Washington DC

The (in)discreet charm of Daniel Kitson’s ‘Keep’ at Studio Theatre

Stand-up comedian and monologist extraordinaire Daniel Kitson enjoys a devout following in the UK and in Australia. He first made his reputation at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he won a...

‘Brides and Mothers’ and ‘Cox and Box’ at The Forgotten Opera Company: Two dazzling flashes of operetta

A double feature, running just two performances at The Forgotten Opera Company, a subset of The Victorian Lyric Opera Company in Rockville? Sure, why not? The world debut of Brides and Mothers, Music...

Giving back to Tia Shearer Bassett

We were saddened to learn this week that Tia Shearer Bassett, a valued member of the DC theater community and a bright shining light of a human, has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Tia and...

1st Stage launches free Youth Engagement Subscription (YES) pass for Fairfax County high school students

Now in its 12th season, the professional 1st Stage Theatre located in Tysons, Virginia, serves as a cultural hub for the community. Beyond producing award-winning theatrical productions, 1st Stage...

John Leguizamo takes audiences to school in ‘Latin History for Morons’ at the National Theatre

John Leguizamo is a famously Latino, American, Tony and Emmy Award-winning comedian, known for numerous roles that defy pigeonholing on the character-genre spectrum. Yet despite the vast range of...

BSO performs US premiere of Lera Auerbach’s ‘Eve’s Lament – O Flowers, That Never Will Grow’ this week in Baltimore and Bethesda

Now that this summer’s drama surrounding the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s financial woes has quieted, at least for now, we can focus on the significant contributions our home state orchestra and its...

Reflections on a terrifying role: Susan Rome talks about ‘becoming’ Louise Nevelson in Edward Albee’s ‘Occupant’ at Theater J

When Susan Rome bats her eyelashes—as she often does in Edward Albee’s Occupant, now at Theater J—she becomes Louise Nevelson, the iconic sculptor whose life and work were inseparable. The lashes,...

Priyanka Shetty’s one-woman ‘The Elephant in the Room’ comes to The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage

Called by critics “incisive,” “timely,” and “brave,” Priyanka Shetty’s one-woman show The Elephant in the Room performs Saturday, November 23, 2019, at 6 pm on the Millennium Stage at The Kennedy...

The bad romance at the heart of Studio Theatre’s ‘White Pearl’

Anchuli Felicia King’s White Pearl is a hilarious, fast-paced satire set in the Singapore office of a cosmetics startup called Clearday that sells skin-whitening cream to Asian women. As the play...

‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ at Adventure Theatre is charming holiday fare

We all want to feel loved, right? And there are times we feel forgotten. Unseen. Disposable. The classic children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit is a sentimental reminder that a child’s love can turn...

Washington Stage Guild delivers skillful production of Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’

Like many of Charles Dickens’s sprawling novels, Hard Times chronicles the lives and times of multiple characters dwelling in England’s mid-19th-century industrial chaos. But unlike the elaborate...

Virginia Opera’s ‘Il Postino’: no “scary modern music” here

Virginia Opera’s artistic director Adam Turner, in his program note for contemporary composer Daniel Catán’s Il Postino, hastens to assure audiences that the company is working to dispel myths about...

Mark Morris Dance Group boldly re-imagines ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in ‘Pepperland’ at the Kennedy Center

Mark Morris dances are emphatically watchable, easily digestible, eccentric, and smartly witty. He so proficiently pairs music and dance, costume and set – with a cadre of collaborators – that it’s...

Virginia Opera opens “From Screen to Stage” series with ‘Il Postino’ at George Mason University

The sensuality and passion of Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician, Pablo Neruda has become the bones for a contemporary opera, Il Postino by Daniel Catán. Il Postino (The...

Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ entertains from start to finish

Once again, Olney Theatre Center (OTC) has put on a tap-happy show. This time it’s Singin’ in the Rain, where the audience hums the familiar tunes as they ratta-ta-tap back to their cars. That was the...

Disney’s ‘Newsies’ at Arena Stage is the good news DC needs right now

From the moment you enter Arena Stage’s Fichandler Stage, an intimate theater-in-the-round where everyone has a seat close to the action, you’ll be transported to turn-of-the-19th-century New York,...

‘Aladdin’ lights up the skies over Baltimore

On stage, Aladdin starts out as the perfect musical for nine-year-olds. But by the time its two swooning lovers have hopped aboard a flying carpet for a trip to the moon, all moms and dads in the...

Cantus’s ‘Alone Together’ at the Kennedy Center puts form over function

Attending Cantus’s Alone Together at the Kennedy Center made me realize that meaningful interaction relies as much upon solitude and mystery as it does connection and revelation. The vocal octet’s...

Creative Cauldron’s Learning Theater shines a fresh light on ‘The Jungle Book’

Creative Cauldron’s Learning Theater presents its own adaptation of the popular tale, The Jungle Book. Based on Rudyard Kipling’s book of the same name, the show centers around the man-cub, Mowgli,...

The Welders’ Annalisa Dias on ‘HEARTSPACE’ and responding to impending and present climate disasters

The Welders, a self-described artists’ collective, burst upon the DMV theatrical landscape in the summer of 2013 with a mission to establish an evolving, alternative platform for play development and...

Expect the unexpected in Washington Improv Theater’s ‘Life and Death with WIT: Hellcat and iMusical’

Improvisational theater is comprised of different aspects of live performance genres, like stand-up comedy or fully scripted plays. But what defines improv, is how the actors use comments from the...

Artistry, rivalry, madness, and genius in Folger Theatre’s ‘Amadeus’

What a great lively yarn about a musical disruptor as a stand-in for the volcanic eruptions of out-and-out revolution in the air throughout Europe and America. Amadeus at Folger Theatre is a triumph....

A teen of many talents: Ethan Van Slyke of Arena Stage’s ‘Newsies’

Think back to when you were in high school. You went to classes all day and came home and did homework, right? And maybe you took piano lessons once a week or played a sport. Seventeen-year-old Ethan...

21 best bets for holiday entertainment in and around DC!

The winter holidays are a great time to see a live performance, so here is our list of best bets in holiday entertainment in and around DC. Whether you are looking for a show to enjoy with your kids,...

Fun, frenetic ‘RENT’ at The National still satisfies

The 20th Anniversary Tour of RENT touched down at the National Theatre this week, much to the delight of area RENTheads. This modern take on Puccini’s La Boheme, with music, lyrics and book by the...

We Happy Few brings ‘Lovers’ Vows’ into the twenty-first century

Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows, first produced in 1798, is every bit as amusing as the unfortunately named Schitt’s Creek, The Good Place, or any other contemporary comedy. Inchbald, an actress and...

In Edward Albee’s first-rate ‘Occupant’ at Theater J, a gutsy woman sculptor creates herself

“True if interesting” is Louise Nevelson’s byword in Occupant, Edward Albee’s witty and wise bioplay about the famous sculptor. She was quite the character. For Nevelson, in the hagiography according...

Vocal ensemble Cantus explores human connection in the Digital Age with ‘Alone Together’ at the Kennedy Center

“I realized the thing I missed most in my process was people,” American composer Libby Larsen told me recently. She was speaking about her commissioned work YOU, which the vocal ensemble Cantus will...

Studio Theatre’s ‘White Pearl’ tackles globalization and intra-Asian racism with acerbic wit

If you attend Studio Theatre’s current production of the brilliantly acerbic White Pearl and feel in the first ten minutes that you’re not sure you know what’s happening, don’t worry. Playwright...

American Shakespeare Center mines the humor in Shaw’s ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’

The plays of George Bernard Shaw are, to be honest, an acquired taste. Erudite in the extreme, filled with Shaw’s unique sense of his own intellectual superiority—which is expressed with paper-thin...

Signature’s ‘A Chorus Line’ proves musicals can evolve in the right creative hands

“A Chorus Line is still one of those musicals you will sing about to your grandchildren,” wrote theater and dance critic Clive Barnes in his 1975 New York Times review for A Chorus Line. Barnes had an...

‘Last Summer at Bluefish Cove’ is a heart-wrenching glimpse into lesbian lives

Life has never been easy for women who love other women. Last Summer at Bluefish Cove—written by Jane Chambers and widely regarded as the first production to portray lesbians in a positive light—takes...

‘Agnes of God’ at Factory 449 glories in a trinity of divine performances

Following on Factory 449’s electrifying production two years ago of Lela & Co.—which earned Helen Hayes Awards for both its director (Rick Hammerly) and star (Felicia Curry)—the company now presents...

Audience-pleasing revival of ‘Guys and Dolls’ by Kensington Arts Theatre

You promise me this. You promise me that. You promise me anything under the sun… belts out a swell Elizabeth Hester as Miss Adelaide, the cherry on top of a high-energy revival of Frank Loesser’s...

What’s Beneath the ‘Sea’ at Scena Theatre?

“It feels unknown. This is nowhere somehow,” says a character in this intriguingly cryptic poetic play by the acclaimed Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse. Indeed, where are we? And what is going on?...

Stage managers work long hours for rich rewards

Being a stage manager of a theater production brings challenging, yet too often unheralded responsibilities that begin long before an audience steps into a theater to take a seat. As the production...

Exploding the canon: Inside the IN Series opera company’s “radical” practice

Now into his second year leading IN Series, the itinerant company based at the Source Theater, artistic director Timothy Nelson has not been shy about challenging opera’s status quo. “I believe that...

Variations on villainy in the Folger Theatre’s ‘Amadeus’

Villainy takes many forms. And Ian Merrill Peakes – now plotting revenge against a gifted rival in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Amadeus – has played more than a few. His most recent...

‘Blue Camp,’ an affecting play about men surviving enlistment in the Vietnam War

Dispatch from the front. “Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction in the Armed Forces of the United States.” For those in the audience of the Boomer generation, Rainbow Theatre’s Blue Camp...

1st Stage to host musical group All 4 Bass on November 16th

Another unique cabaret evening is arriving at 1st Stage in Tysons. It is a musical performance by the quartet All 4 Bass. The event is entitled Play it LOW…Play it COOL. The All 4 Bass group is a...

Shakespeare Theatre Company renames the Lansburgh Theatre

At its annual Gala, Shakespeare Theatre Company announced to a surprised audience that the Lansburgh Theatre at 450 7th St. NW would be rechristened as the Michael R. Klein Theatre. In addition to the...

Signature Theatre’s “A Chorus Line” is a singular sensation

In the theater world, a performer who is a true triple threat – one with the ability to perform at the highest levels as an actor, singer, and dancer all at the same time – is rare. Luckily, Signature...

A powerhouse ‘Protest’ and a vague ‘Vaněk Unleashed’ from Alliance for New Music-Theatre

In honor of the Czech dissident, political prisoner, and playwright Václav Havel, Alliance for New Music-Theatre has served up a two-course theatrical repast in DC’s most outré new arts venue, Dupont...

“All I had to do was listen”: Playwright Norman Yeung rethinks his ‘Theory’

By Norman Yeung That Theory has gained urgency and relevance since I wrote the first draft in 2009 is uncanny and alarming. Over ten years of innumerable workshops, readings, and productions, the...

‘Flyin’ West’ Soars to the Clarice UMD’s School of Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies

By Kyle Starling The School of Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies (TDPS) and The Clarice at the University of Maryland, College Park will be premiering their main stage production of Flyin’ West by...

‘The Willard Suitcases’ unpacks the re-imagined voices of psychiatric patients at American Shakespeare Center

First, dear reader, a confession—for which I fully expect to be pilloried, drawn and quartered, then maybe burned at the stake: I’m not a huge fan of musicals these days. Yeah, I know, there was a...

Cleopatra rules the stage in American Shakespeare Center’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’

Of all of Shakespeare’s history plays, Antony and Cleopatra is the most complicated and thankless to stage. You’ve got shifting alliances, battles won then lost, and then you’ve got the bizarre...

American Shakespeare Center delivers a fresh take on ‘Julius Caesar’

You know you’re in for a new take on Julius Caesar when the famous Soothsayer (“Beware the Ides of March!”) doesn’t enter upstage right or left, as usual, to make his warning. In Ethan McSweeny’s...

Call for proposals for the 2020-2021 theater season at the Arts Barn

Arts on the Green, the City of Gaithersburg’s home for the performing and visual arts which includes the Kentland’s Mansion and Arts Barn, is now soliciting production proposals for the theater season...

‘Sweat’ at Silver Spring Stage: a precise portrayal of workers caught in a rip tide

I’ve never been to Reading, PA, the location of Lynn Nottage’s searing 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sweat, now playing at Silver Spring Stage, but my life has been bracketed by living in or near...