DC

Review: ‘Use All Available Doors’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Dupont Underground

Sherry (Lady Davonne), a WMATA train driver, starts her day at Shady Grove in Derwood, MD. She has a word with the lead car of her train, “Forty-Twenty”: a soon to be decommissioned vehicle which she...

Magic Time!: Bedroom Talk with Actors Dimitri Gann and Ryan Townsend About ‘Top and Bottom’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

Top and Bottom is a new gay comedy by Kevin Michael West and directed by Christopher Janson. It’s set in a hotel room where James, a wannabe “dom,” has planned an S&M-ish hookup with Tommy, supposedly...

Review: ‘Luzia’ at Cirque du Soleil in Tysons

For a Cirque-head such as myself, anticipation of a new Cirque du Soleil show coming to town kicked in months ago. It had been two long years since Cirque last pitched its Big Top here, with Kurios –...

Review: ‘Border’ by Jane Franklin Dance at Theatre on the Run

Using interviews of real community members wanting to live a full life here in America as her source of inspiration, Jane Franklin and her eponymous dance company have developed an engaging evening...

Preview: The Kennedy Center’s 2018-19 Season Brings Theater Front and Center

We were promised surprises – guest artists and other treats – at the Kennedy Center’s 2018-2019 Theater Season announcement Tuesday in the Center’s cozy Terrace Theater. And, as expected, Kennedy...

Magic Time!: ‘Roz and Ray’ at Theater J

This is an absolutely absorbing medical drama performed with full-on passion by two of DC’s top-tier actors. Susan Rome plays Roz, a hematologist dedicated to her role as healer, and Tom Story plays...

‘Use All Available Doors’: A Conversation with Brittany Alyse Willis and Toni Rae Salmi

Pinky Swear Productions’ latest offering, Use All Available Doors, will open at the Dupont Underground this weekend. The popular DC arts and culture space in a subterranean trolley station is the...

Review: ‘Between the World and Me’ at The Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, Samori, was 15 when his father wrote a book addressed to him, Between the World and Me. Before that book won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, it was a...

Review: ‘Roz and Ray’ at Theater J

Fierce. No word short of that can fairly describe the characters’ commitment to their consuming passions, and the actors’ commitment to their roles, in Theater J’s harrowing production of Karen...

News: Lauren Gunderson’s ‘Natural Shocks’ Reading to Address Gun Violence

WSC Avant Bard will present a reading of Natural Shocks, a new play by Lauren Gunderson, on Monday, April 23, 2018, at 7:30 pm at 1st Stage, 1524 Spring Hill Rd, McLean, VA 22102, as part of a...

Report: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids Perform at the Library of Congress

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 student musicians in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program performed at Library of Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium as a part of a collaboration with the Library....

Review: ‘Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre)’ at American University’s Greenberg Theatre

Though he had a wide stylistic range, in America, Federico García Lorca’s fame as a playwright is mostly limited to his rural tragedy, Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) which was originally staged in...

In the Moment: Nicole Burton, Pipeline Playwright discusses upcoming MetroStage reading

Pipeline Playwrights, the Northern Virginia-based collective of accomplished women playwrights who support productions that explore the variety of women’s experiences, continues its new series of play...

Review: ‘Honey’ by Nameless Theater

“Clutch my pearls!” one audience member remarks toward the end of Nameless Theater’s motel-room drama, Honey, which has at least three throat-clutching twists during its less than 30-minute run time....

Review: Molière’s ‘Don Juan’ by Taffety Punk Theatre Company

There is always a good reason to see Tonya Beckman perform, and she is a superb Don Juan. Her rendition of the famous seducer is beguiling but at the same time horrifying, like watching a particularly...

Review: ‘Florida’ by UrbanArias

In the second production of their 2017-2018 season, UrbanArias brings the world premiere of Florida to the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Based partly on true events, Florida follows the 16-year-old...

Magic Time!: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

“What the fuck was that?” a friend asked me at the opening night reception for this show at Woolly. To which, still reeling, I could only answer, “Yeah, what the fuck?” The cringe-inducing show we had...

Review: ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood [Symphonic Metal Version]’ by Landless Theatre Company

The 1986 Tony Award best musical winner is playing in DC, and it has one different detail from any other production you’ve ever seen before: a symphonic metal score. Created by Landless Theatre...

Review: ‘Paper Dolls’ at Mosaic Theater Company

From start to finish, Paper Dolls is a wildly entertaining and unapologetic dramedy filled with biting contradictions, provocative imagery, and endearing characters that you can’t help but root for....

Review: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

How can you unpack a show with as many racial, sexual, and historical bombshells as Underground Railroad Game? The conceit of the play (2017 Obie Award Winner, Best New American Theatre Work) is an...

Review: ‘Two Trains Running’ at Arena Stage

There’s simplicity in truth. Arena Stage’s Two Trains Running is August Wilson’s simple truth about the African American experience during the 1960s urban renewal of inner-city Pittsburgh. But simple...

Review: ‘The Improvised Shakespeare Company’ at The Kennedy Center

The Improvised Shakespeare Company is a show that has been performed to sold out, jam-packed houses in its Chicago hometown since 2005, and in New York City, L.A., San Francisco, Montreal and more...

Magic Time!: ‘Paper Dolls’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Paper Dolls has such an open heart and such largesse of spirit that you might well leave the theater verklempt with hope. The play with songs by Philip Himberg, directed by Mark Brokaw, tells an...

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

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant...

Review: ‘Potted Potter’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Potted Potter, Potted Productions’ rollicking parody of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, is full of toy snakes, terrible wigs, and boatloads of physical comedy. The audience plays Quidditch. The...

Interview with Matt Torney, director of ‘Translations’ at Studio Theatre

It’s no coincidence that Matt Torney is directing Translations, the iconic Brian Friel play now on view at Studio Theatre. “It’s a play I’ve wanted to do ever since I first saw it in Belfast, when I...

Review: ‘The Pavilion’ at The Hub Theatre

Aching and raw, sweet and lamenting, Hub Theatre’s production of The Pavilion is a master class of three DC-area actors in command of playwright Craig Wright’s lyrical, melodic language about love,...

Review: ‘Migratory Tales’ at GWU Corcoran School of the Arts & Design

The inspiration for Migratory Tales comes from multiple sources, according to the play’s creator and director, Leslie Jacobson. Our current and painfully divisive debate on immigration was foremost...

Review: ‘Works by Balanchine, Martins, and Peck’ by New York City Ballet

In this era of #MeToo, a review of the New York City Ballet can’t begin without noting the allegations of abuse against now-retired Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins. Late last year, the company...

Review: ‘410 [Gone]’ at Rorschach Theatre

A young Chinese-American woman identified in the playbill as “Twenty-one” but named Jamie (Linda Bard) is attempting to use her MacBook to contact her dead younger brother through a video chat app....

Review: ‘The Wiz’ at Ford’s Theatre

Ford Theatre’s The Wiz, the Tony-Award-winning musical based on L. Frank Baum’s novel, will leave you enthralled, amazed, and bedazzled. The show is a cornucopia of colors, dancing, singing, sizzle,...

Review: ‘Translations’ at Studio Theatre

Studio Theatre’s take on Translations by Brian Friel (1929-2015) is one crackling fine production. It begins as an intellectually stimulating comedy, then ultimately turns tragic after weaving through...

Review: ‘Alabama Story’ by the Washington Stage Guild

“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” – James Baldwin Southern humor, gentle charm, and the awkward silences of discussions...

In the Moment: Interview with Grace Gonglewski, Folger’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’

For this writer, Grace Gonglewski as Paulina in the Folger Theatre production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is one rock solid, indispensable presence. As the bravest truth-teller in The Bard’s...

Review: ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ by the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music

W.A. Mozart’s opera, Le nozze di Figaro, came to life last night in the Hartke Theatre. Based on Beaumarchais’s scandalous and once-banned play, it depicts intrigue, class conflict, and domestic...

Review: ‘Love in the Time of Coloring’ at Trinadad Theater

Review by Betsy Lizotte Heather Frank’s solo cabaret of witty observations about the state of social interactions in a perplexing, high-tech world, combined with songs that she personally selected...

Review: Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ by The National Symphony Orchestra

A nominally ecclesiastical work written by an essentially non-religious man, the Verdi Requiem has come, in the nearly century and a half since its completion, to be beloved by church-goers and...

Review: ‘Layla and Majnun’ by the Mark Morris Dance Group with the Silkroad Ensemble

A tapestry of poetry, chant, music, and dance drawn from a swath of the ancient Silk Road has provided vivid inspiration for influential choreographer Mark Morris. His re-envisioning of Layla and...

Review: ‘In the Heights’ at The Kennedy Center

Celebrating 10 years since taking Broadway by storm with its exploration of New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood, In the Heights, directed by Stephanie Klemons, takes the stage at The...

Review: ‘The Beckett Trio’ at Scena Theatre

Nanna Ingvarsson is so phenomenal in these three harrowing short plays by Samuel Beckett that one can easily imagine the Nobel Prize-winning minimalist—notoriously persnickety about his stage...

In the Moment: Interview with Andrew Baughman, Landless Theatre’ ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood [Symphonic Metal Version]’

Moving into its 18th year of producing exciting and accessible alternative theater to cultivate new and diverse audiences, the Landless Theatre will present the world premiere of The Mystery of Edwin...

Review: ‘The Winter’s Tale’ at Folger Theatre

One would not expect a tale full of heartbreak, betrayal, abandonment, and death to be a comedy. But that is exactly what Folger Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is....

Magic Time!: ‘Nat Turner in Jerusalem’ at Forum Theatre

By coincidence, Nat Turner in Jerusalem opened at Forum Theatre the day that The Raid closed at Theater Alliance. The two plays seen in succession are powerfully connected. Idris Goodwin’s The Raid...

John Kadlecik on the Living, the Dead, and the Beauty of Improvisation

While American folk band the Grateful Dead officially disbanded shortly after the death of frontman Jerry Garcia in 1995, the Dead has lived on in numerous “post-Jerry” incarnations. Few people have...

Review: ‘Chicago’ at The Keegan Theatre

With its snappy-saucy take on Chicago, The Keegan Theatre shows it knows how to give an audience the ol’ razzle-dazzle. And Keegan has done the durable musical proud. In fact in Keegan’s mounting of...

Review: ‘A Burial Place’ at The Wheel Theatre

If you’re looking for proof that big things come in small packages, then you need look no further than the tiny black box theater where A Burial Place, produced by the Wheel Theatre Company at the DC...

Review: ‘Anthracite Fields’ at The Kennedy Center

It was a haunting, atmospheric triumph. It was an urgent, yet respectfully accomplished multimedia exploration of American cultural issues rarely presented on DC stages about the unknown laborers in...

Review: ‘Breathe: The Musical’ at THEARC

Breathe is a brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed gospel musical that celebrates black resilience even as it revisits the traumas endured by the black family in a nation built on slavery. At...

Review: ‘KC Jazz Club: Myra Melford with Snowy Egret’ at The Kennedy Center

Myra Melford’s avant garde approach to music is filled with moments of intensity and light. Melford’s career is an illustrious one, with a Fulbright scholarship, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, and an...

Review: ‘Mason Bates’s KC Jukebox: California Mystics’ at The Kennedy Center

The Kennedy Center for The Performing Arts Atrium was transformed into a bohemian, Bedouin-style venue, where pillows for seating were splayed across the floor and the audience was lulled into an...