&A With Adam Immerwahr About ‘The Christians’ at Theater J

For the second show in his first season as artistic director of Theater J, the nation’s largest and most prominent Jewish theater, Adam Immerwahr picked a play with the counterintuitive title The...

Review: ‘Salvador’ by Flamenco Aparicio Dance Company at GALA Hispanic Theatre

There’s good news and bad news floating out of GALA Hispanic Theatre this week. First, the bad news. Salvador—the full-length autobiographical dance drama, choreographed by the great Flamenco dancer,...

Magic Time! ‘Milk Like Sugar’ at Mosaic Theater Company

This beautiful play about black teenagers with bleak futures left me with such a melancholy sadness that two days later (on what was then Election Day), it had not gone away. I share that not to keep...

Spine: ‘Milk Like Sugar’ at Mosaic Theater Company

America is but an expensive iPhone. If you’ve got that, and its Pink with a sexy ringtone, then you’re in, as in the “in” crowd. Now, all you need is a baby. Or so seems the mind-set of Margie,...

Review #2: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at The Keegan Theatre

In John Guare’s wonderfully enigmatic and slightly precocious play, Six Degrees of Separation, now playing at The Keegan Theatre—the ripples of interconnection run rampant as the author intended. This...

Review: ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ at The Keegan Theatre

We’ve all heard of this idea before—that there are six degrees of separation between everyone in the universe, from the president of the U.S. to a “gondolier in Venice.” John Guare’s play, named after...

Review: ‘Where Words Once Were’ at The Kennedy Center

This past weekend, The Kennedy Center opened a newly commissioned show for young audiences from Playwright, Finegan Kruckemeyer. The piece titled, Where Words Once Were, touches on the often...

Review: Sheila Jordan at the KC Jazz Club

Sheila Jordan loves jazz. Sheila Jordan loves singing. Sheila Jordan really loves jazz singing. And we feel truly blessed to have spent an evening in the presence of that love. For those who have not...

Review: ‘Milk Like Sugar’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Milk Like Sugar, the Obie Award-winning play that just opened at Mosaic Theater Company of DC, starts off as badass comedy, the kind where the word “shit”—repeated like an “amen” at the end of each...

Who’s in Town?: American Idol Winner Taylor Hicks, Performing at The Hamilton in DC on Friday, November 11th at 8pm

Taylor Hicks became a household name in 2006 when he won the fifth season of American Idol, becoming one of the most beloved winners of that iconic TV program. Over 200 million viewers watched the...

Review: ‘Girl in the Red Corner’ at The Welders

Among the adages that keep women put down and passive is the one that goes, “Good girls don’t fight.” It’s a specious presumption that infects culture like an immobilizing toxin. It’s an addle-brained...

Review: ‘STREB Extreme Action’ at The Kennedy Center

Fans of STREB Extreme Action were out in force last night at The Kennedy Center. Enthusiasm in the Eisenhower Theater was at a fervor one might find at a rave or rock gig. The singular choreographic...

Review: ‘Wind Me Up, Maria!: A Go-Go Musical’ at Georgetown University

There’s a delectable new musical in town celebrating a distinctive genre of music called Go-Go, and it’s gotta be one of the most go-to fun times to be had in DC right now. The show is in the splendid...

Review: Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center

Something of a high-stakes atmosphere pervades this week’s concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra. It’s performing an all-Russian program, always a touchstone harking back to the reign of Soviet...

An Interview with The Performers of the ‘Aunt Sally Sideshow Reunion’ Performing Tomorrow 11/5 at 9:00 PM at the Bier Baron

I’ve said it before, for someone with a lot of friends who perform sideshow I’m kind of squeamish. I see, maybe, half of their acts, peeking through my fingers. Imagine my delight when I found out a...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Howard University

From the moment the actors appear, the stage becomes a non-stop whirl of color and movement. Howard University’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set in what is meant to be modern-day New...

Magic Time! ‘In the Cage, She Has a Fighting Chance’: A Q&A With Stephen Spotswood About His New Play ‘Girl in the Red Corner’ at The Welders

This seems to be the season in DC Metro Theater for pugilistic women. Women who box claimed the stage in Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage (just closed at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company). A woman who...

Spine: ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

The 18th century French playwright and philosopher Denis Diderot is known best among theatre folk for his theoretical writings: on the actor, the 4th Wall, and the emergence of scenography as an...

‘Getting to Know The Edge of the Universe Players 2’s ‘Pullman, WA’ 11/13-20 at Woolly Mammoth by Bill Goodman

Getting to Know the Play Pullman, WA by Young Jean Lee Reflections by Producer Bill Goodman, The Edge of the Universe Players 2. During the process of producing Pullman, WA, I’ve come to appreciate it...

Review: ‘City of Angels’ at The Catholic University of America

The 1989 musical City of Angels opened last night at Catholic University’s Hartke Theatre, offering its appreciative audience a glimpse into the past through its double filtered lens. There’s no doubt...

Review: Debbie Allen’s ‘FREEZE FRAME… Stop the Madness’ at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater

Ever since Debbie Allen parleyed a killer look in the 1980 movie Fame into a featured role on the popular television series, this triple threat has been busting open doors in Hollywood for women of...

Review: ‘Cinderella’ With the San Francisco Ballet at The Kennedy Center

There are no pumpkins to be found in this Cinderella. The San Francisco Ballet’s version, created by Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and librettist Craig Lucas, departs from the Perrault story most...

Magic Time! ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

There comes a scene in Rameau’s Nephew at Spooky Action Theater when Robert Bowen Smith playing He (the titular character) coughs an aria. Literally. Just like an opera singer except without music or...

Review: ‘The Trump Card’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

The Trump Card, an original solo performance by monologist extraordinaire Mike Daisey, is a searing punch in the gut to rival any leaked Access Hollywood tape. The current production, which only runs...

Review: Lindsey Stirling ‘Brave Enough’ Tour at DAR Constitution Hall

Promoting her third studio album Brave Enough in a tour of the same name, Lindsey Stirling has come a long way from her days competing in the fifth season of America’s Got Talent. The violinist, known...

Review: The Romantics III: ‘Schumann & Heine’ at The In series at Source

Close your eyes for just a moment. Imagine that you are comfortably seated in an elegant, yet commodious room, filled with people who have come to share—no, not the latest election scuttlebutt; but...

Magic Time! Mike Daisey on Playing ‘The Trump Card’ in the Turbulence of Trump

You might say The Trump Card keeps getting dealt one new hand after another. Since Mike Daisey’s monologue played to acclaim in August at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Donald Trump’s campaign for...

Review: ‘Opera Magic: Highlights from Eugene Onegin’ at the Russian Chamber Art Society

Weaving together the strands of a full opera in a concert setting has to be one of the biggest challenges around for presenters and audiences. Over the past year the Washington area has seen such...

Review: ‘Beertown’ at dog & pony dc at Thurgood Marshall Center for Service & Heritage

I’d never been to Beertown, though I knew it by reputation as a must-visit burg. Folks had told me of this storied hamlet in the heartland where the local citizenry gather every five years to remember...

Review: ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

An intellectually manic world, propelled by a charming, whimsical disrupter with an abundance of prickly opinions aimed at the cultural elite, awaits audiences at Spooky Action Theater. It is Rameau’s...

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet: All-Balanchine Program at The Kennedy Center

Original works of George Balanchine drift onto The John F. Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower stage by The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Under the direction of Suzanne Farrell, who was once the protégé of George...

Review: ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’ at American University

A funny thing happens on the way out of American University’s fabulous new production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. You find yourself humming along to “Comedy Tonight” or tapping...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Gallaudet University’s Theater and Dance Program

Like a gift that keeps on giving, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream keeps on rekindling. Dreamer after dreamer reconceives it as if anew. And last night that classic spark reignited at Gallaudet...

Review: ’43 1/2: The Greatest Deaths of Shakespeare’s Tragedies’ at the Logan Fringe Arts Space

Five actors, a stage manager, an audience, and a lot of blood. Nu Sass Productions has remounted its 2013 Capital Fringe hit, complete with gags and cornball and puppets. The pace might not be up to...

Arena Stage Holds an Open Reading of Zelda Fichandler’s Words This Sunday, October 23th from 2:00-7:00 p.m. and a Public Memorial Service This Monday, October 24th at 2:00 p.m.

Open reading of her words on Sunday, October 23 from 2:00-7:00 p.m. Public Memorial Service on Monday, October 24 at 2:00 p.m. Arena Stage’s Co-Founder and Founding Artistic Director Zelda Fichandler...

‘Black Diamond’ by Danish Dance Theatre at The Kennedy Center

The choreographic universe Tim Rushton created for his evening-length contemporary ballet Black Diamond is made up of an engaging accretion of enticing, quirky, and oddball moments in movement. The...

A Report on ‘No Word in Guyanese For Me’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

The dual intersections of tradition and the authenticity of the individual, autonomous human being compartmentalize, collide and—then —slowly merge in the Rainbow Theatre Project’s thought-provoking...

Review: Peter Frampton Raw: An Acoustic Tour at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater

It was a packed house for Peter Frampton Raw: An Acoustic Tour last night at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. With excitement in the air, the crowd could not sit still ahead of the show, and...

Review: ‘Witch’ at Convergence Theatre at Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint

Whatever your choice in Hallowe’en fare, Witch—an adaptation of a Jacobean melodrama now having its world premiere at The Mead Theatre Lab—has it all. There’s murder, mayhem, and blood on the...

Review: The Second City’s ‘Unelectable You’ at The Kennedy Center

Billed as “The Second City’s Completely Unbiased Political Revue,” Unelectable You—now in the middle of a four month pre-election national tour—paused in Washington, DC last weekend for a stop at The...

Review: ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat’ at UrbanArias

Oliver Sacks’ non-fiction book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, consists of a series of neurological case studies. Each study examines one of Sacks’ patients, each of whom is suffering from...

Review: ‘Bloody Poetry’ at The Catholic University of America

So far as I can tell, The Catholic University of America’s Drama Department turns out a lot of local talent. I keep seeing mentions of it in program bios around town. Must be something good going on...

Review: ‘Wild Lines: Jane Ira Bloom Plays Emily Dickinson’ at the KC Jazz Club

There is nothing quite like “a vast morsel.” When Jane Ira Bloom plays her soprano saxophone, her wiry body jutting and jagging to the notes popping out of her horn, vastness of her petite frame...

Review: ‘Kiss’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

I go to see live theatre for a lot of reasons. I go to laugh and to be moved, to feel excitement or empathy, to be entertained in a way that just isn’t possible with podcasts or Netflix. I also go...