Virginia

Review: ‘Assassins’ at NextStop Theatre Company

NextStop opened their production of Assassins over the weekend and (all the cheesy pun intended) absolutely killed it. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, the musical...

In the Moment: ‘ReDiscovery Series’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

It was a festive, most satisfying evening of high-end arts entertainment and education. And it was totally free. What was it? It was a recent Monday evening at The Lansburgh with the Shakespeare...

Review: ‘On Golden Pond’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Ernest Thompson’s On Golden Pond, directed by Sherri L. Edelen. Joyce Dewitt from ABC’s hit comedy Three’s Company and the renowned Joe Inscoe star as...

Review: Gin Dance Company’s ‘Dance, Champagne and Chocolate with Gin’ at the BalletNova Center for Dance

Gin Dance Company’s Dance, Champagne and Chocolate with Gin program felt a little bit like flicking between emoticons: determined, eyebrows scrunched emoji? Hmm, aloof? What about giggling emoji?...

Review: ‘Hello, My Name Is…’ at The Welders

Challenging theatrical conventions, Hello, My Name Is… by Deb Sivigny, directed by Randy Baker, and produced by The Welders is like no other theater production I have taken in, in recent memory. The...

Review: ‘The Adventures of Peter Pan’ at Synetic Theater

I have to admit something: this was my first Synetic Theater production. I assure you, however, it will not be my last. I had read about Synetic’s wordless Shakespeare shows and heard rapturous...

Review: ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ at The Prince William Little Theatre

The markings on my forearm, imprinted when I entered the theater, remain, labeling me. At the end of the play, when I am leaving through the hall behind the theater, I witness a large pile of worn,...

Review: ‘DEMO’ at Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

No curtain opened on the black and white picture of Jerome Robbins, smiling, in a sweatshirt, a hand on his forehead and another on the chest of one of his two dogs. There was no boundary unrolled, no...

In the Moment: Interview with Lighting Designer Andrew F. Griffin

Folger’s production of Antony and Cleopatra directed by Robert Richmond has garnered its rightful share of critical acclaim. Its lighting design is a critical component of the production’s striking...

Dangereuse: ‘Emilie’ by Lauren Gunderson at WSC Avant Bard

Emilie Our Contemporary Emilie du Châtelet, scientist, mathematician, lover of Voltaire, genius, is a perfect example of the power of women in the 18th century and today. Many of the challenges to...

In the Moment: ‘Jazz4Justice’ at Center for the Arts

Hardy, inspiring community engagement is vital for the continuing health of the performing arts. That is a given. With challenging times for arts funding; the changes in the acceptance of the...

Review: ‘Pippin’ at The Arlington Players

The Arlington Players are entering the last weekend of their production of Pippin, a show that promises magic and fantastic feats, with book by Roger Hirson and music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz....

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at Port City Playhouse

An actor of illustrious talent shone bright recently on the D.C. area stage of Port City Playhouse. Rebekah Raze, in a performance that progressed from great to astounding, not only enthralled her...

In the Moment: ‘Are you now or have you ever been…’ at MetroStage

As I took in, with a notably racially diverse audience, MetroStage’s top-notch, tense, musically revealing production, Are you now or have you ever been…, so many questions challenged me. The...

Movie Review: ‘The Florida Project’

The Florida Project covers part of a summer in the life of the denizens of motels along US 192, a stretch of highway right around the entrance to one of Walt Disney’s places. It is a world whose...

Review: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been…’ at MetroStage

In the current political zeitgeist, which includes Russian hackers manipulating opinion through Facebook ads, playwright Carlyle Brown’s Are you now, or have you ever been… is germane to the truism...

Review: ‘Lotus’ at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater

Tap dancers are family. As family they gather together, catch up, trade stories, reminisce, honor their forbears and simply, yet profoundly, enjoy each others’ company. Saturday evening’s sold-out...

Review: ‘Drumming with Dishes’ at Arts on the Horizon

My three-year old son and I sat with about forty restless children and their haggard parents in a crowded playroom while we waited for Drumming with Dishes to begin. I was especially nervous, because...

Review: ‘The Mistress Cycle’ at Creative Cauldron

Creative Cauldron presents The Mistress Cycle, with Book and Lyrics by Beth Blatt and Music by Jenny Giering. Matt Conner directs a cast of five women in this ambitious musical that, while an...

In the Moment: ‘The Mistress Cycle’ at Creative Cauldron

Illuminating what has been in the shadows, or usually whispered about, Creative Cauldron has provided a delicately rendered musical about the harsh realities women have faced over the centuries when...

Review: ‘Night Witches’ at Ground Rush Productions

“We all had things we had to let go of,” says the woman flanked by her six sisters-in-arms in Night Witches, directed by Kathleen Anne Hefferon, and created by the seven women who comprise the...

Review: ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ at Providence Players

The play is set in 1953, and the Hays’ once-proud stage careers are fading due to the increasing popularity of television and cinema, and actors who haven’t been paid in a few weeks are quitting the...

Night Witches – A New Play About WWII Soviet Female Fighter Pilots To Workshop at Local Airports and the Hylton Performing Arts Center

Night Witches, a new play following the true story of the first all-female Soviet combat pilots of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, will be performed at The Hylton Performing Arts Center on...

Review: ‘The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt’ at Aldersgate Church Community Theater

Aldersgate Church Community Theater presents the world premiere of local playwright Rich Amada’s The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt, an award-winning historical drama about one of the most famous...

Review: ‘Sense and Sensibility’ at Aquila Theatre at the George Mason University Center for the Arts

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is the story of the two older Dashwood sisters. In a delightful Aquila Theatre production at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts, the two sisters –...

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: Kelli O’Hara Performs at the ARTS by George Benefit at George Mason University

Kelli O’Hara’s concert last night was the culmination of a wonderful evening at George Mason University’s “ARTS by George” benefit. The concert hall at the Center for the Arts was full of an...

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...

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: ‘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: ‘Any Given Monday’ at Dominion Stage

Moral dilemmas feed the dark humor of Bruce Graham’s Any Given Monday, directed by Jennifer Lyman. Marital infidelity, the loyalty of friendship, the eagerness of youth, and the logic of no logic at...

Analysis: Charlottesville Theater Groups Respond to Last Month’s Deadly Rally

On August 11th and 12th, a group of neo-Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists thronged Charlottesville, Virginia. They were there to protest – peacefully, they’d said – the removal of a statue of...

Review: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ at the Little Theatre of Alexandria

It’s rare that a play allows for a more distanced view than that of its cinematic counterpart, but in the case of the Little Theatre of Alexandria’s production of Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry’s...

Review: ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with a book by Lawrence Kasha and David Landay, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and music by Gene de Paul, including new...

Magic Time!: ‘Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train’ at 1st Stage

There are times in the theater when the particulars of a play—its people, place, and poetics—pull you in as only an arresting, well-told story can. But then something even more interesting begins to...

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: ‘Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train’ at 1st Stage

Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, now in production at 1st Stage, opens while the audience is still finding their seats. On a raised platform, in the round, Angel Cruz (Luis Alberto...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Workhouse Arts Center

Everybody loves a winner. The song “Maybe This Time” reminds one of the spark of hope in a new beginning, what it feels like to cross a path and find someone and find a home. How very simple and very...

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...

In the Moment: ‘A Little Night Music’ at Signature Theatre

Opening in 1973, A Little Night Music was part of the muscular turbulence of those well-remembered primal days of rage. Rage that bred inhaled cynicism like a needed eye-opening drug into the arts for...

Review: ‘The Wizard of Hip’ at MetroStage

Yesterday may be far away for some; but a high-spirited comic primer of one male’s vainglorious attempts to be “hip” and his bewilderment at all things relating to women awaits from the exuberant,...

Review: Blondie & Garbage – The Rage and Rapture Tour at Wolf Trap

Despite the torrential downpour Thursday night, Blondie and Garbage devotees came in droves to Wolf Trap, with rain ponchos and umbrellas in hand, to hear two distinctively powerful and iconic...

Review: ‘Legally Blonde’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The Little Theatre of Alexandria (LTA) production of Legally Blonde is a laugh-fest for summer audiences. Gauging from the hoots and cheers of appreciation at the curtain call, this campy musical –...

Review: ‘Anne and Emmett’ at MetroStage

Anne and Emmett, by Janet Langhart Cohen, is a play about an imagined conversation between two figures from history – teenagers, who were the victims of institutional terrorism. MetroStage produced...

Avant Bard Announces 2017-2018 Season

The exhilarating musical The Gospel at Colonus returns, Lauren Gunderson’s fiery genius Emilie makes her DC debut, and Shakespeare’s fantastical The Tempest takes the stage by storm For its 28th...

Review: ‘A Grand Night for Singing’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II have been called the greatest writing partnership of the 20th century. Their work spans from 1943 to 1959 and includes some of the most...

Review: ‘Bonnie & Clyde The Musical’ at Monumental Theatre Company at the Ainslie Arts Center

The history of Bonnie and Clyde is well-known. Lovers, living a life of crime. Since their infamous streak of robberies and murders, which ended with the two being killed in an ambush on May 23, 1934,...

Review: ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ at City of Fairfax Theatre Company

For those who love musical theatre, there is something amazing going on in Fairfax, Virginia this weekend and next, as the City of Fairfax Theatre Company and Truro Anglican Church present Joseph and...

Review: ‘The Mark of Cain’ at Synetic Theater

Fans of Synetic Theater’s music-and movement-based works derived from classic texts will find a surprise twist in the company’s latest offering. Typically, a Synetic extravaganza creates a vivid other...

Review: ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ at McLean Community Players

Oh the years of awkward adolescence. Who doesn’t look back on that time and cringe? No one! Which is why The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is the perfect combination of hilarity and...