DC

Review: ‘Journey to the West’ at Constellation Theatre Company

Mary Zimmerman has mastered the stage adaptation, particularly of the classic tale, freely blending cultural forms and styles with hypnotic brilliance. Her Metamorphoses and Arabian Nights are shining...

Review: ‘The Naked Magic Show’ at Lincoln Theatre

Admittedly, I haven’t been to that many bachelorette parties, and with good reason – Ms. Blozia drinks a little – but the atmosphere at The Naked Magic Show at the Lincoln Theatre on Sunday night felt...

Review: ‘The Electric Baby’ at Rorschach Theatre

At the center of this beautifully ambiguous and hauntingly honest play is a sick infant. The baby is peculiar, perhaps mythically so, in that it glows like the moon. As we enter the theater, the...

In the Moment: ‘William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged)’ at Folger Theatre

The boys from the Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) have been a mainstay in the DC area for decades. They never wear out their welcome whether performing at the Folger, The Kennedy Center or Reston’s...

Review: ‘Cosi Fan Tutte Goes Hollywood’ at The In Series

The confusion all begins with the title. Cosi Fan Tutte — It is of course the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart comic opera, or “opera buff,” that is today considered part of the gold standard of the opera...

Review: ‘Hugo Ball: a Dada puppet AdveNTuRe!!/?1!!?? at Pointless Theatre Company

The whooshing, passionate ride that is Hugo Ball: a Dada puppet AdveNTuRe!!/?1!!?? – an original piece by DC’s perennial enfant terrible, Pointless Theatre Company – masquerades as a simple biography...

Review: ‘William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged)’ at Folger Theatre

Whatever you’re doing, stop now. Run – do not walk; run – to Folger Theatre for the glorious ray of sunshine that is William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged). Created by the Reduced...

Review: Theater Triebewerk’s ‘Moby Dick’ at The Kennedy Center

A big theatrical story created on a small space is no easy matter. For the too-short stay of Moby Dick at the Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, it was accurate what the Kennedy Center staff...

Review: DEMO: Place with Damian Woetzel starring Lil Buck at The Kennedy Center

Damian Woetzel’s DEMO Place starring Lil Buck uses art as a platform to explore geographical locations in the midst of authentic human emotions. A 90-minute jam session of dance, music, and dramatics,...

Review: ‘C.S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre

Believe it or not, this is one terrific piece of theater. It’s a one-man play about an influential, world-class thinker that’s every bit as smart, fascinating, and satisfying as the best such solo...

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at The Catholic University of America’s Drama Department

On Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, CUADrama opens one of the most iconic English-language stories in the canon, Pride and Prejudice. Darcy and Elizabeth get a brand new Pop Art twist in this refreshing...

‘La-Ti-Do Remembers Prince’: On Monday, April 25, 2016 at 7 PM Invites Local Artists to Perform

LA-TI-DO REMEMBERS PRINCE: MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016 @7PM La-Ti-Do DC Cabaret Changes Programming to Provide a Space for Artists to Mourn La-Ti-Do invites the best artists from all over the Washington...

Sarah Lasko is ‘Over the Rainbow’ Coming Home and Playing Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at The National Theatre

You may have seen Sarah Lasko perform on our local DC area stages, but now you can see her in Oz when she returns home to appear as Dorothy on the National Theatre stage in the eye-popping tour of...

‘New Voices Old Muses’ at The Kennedy Center’s KC Jukebox

This year, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts began an innovative concert series called KC Jukebox, curated by The Kennedy Center’s first proclaimed Composer-in-Residence, Mason Bates....

‘Talking Shop and Taking Stock With Ari Roth’ by John Stoltenberg and David Siegel

There was a buzz of high energy as we walked into Ari Roth’s office at the Atlas Performing Arts Center to meet with the Founding Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company of DC. We wanted to talk...

Review: ‘Cloud Nine’ at Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program

Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, which premiered in London in 1979, is rightly considered a landmark play. It’s pivotal for me personally as well, ever since I saw the legendary Tommy Tune production...

‘My Queer Body’ at The Rainbow Theatre Project

Inside the beltway bubble of local theater making, it’s easy to forget how many U.S. citizens are indifferent, if not antipathetic, to live theater. Mainly they express this by voting with their...

“This is Spinal Tap” Tribute: An Interview with Anna Steasya and Phil Lander

I’m a big fan of Christopher Guest, master of the mockumentary, and yet had shamefully never seen the movie that started it all, This is Spinal Tap, until my friends at Black Market Burlesque decided...

Review: ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five thirty in the morning… So begins one of the most powerful works of literature ever written. Chronicle of a Death Foretold was...

In the Moment: ‘The Nether’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

The seeds of Jennifer Haley’s award-winning The Nether now at DC’s Woolly Mammoth and Philly’s InterAct were planted long, long ago. Twenty years ago in fact, The War of Desire and Technology at the...

‘The Long View’: A Look at Motti Lerner’s ‘After the War’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

It’s a lot like Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, when Nora sounded the door-slam heard round the world. A similar shocking noise punctuates the end of Motti Lerner‘s new play, After The War, with the...

Spine: ‘The Nether’ and its Virtual Revolution at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

In the middle of Jennifer Haley’s beautifully poetic The Nether, now playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the detective quotes Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time:” Dark, dark my light, and...

Review: ‘Jersey Boys’ at National Theatre

Jersey Boys, the 2005 Broadway smash hit and preeminent “jukebox musical”, is now bringing its signature blend of tough guy brashness and doo-wop dazzle to the National Theatre for a brief run through...

Review: ‘The Nether’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Imagine a place where you could be anything you ever dreamed of and do anything you desired in total anonymity and without fear of reprisal or consequence. Imagine the retreat you crave, that you...

Review: ‘Drift’ at Howard University

Howard University’s annual spring dance concert, held this weekend at the Ira Aldridge Theater, brings forth emerging artists. In collaboration with The Washington Ballet’s Studio Company, the concert...

Review: Pianist Bruce Levingston Presents ‘Creating An American Citizen’ at Georgetown University

Bruce Levingston, Pianist – True Southern Gentleman and Cosmopolitan Musician On Wednesday, April 6, 2016, a captive audience was treated to a performance by acclaimed pianist Bruce Levingston, in...

Review: Clarinetist Valentin Uryupin at the Phillips Collection

The Music Room at the Phillips Collection is such a distinctive and up-close venue to hear performers that you can forget how momentous the events there can turn out to be. That may well have been the...

Review: ‘All the Way’ at Arena Stage

Lyndon Baines Johnson, popularly known as “LBJ,” was one of our best presidents, and also one of our worst. Truly a study in contrasts, he could evince both strength and weakness at the same time. LBJ...

Theater J Announces its 2016-2017 Season: 1st Chosen by Theater J’s Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr

Theater J, the nation’s largest and most prominent Jewish theater, announces its 2016-2017 season, the first season chosen by new Theater J Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr. This lineup of seven...

Aaron De Jesus on Playing Frankie Valli in ‘Jersey Boys’ at The National Theatre

Aaron De Jesus is wowing audiences on the road with his vocal acrobatics as the legendary Frankie Valli in The National Tour of Jersey Boys. Aaron takes us on his journey of playing the role of a...

Review: ‘After Life’ | ‘Josephine’ by UrbanArias

Say “operatic double bill” and two duos spring to mind, for aficionados and amateurs alike. From the mid-20th century, Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium and The Telephone; from the late-19th century,...

Review: ‘The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord’ at Washington Stage Guild

In the beginning was the Word–In the beginning was Reason–In the beginning was the Spirit. In the beginning was… Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy (he renounced his “Count” status)...

Review: ‘Superman 2050’ at The Kennedy Center’s Family Theater

The Kennedy Center Theatre for Young Audiences is currently presenting an imaginative theatrical experience, Superman 2050, produced by Theater Unspeakable. Founded in 2010 by Marc Frost, Theater...

Mosaic Theater Company of DC Announces its 2016-2017 Season Schedule

“It’s absolutely amazing to talk about a second season for Mosaic and look at the unfolding of expanded horizons. We’re a start-up that started big and with a bang that now moves forward, broadening...

Review: ‘A Little Night Music’ at GWU

A Little Night Music might be classified as a gateway drug to Stephen Sondheim. Whether a fan or a skeptic, once you get a whiff of this vigorous (and tuneful!) exposé on humankind’s mating follies,...

Howard University’s Spring Dance Concert ‘DRIFT’ on April 8 & 9

We close our season through movement with DRIFT~ Spring Dance Concert! This production will surely take you on a journey through time, generations, emotions and movement. Dance Coordinators Royce...

Review: The Kennedy Center and Pro Musica Hebraica Present ‘Wandering Stars: Two Centuries of European Jewish Song’

I left The Kennedy Center Terrace Theater last night walking about in that peaceful sort of glow one gets after an experience of great beauty; a kind of encounter that seems to refocus the world in...

Magic Time! ‘After the War’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

“A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house,” said a certain prophet of Nazareth long ago. Subtract the word “prophet,” swap in...

Review: ‘After the War’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

When you decide to be a dissident artist–think Paul Robeson–you’d better be willing to suffer the consequences. When you challenge a nation’s founding mythology, an emotional backlash is guaranteed....

Review: ‘Dry Bones’ at The Portraits of Faith

Dry Bones is philosophically and emotionally challenging Are there really “no second acts in American lives,” as the great writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote? The stage play Dry Bones tends to...

Review #2: ‘No, No, Nanette’ at American University

A Frothy Revival of No, No, Nanette at American University After a week in which corpses—remembered and actual—have littered just about every stage I’ve visited this week (beginning with Falling Out...

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at The Washington Ballet

Hamlet, a modern, dramatic contemporary ballet based on William Shakespeare’s original, The Tragedie of Hamlet, published in 1603 premieres in The Kennedy Center. An “ongoing dialogue between...

Review: ‘An Evening with Jim Lehrer’ at The Writer’s Center

The Writer’s Center in Bethesda is celebrating its 40th Anniversary this year, and what better way could there be to mark the occasion than a program with the premier journalist, author, and...

Review #1: ‘No, No, Nanette’ at American University

“I want to be happy / But I won’t be happy / Till I make you happy too.” So sings Uncle Jimmy to the show’s titular character. These are also the last lines, sung by the ensemble, of No, No, Nanette,...

In the Moment: ‘Falling Out of Time’ at Theatre J

Writing a column about Theater J’s world premiere of Falling Out of Time is difficult. Based upon the book by David Grossman, about a man’s 20 year-old soldier son who was killed during military...

Nibbles And Sips Around Town Chooses The Lap Of Luxury At The Hay-Adams

There’s something restorative about being coddled and enveloped in the lap of luxury. Doors magically open, dark coffered wood and gleaming marble floors beckon and the soul-soothing hushed tones of a...

Review: ‘Falling Out of Time’ at Theater J

When I attended the reading of Falling Out of Time at the Page-to-Stage Festival last fall, I wondered how on earth this poetic drama—half fairy tale, half allegory–could ever be mounted on a stage....

Magic Time! ‘Falling Out of Time’ at Theater J in Verse

There is so much sorrow in this show Nine fine actors playing nine parents All mourning dead children Searching to see them again Seeking to be with them one more time Speaking words of unspeakable...

Review: ‘Moment’ at The Studio Theatre

Family dramas are not rare; in fact, they are abundant; in fact, they dominate the theatrical landscape. Quality family dramas are rare, however: those that resound beyond their domesticity to signify...

Magic Time! “Moment’ at The Studio Theatre

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” as Leo Tolstoy famously said. Had Tolstoy seen Studio Theatre’s penetrating production of Deirdre Kinahan’s lacerating...