Washington DC

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘#albatross’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) MOVEIUS Contemporary Ballet, a DC-based company founded in 2010, presents #albatross in this summer’s Capital Fringe Festival, with a program of three works. The decision...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Persephone’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Usually when someone tells you a Fringe show is different every night, it means “improv showcase” or “audience participation.” Sometimes it means “we didn’t really...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Macbeth: The Instruments of Darkness’

When it comes to Fringe, Shakespeare is an ace in the hole. Audiences find it familiar, but they also expect more in the bargain. Rude Mechanicals’ production of Macbeth: Instruments of Darkness is a...

‘Les Misérables’ at Montgomery College Summer Dinner Theatre

One show more! Another theatre another production of the epic musical Les Misérables. It is the summer of revolution and no theatre wishes to be left behind in this magnificent pursuit of the musical...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review ‘As We Are’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) A widowed father in his late 50s lies in bed on a morphine drip, his body rife with cancer. Beside him is his thirty-something gay son, who has traveled to his childhood...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘To The Outside/D.C. al Coda’

I attended In To The Outside/D.C. al Coda last night with my editor. As you may have heard, one of the actors sustained an injury the night before opening night. Playwright and Director John Sowalsky...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review ‘Cross the Line’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Six actors: three men, three women, all in all black—t’s, tanks, slacks, shoes, leggings—sitting, standing, walking upon; bounding, flipping, dancing across a square black...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Blue Moon/Red River’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Jane Franklin Dance is a Virginia based company known for its innovative works and collaborations; Blue Moon/Red River is a prime example of both. Jane Franklin is the...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Lucretia Borgia’

The Small Batch Theater Co. succeeds with modern dance in its unique production of Lucretia Borgia. Back in Renaissance Italy, Lucretia Borgia was always the baddest girl on the block-or so we’ve been...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘This Gonna Be on the Test, Miss?’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) This Gonna Be on the Test, Miss? is written and performed powerfully and hilariously by Ronna J Levy and directed by Kel Haney. Originally conceived in Matt Hoverman’s Go...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘In To The Outside/D.C. al Coda’ #1

This review must start off as my show experience started off…with an apology… The writer/director John Sowalsky walked onto the stage tonight and announced that yesterday one of the two actresses...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘That Kind of Girl’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) “It takes a long time to write words about my body that taste good on my tongue,” espouses Natalie Piegari, one of the many talented women who created That Kind of Girl....

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘A Fire in Water’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Sparse but beautiful, Silver Finch Art Collective’s a fire in water is a modern opera with an ancient theme – the impact of war particularly on loved ones, lost or left...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Walken In His Shoes’

Christopher Walken (for those who live under a rock) is a prolific American performer of stage and screen. He won an Oscar playing Russian Roulette with Robert Di Niro in 1978’s The Deer Hunter, and...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘The Tournament’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) What do you gather a team of actors who also happen to be some of the best fight choreographers in DC, and pair them with a writer that loves campy, silly jokes and 80’s...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Stone Tape Party’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Even before the show starts, Stone Tape Party, written by Danny Rovin and directed by Angela Pirko, immerses the audience in the vivacity that is the house where the party...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘À Demain’

Brendan O’Connell creates a memoir after the death of his friend. It’s a surprisingly funny show that nevertheless perfectly captures the permanence of grief. As he says at one point, “There is no day...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘The Road to High Street’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Juggling fire, riding a unicycle, living in a beer tank and eating raw eggs—these are just a few of the stops on The Road to High Street. Andrew Potter’s solo performance...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Capt. Tickle Britches’

In the words of the Captain himself, “Here at the Captain Tickle Britches Show, we set the bar low. Real Low.” This sort of sums up the type of humor and atmosphere you should expect when you walk...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Love Song To Miss Kitty’

With their tight jeans, high heeled boots, and well endowed means of transport, cowboys have always been pretty gay. But the homo western vibe is taken to new and outrageous heights in LaGoDi’s...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Everything I Do’

Everything I Do is a musical, loosely adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman by playwright and composer John Becker. Just as the tagline in the promos for the show say, “You’ve never seen...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Hey, Hey, LBJ!’

The unfolding story of one combat correspondent and his changing views on the Vietnam War, David Kleinberg’s solo performance Hey, Hey, LBJ! spans three decades and two continents. Hey, Hey, LBJ is an...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Antigone’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Fringe is well known for exposing audiences to exciting new works, but the festival can be equally exciting when it presents a fresh take on a theatre classic. Such was...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Perfect Liars Club’

P.T. Barnum was right. There’s a sucker born every minute, and Perfect Liars Club is out to prove it. In 90 minutes of fun-filled storytelling and audience participation, the Perfect Liars Club’s...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Dream Within a Dream’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) While I was in London a couple months ago, I attended a Punchdrunk Theatre Company production, and the play was like nothing I had seen before. Punchdrunk’s most defining...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Song of Myself: The Whitman Project’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Robert Michael Oliver is a tour-de-force in his one-man show It’s got to be tough to do a solo show, opening night at 9 p.m. on a sultry summer night, but remarkable,...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Olizzia’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) First-time playwright John Bavoso’s inventive and appealing script for Olizzia would make a terrific indie rom-com caper that would be a hit on the lesbian-and-gay film...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Rock Bottom [A Rock Opus]’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) If one way to tell whether a rock musical is really good is that it makes you want to come back and see it again, The Landless Theatre Company’s Rock Bottom [A Rock Opus]...

‘Rodney King’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

“Can we all get along? Can we all get along?” is the urgent, impassioned five word plea that became a cultural touchstone for the nation twenty-two years ago. The 1991 videotaped brutality of 25 year...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘The Hello Girls: Unknown Heroines of WWI’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Ellouise Schoettler enlightens us in her one-woman show. US history provided little to inform us about the role of women in “The Great War.” However, Ellouise Schoettler...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Coosje’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Every now and then CapFringe makes a divine pairing of venue and production. Such is the case with No. 11 Productions’ Coosje at the Goethe Institut, where the art house...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Chesapeake’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Chesapeake by Lee Blessing – A One-Man – Er, Dog – Show! Chesapeake by Lee Blessing opened last night in the intimate Bedroom, in a 110-minute, single-act, star turn...

Tom Goss at Signature Theatre’s Sizzlin’ Summer Nights Series

From the first downbeat of his powerhouse opening song, “It Only Takes One” off of his fourth album Wait, Tom Goss delivered a powerhouse performance to the very last note on Thursday night at...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Dream Love’

(Best of the Capital Fringe) Ryan Tumulty’s devised movement piece Dream Love is a surreal combination of dance and theater, switching back and forth from scene to choreography to illustrate the story...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Interrogation’

(Best of the Fringe!) In his play Interrogation, John Feffer, a foreign policy analyst who writes widely on privacy issues, pokes gentle fun at U.S. intelligence agencies as if to say, “I love my...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Four Dogs and a Bone’

(Best of the Fringe!) Welcome to the savage world of moviemaking where success-hungry humans, snarl and growl at each other like dogs fighting for a bone. Welcome to Hollywood, as experienced...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: “C-“

(Best of the Fringe!) C-, a SPNP Tech production is a one-man play featuring writer and director Eric Jaffe. The performance, based on Jaffe’s interviews of his former hard-partying fraternity...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘The Program Assistant’

(Best of the Fringe!) Fringe favorite John Krizel is at it again with his new show The Program Assistant, which he wrote, directed, and produced. It is a polished, fast-paced, painfully funny comedy...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘Tomorrow’s Dawn’

(Best of the Fringe!) What would you get if you crossed a French High School Musical with some of the characters from The Breakfast Club? You’d get Tomorrow’s Dawn, a bright, original musical in...

Capital Fringe 2014 Review: ‘The Old Man Never Let It Go’

(Best of the Fringe!) If Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea strikes you as an interesting choice of subject for a movement theatre piece, you are where I was prior to seeing The Old Man Never...

The Playwright’s Playground: ‘The Playmakers – CATF 2014: Interview With Ed Herendeen & Peggy McKowen Who Preview The Season

This Special Edition of The Playwright’s Playground introduces The Playmaker Series: CATF 2014. In a series of in-depth conversations, I speak with the artistic teams associated with the the plays at...

Magic Time! ‘Rodney King’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

If ever there was an Inadvertent American Hero, it’s Rodney King, the black construction worker whose brutal beating in 1991 by white cops in LA, caught on videotape, appalled the world, indicted a...

Capital Fringe Preview 2014: ‘La Llorona’- An interview with Playwright Amanda Zeitler

Thee Candidates Graduate Theatre Company presents a production of Amanda Zeitler’s La Llorona in this year’s Capital Fringe festival. The play recently won the Wichita State University National...

Capital Fringe 2014 Preview: ‘The Matty Matthews Foundation’ by John McGrath

Matty Matthews Wants Young People to Learn His Cash’n Carry Politics The Matty Matthews Foundation is allegorical, historical, funny, and disturbing. Before Citizens United, before the Koch Brothers,...

Capital Fringe 2014 Preview: ‘Medea’s Got Some Issues’ by Joanna Castle Miller

Medea’s Got Some Issues – the Funniest Tragedy of the Summer The first time I saw Lisa Hodsoll read the role of Medea in Medea’s Got Some Issues, it was to a packed house at the Former Residence of...

Capital Fringe 2014 Show Preview: ‘Size Doesn’t Matter: 7 Shorts By DC Playwrights’ by Nan Kyle Ficca

For the seventh consecutive summer, Fully Charged Productions gleefully romps at Capital Fringe in Size Doesn’t Matter — 7 Shorts by DC Playwrights In this incarnation, Fully Charged revels in a...

Capital Fringe 2014 Preview: ‘Not Every Card’ by Emmanuel S. Wazar

THE GAME Having the distinct pleasure of sharing the company of the most distinguished Sebastian Martin over the years in leisurely moments as he dutifully tended to his garden, from time to time, a...

Cinema Speak with Sydney-Chanele: ‘Unscripted and Improvised – Roger Guenveur Smith, Discusses Making Movies & His Unparalleled Collaboration with Spike Lee’

Roger Guenveur Smith is a writer, director, and one of those enigmatic actors whose work continues to illuminate the international stage and screen. This classically trained Yale School of Drama...

Capital Fringe 2014 Show Preview: ‘Mandarin Orange’ by Hunter Styles

Mandarin Orange is written and performed by Kate Robards. Uprooted from country life in Orange, Texas, Kate finds herself at the center of Shanghai, China’s largest city. Now, with humor and wit, she...

Capital Fringe 2014 Preview: ‘Balloon Plays’ by Babel Theatre

Sometimes a Fringe show is like a recipe: it’s all about starting with the right ingredients. In the case of Balloon Plays, we started with a whole mess of balloons, added three clowns, and finished...