DC

Nibbles and Sips Around Town: Ashlar at the Morrison House ~ The Return of The Majestic ~ True Food in the Mosaic District ~ Author Luncheons at the Hay Adams ~ Edible Flowers Decorate the Plate

Swank Modern Interior and New Chef Dazzle at the Morrison House At long last the Morrison House the elegant boutique hotel in Old Town, Alexandria has shed its dowdy decor to feature a snazzy redo by...

Review: ‘Women Beware Women’ at 4615 Theatre Company

Most of us know how William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet ends. Romeo, thinking his precious Juliet dead, drinks from a vial of poison. When Juliet awakens, she sees Romeo dead and stabs herself....

Co-Founder and the First Artistic Director of Arena Stage Zelda Fichandler Passes Away at Age 91

We received this sad news from Arena Stage. A pillar of our theater community has passed away. We send our condolences to the Arena Stage family and to Zelda’s family. And thank you Zelda for being...

Sarah Doreen MacPhee on Playing Brenda Strong in ‘Catch Me If You Can’ at Montgomery College’s Summer Dinner Theatre

Sarah Doreen MacPhee tells us about playing Brenda Strong, who falls in love with a con artist in Montgomery College Summer Dinner Theatre’s Catch Me If You Can. Joel: Please introduce yourself and...

Review #2: ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at The Kennedy Center

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of...

Review #1: ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at The Kennedy Center

The appropriately psychologically penetrating and vivid production of The Merchant of Venice (now playing at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater) embraces all the conundrums of William...

Review: ‘Blue God’ by Timeless Entertainment at THEARC

Blue God Examines Faith and Trust at DC’s THEARC Last Sunday afternoon, THEARC in DC was a flurry of festivities, including at its center the play, Blue God, by Marshawn Metters. The one performance...

‘Review: Love’s Labours Lost’ at 4615 Theatre Company

With the savvy direction of Anne Donnelly and the industrious labors of 4615 Theatre Company, the 400 year-old Shakespearean comedy, Love’s Labours Lost has taken a fruitful leap into the 21st...

The 2016 Capital Fringe Audience Awards and New Community Awards Announced/List of EXTENSION Shows

The 2016 Capital Fringe Audience Awards and new Community Awards were announced tonight, Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 8 pm on the Trinidad Stage at the Logan Fringe Arts Space. Here are the honorees: Best...

Review: ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at The Kennedy Center Opera House

In fact, a perfect opera! Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera dazzled the Kennedy Center’s Opera House this Friday, bringing the beloved and longest running Broadway musical to the delight...

Review: ’99 – A Rock Opera’ by DC Dogs

Musical theater and the country could use a good renegade rock musical inspired by the Occupy Movement. The demonstrations that spread across America spurred by Occupy Wall Street shared a kindred...

Review: ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at Theatre Lab

The story of Jesus Christ and his Apostles is a tale as old as time, all having different meanings to each religion. The story of Jesus Christ and his Apostles is a tale as old as time, all having...

All 113 Capital Fringe Shows Are Now Reviewed on DCMetroTheaterArts

It’s the final weekend of this year’s Capital Fringe Festival and I urge you to attend some of this year’s offerings. DCMetroTheaterArts has reviewed all the shows in this year’s Capital Fringe...

2016 Capital Fringe Review ‘Act Like a Grrrl!’

Act Like a Grrrl! by the Actors Bridge Ensemble opened at the Martin Luther King Library this Thursday. More paratheatre than straight performance, this rendition of Act Like a Grrrl! represents the...

Review: ‘Riches’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Act 3 of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) is entitled, “Exorcism” and, indeed, the infamous Martha and George exorcise their demons, as well as the demons of academia everywhere....

Theatre Lab Students Ben Cherington and Jack Posey Take ‘Superstar’ Turn in Summer Teen Institute Production This Weekend

Theatre Lab Students Take ‘Superstar’ Turn in Summer Teen Institute Production Ben Cherington and Jack Posey are both veterans of The Theatre Lab’s summer Musical Theatre Institute for Teens...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘, she took me back so tenderly’

It’s not often that you attend a funeral for someone you never knew. Yet, for some patrons, that will be their experience of , she took me back so tenderly, from banished? productions. Billed as a...

Spine: ‘We Know How You Die’ and an Oracular Upright Citizens Brigade

We Know How You Die, the Upright Citizens Brigade’s improvised, audience participation exploration of the Oracle, its predictive methodology, and its impact on the American political—STOP! You will...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Underneath the Lintel’

Pat O’Brien’s solo performance in Underneath the Lintel has been captivating US and Canadian Fringe audiences for eight years now, and it’s not hard to see why. Seeing O’Brien—a longtime star of...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Whisper Into My Good Ear’

The scene is deceptively simple. It’s winter. Two old men—one shivering in a sweater, the other swaddled in layers of coats and hats—are sitting on a park bench, contemplating the emptiness of what’s...

Review: ‘We Know How You Die!’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

I sure laughed a lot at the show I saw the other night at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Gut-busting funny, it was. And I’d highly recommend you catch it…except it was made up on the spot, never to be seen...

Review: ‘Miss Cuarenta’ Starring Paula Arcila at GALA Hispanic Theatre

GALA Hispanic Theatre—home of the National Center for Latino Performing Arts—kicked off its 41st season this weekend with the DC premiere of Miss Cuarenta. The dazzling solo performance—written and...

Review: ‘Yellowman’ at The Anacostia Playhouse

I first saw Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman at the Manhattan Theater Club in 2002, with Orlandersmith herself in the role of the dark-skinned Alma and Howard W. Overshown as the light-skinned Eugene....

In the Moment: ‘Kitchen Sink Fest’ at Dance Place: Part 2: 7 Dancers on Their 1 Minute Pieces

Hungry for inventive choreography? Up for a summer’s night adventure with performance that is unconventional and live? Hungry for inventive dance and movement? Desire a way to escape the summer’s heat...

Magic Time! The Studio Theatre’s ‘Hand to God’: A Puppet Chat

So this strange thing happened. I was sitting at a table in a church basement that happened to be on the fourth floor of The Studio Theatre, and I was waiting to see a show called Hand to God. And...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Adolescence 2.0’

Dixie Lee Mills takes the stage at the extremely tight quarters of upstairs at The Argonaut Tavern on H Street NE. The first words that come out of her mouth: “So I was at my yearly check up….” and...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Human Algorithm’

She’s been described as a stand-up comic, a multilingual humorist, a playwright and a director. But mostly CJ, as she likes to be called, is a master storyteller whose ability to laugh at herself—and...

Capital Fringe Review: ‘Fat Kids are Harder to Kidnap’

If you’ve seen Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind—the innovative devised theater work by Chicago-based company Neo-Futurists—then in a significant way you have already seen Fat Kids are Harder to...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Seven Windows’

In keeping with the theme of several shows in this year’s festival, Philadelphia-based SHARP Dance Company’s Seven Windows is another piece focusing on the power of dreams, death, and reincarnation....

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Dial R for Robot’

Dial R for Robot is a mash-up of Hitchcock’s film Rope and the film Blade Runner, with some references to Hitchcock’s spy thriller Torn Curtain. The funk-rock opera is an immersive multi-media sci-fi...

“A Textbook Case of Horror: Molotov’s ‘Blood, Sweat & Fears’ Goes Authentically Old School” by Alex Zavistovich

There is much that the average theatre-goer does not know about the Grand Guignol, the French Theatre of Horror that originated in the 1800s and is being revived in Molotov Theatre Group’s Blood,...

Magic Time! ‘Blood, Sweat & Fears: A Grand Guignol Sick Cabaret’

As the local go-to theater company for carrying on the Grand Guignol tradition, Molotov Theatre Group mounts some of the most interesting combos of style and substance in town. There are a few other...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘SpookyMsgPlsFwd!’

If you’re looking for an adult comedy featuring a unicorn, funny dialogue and wicked costumes SpookyMsgPlsFwd! is a show for you! This fast-paced comedy imagines a world 60 years after the election of...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ’22 Boom!’

Think commissioned plays are a thing of the Elizabethan past? Nu Sass Productions’ 22 Boom! is concierge theater at its nimblest. Written by Miranda Rose Hall and directed by Renana Fox, this...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘TARGET GOLDBERG (HELP! ROGUE GOVERNMENT AGENTS ARE TRYING TO FRAME ME!)’

A “show” was presented by one “David J. Goldberg”, purporting be a “theater piece” about a secret cabal of heartless corporations/rogue government agents/reptilized Masons who aim to incite fear in...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Yes, And’

‘Yes, And’ explores the history of improv Yes, And… directed by Jeff Quintana and expertly written and acted by Playwright Zack Myers is a quirky bit of work that questions the nature of improv comedy...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Jamie and Duncan’s Glorious Suicide at the End of the World’

How do you survive the apocalypse? You don’t, obviously, but before the apocalypse can get you, you might as well go out the way you want. The only problem is trying to figure out what a fitting way...

2016 Capital Fringe ‘Elephant in the Room’

There is an ancient Indian story that tells the tale of blind men unknowingly encountering an elephant. Based on which part of the elephant they touch, each man proposes that the animal is something...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Trial of Mrs. Surratt’

The world of 1865 Washington, DC is living and breathing in The Wandering Theatre Company’s production of The Trial of Mrs. Surratt. Lanie Robertson’s script explores the events surrounding the...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘How to Give Birth to a Rabbit’

In this season of our discontent, How to Give Birth to a Rabbit reminds us that bizarre hoaxes and media frenzies are hardly 21st-century inventions. In fact, one of Western history’s more ludicrous...

Updated July 12, 2016: On Parenting and a Play: Director Shirley Serotsky Talks About ‘Another Way Home’ at Theater J

I have admired Shirley Serotsky’s work as a director on such shows as Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy at Theater J in 2014 and Rapture, Blister, Burn at Round House Theatre in 2015. Shirley also serves as...

Review: ‘Hand to God’ at The Studio Theatre

Hand to God at Studio is truly outlandish; a joyfully “blasphemous” production just as The Studio Theatre marketing material shouts out in a bold headline. With immersion staging in its intimate...

Review: ‘Blood, Sweat, & Fears: A Grand Guignol Sick Cabaret’ at Molotov Theatre Group

Critics do our best to stay rational and objective, to reflect on the goals and execution of a given piece of theatre, and thus evaluate the work on its own terms, with as little of our personal...

In the Moment: ‘Kitchen Sink Fest’ at Dance Place Part 1: An Interview with Ben Levine

This summer’s Kitchen Sink Fest at Dance Place is showcasing a curated, meant-to-provoke on-lookers, dance and theater technical design elements collaboration. From Kitchen Sink Fest producer Ben...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Timon 2016’

If Shakespeare is your bag, Timon 2016 will be just what you are looking for, but with a modern air. Directed and adapted by Katie Wanshura, this play is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Timon...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The House of Yes’

Think about your worst family Thanksgiving ever, then amp up its bizarre agonies a thousand fold. Even then, you will not come close to the dysfunction displayed by the Pascal family of McLean,...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ’35mm: A Musical Exhibition’

The idea of matching music to photographs is not new, but in 35mm—now having its DC premiere at the Atlas Performing Arts Center as part of this year’s Capital Fringe—the approach gets an energetic...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Ten Principles )'(‘

Ten Principles )’( is storytelling in its purest form: friends getting together to talk about their favorite adventures. Ten Principles is simple at its core. Get people who have experienced the...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Root of All Knowledge’

The Root of All Knowledge, written by Gabriel Hudson and directed, choreographed, and composed by Justin Jarod Bell, is an interesting mixture of existentialism and hope. It uses bodies to present a...

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Midsummer’s Burlesque Dream’

Burlesque Classique’s mission is to reclaim the meaning of burlesque, not as something sleazy and demoralizing as many people assume, but as an energetic and titillating exaggeration of a story. Their...