Washington DC

Review: ‘La Paloma at the Wall’ by The In Series

The In Series at GALA Theatre has succeeded in brilliantly breathing life into a treasured zarzuela – a blend of song and dance – which was written in 1894 and originally titled La Verbena de la...

Review: ‘The Viennese Classics’ by the National Chamber Ensemble

By Ross Heath Of the National Chamber Ensemble’s roster of exceptional musicians, three artists, Leonid Sushansky (violin and artistic director), Sean Neidlinger (cello), and Carlos Cesar Rodriguez...

Review: ‘Dead Dog’s Bone: A Birthday Play’ by Nu Sass Productions

There is indeed a dog in this play, aptly named Dog, wryly performed by Karen Lange wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and neck bandana. At the top of Act One, Dog sings a country-westernish song, “[Taking...

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s Pride and Prejudice is an impeccable dance, an elegant minuet from start to finish. Every element works gracefully with every other, producing a pleasing, harmonious...

Review: ‘Spills’ by Who What Where Theater Collective

We are seated on folding chairs in the living room of an actual house where two women and a man in their mid-twenties have agreed to meet up for a three-way. There’s a modest playing area for them and...

Adventure Theatre MTC Announces Departure of Artistic Director Michael J. Bobbitt

Adventure Theatre MTC (ATMTC) today announced that Michael J. Bobbitt, who has served as the organization’s artistic director since 2007, will be stepping down on July 1, 2019. Bobbitt, an...

“The Puppets Help Tell the Story”: World Puppetry Day Interview with ‘Vanity Fair’ Creative Team

In honor of World Puppetry Day celebrated on March 21st, it was time to learn more about the puppetry used in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Vanity Fair, now...

Review: ‘Topdog/Underdog’ by Avant Bard

“Watch me close, watch me now!” As I watched Avant Bard’s production of Topdog/Underdog, I knew that it is a production for the ages. Under the visceral, athletic direction of DeMone Seraphin,...

Review: ‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’ by The Second City at Wolf Trap

By Andy Arnold The Second City: It’s Not You, It’s Me gets laughs. Sort of like the laughs an adult might give a naughty, inappropriate child. The show – a re-envisioning of sketches by the Canadian...

Review: ‘Into the Woods’ at Ford’s Theatre

I have loved Sondheim’s Into the Woods since seeing its original Broadway production. Three decades on, Ford’s Theatre’s current version carries the tradition forward proudly. For anyone unfamiliar...

Photo Feature: The Washington Chorus Celebrates St. Patrick’s Day

The Washington Chorus (TWC) celebrated St. Patrick’s Day 2019 with a concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, followed by its annual Gala dinner at the Watergate Hotel. The concert featured a...

Wolf Pack Theatre Company Has Found a Home

Wolf Pack Theatre Company has found a new home at the Cora B. Woods Center in Brentwood Maryland. After almost five years of being nomads, Wolf Pack Theatre Company will be moving into the Cora B....

Review: ‘The Jewish Queen Lear’ by Theater J

Valerie Leonard’s engrossing performance as a powerful matriarch lifts the Theater J premiere of the English-language The Jewish Queen Lear beyond a nostalgia-laden look back to a once highly...

Review: ‘The Comedy of Errors’ by Britches and Hose Theatre Company

By Daniel Rinehart Britches and Hose Theatre Company’s production of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors begins with a boisterous crowd scene. Then suddenly a great lord and a prisoner enter....

DC Playwright Collective The Welders Announce Third Generation Playwrights

A new generation of playwrights is taking over The Welders – Washington DC’s only playwrights’ collective devoted exclusively to developing and producing new work. Starting in January 2020, the Welder...

Theater J to Welcome Home Audiences for its 2019-2020 Season

Theater J Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr and Managing Director Jojo Ruf announce Theater J’s 2019-2020 season, welcoming home audiences to a beautiful and refreshed theater located in the newly...

Review: ‘The Color Purple’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Magic. Magnificent. Marvelous. There are only so many superlatives I can muster in such a small space, but The Color Purple, now running at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts, is phenomenal....

Review: ‘Fallen Angels’ at NextStop Theatre Company

If there could be a single word to describe NextStop Theatre Company’s production of Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy, Fallen Angels, it would be symmetry. Emily Lotz’s delightfully realized period set,...

Magic Time!: ‘Queen of Basel’ at Studio Theatre

Queen of Basel by Hilary Bettis, now on the boards at Studio, is scathingly brilliant. One walks out gobsmacked. (I completely concur with my colleague Bob Ashby’s astute review.) But watching Queen...

Yiddish Translator Nahma Sandrow Talks About Bringing a 19th-Century Masterpiece to a Modern English-Speaking Audience

It took a little over 120 years. But—thanks to Theater J—Jacob Gordin’s wildly popular Yiddish drama, celebrated as The Jewish Queen Lear, has made it onto the English-language stage. The play, whose...

Report: ‘Les Misérables in Concert’ by Young Artists of America at Strathmore

Young Artists of America presented its annual concert on Saturday, March 16, performing a semi-staged concert version of Les Misérables that featured a large ensemble of performers, chorus members and...

Christian Sands Brings ‘Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour’ to Strathmore March 21

The East Coast has the Newport and DC jazz festivals. The Midwest claims the world’s largest free jazz extravaganza, the Detroit Jazz Festival. The South showcases jazz and R&B talent at the New...

Review: ‘The Explorers Club’ at Workhouse Arts Center

If you have not yet visited the intimate Workhouse Theatre in Lorton, Virginia, Frank Shutts is currently directing a screwball comedy full of inappropriate giggles. Attitudes are purposefully dated...

2019 WATCH Award Winners and Ceremony Recap

The 19th Annual WATCH Awards recipients were announced tonight at a ceremony at The Birchmere in Alexandria Virginia. The ceremony was notable for two touching moments. Charles Hall, father of Leta...

Review: ‘Faust’ by Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center

It’s been a quarter of a century since Satan came to call on the Kennedy Center, but the Washington National Opera’s production of Faust (with music by Charles Gounod and libretto by Jules Barbier and...

The 2019 WATCH AWARDS Ceremony Takes Place Tonight

The 19th Annual WATCH Awards winners will be announced tonight at a ceremony at the Birchmere in Alexandria Virginia. DC Theater Arts will be at the ceremony to bring you updates on social media...

Review: ‘JQA’ at Arena Stage

Leaving Arena Stage’s world premiere of JQA, the fictionalized account of John Quincy Adams as imagined by playwright/director Aaron Posner, I’m feeling this: Adams was a sour, stiff-necked, rigid man...

Review: ‘Hexagon 2019: Romp in the Swamp’

Hexagon has been around for 64 years and never seems to age. Since 1956 the musical comedy theater group has been turning out original political satire that’s as of-the-moment as the news. Its latest...

Magic Time!: ‘Limits’ by Cirkus Cirkör at The Kennedy Center

The circus I fell in love with as a kid is gone. It was touted at the time as the greatest show on earth: a three-ring tented extravaganza that smelled of roasted peanuts, sawdust, and manure and...

Review: ‘The Seagull’ at The Wheel Theatre Company

An aspiring playwright and son loves an aspiring actress and ingenue. A famous actress and mother loves a famous writer and inconstant. Life doesn’t often provide neat parallels between generations...

Arena Stage Voices of Now Artists Return from Trip to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

(Washington, D.C.) Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia and the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, sent four Arena...

Rep Stage Announces 2019-2020 Season Productions

Rep Stage has announced its 2019-2020 Season: Souvenir By Stephen Temperley Directed by Joseph W. Ritsch September 5-22, 2019 E2 By Bob Bartlett WORLD PREMIERE Directed by Joseph W. Ritsch October...

Review: ‘Hands on a Hardbody’ at the Keegan Theatre

The title of this show, if you have never heard of it, doesn’t mean what you might think. It’s not about fitness. It’s not about sex. It’s a country-western musical about ten hard-up Texans trying to...

Studio Acting Conservatory Announces Location for 2019-2020 Classes

The newly formed Studio Acting Conservatory has secured temporary space for its next season of classes. 2019-2020 Classes will take place in Washington, DC, at the Garnet Patterson School, directly...

Magic Time!: ‘Crying Hands’ by Teater Manu at George Washington University

We like to think that the Holocaust could never happen here. We want to believe that it shouldn’t so it couldn’t. And then comes along a work of theater like Crying Hands that screams out how...

Review: ‘Eugene Onegin’ at Washington National Opera

Of all the grand tear-jerkers, those epic romances that make you want to tear your heart out and roast it on the barbecue, Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin stands out. Packed with beautiful...

Review: We Happy Few’s ‘Macbeth’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Taking their seats in the black box theater, the audience is confronted with three immobile figures cloaked in chiaroscuro, as small, gold-leafed picture frames faintly reflect tiny boxes of light. A...

Review: ‘Time Stands Still’ at Reston Community Players

Many plays try to capture the complexity of the human spirit and the Reston Community Players production of Donald Margulies’, Time Stands Still, does just that. The poignant tale examines an...

Renowned Organist Dr. Lonnie Smith To Bring His Signature Sound to Sixth & I

These days, it is rare to hear an organ in a jazz ensemble. The exception is Dr. Lonnie Smith who not only remains the master of the Hammond B-3 organ but also has had a career that spans more than...

Review: ‘Queen of Basel’ at Studio Theatre

Warning: Spoilers Ahead Christy Escobar’s mesmerizing, compelling, utterly brilliant, performance is the centerpiece of Studio Theatre’s world premiere production of Hilary Bettis’ Queen of Basel. In...

Review: ‘Noises Off’ by the British Players

Noises Off is the Mount Everest of farce. Numerous critics have called Michael Frayn’s 1982 masterwork the greatest farce ever written, and its second act may well be the most difficult to perform...

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts To Stage ‘The Color Purple’

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts is excited to present The Color Purple opening Wednesday, March 13 and running until Sunday, May 5. The Color Purple opened at The Broadway Theatre in 2005,...

Review: ‘Daddy Long Legs’ by Monumental Theatre Company

Sometimes you find a gem in an unlikely place. That happened to me recently at a small state-of-the-art black-box theatre on the campus of a boarding school on a quiet street in Alexandria, Virginia,...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

Your mother no doubt told you not to discuss religion or politics over dinner. In Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, now playing at the Greenbelt Arts Center, the exchanges among the characters during the...

Review: ‘Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ at Signature Theatre

Arresting and compelling are two words that describe Signature Theatre’s fiery production about survival in a society racked by long-term natural disasters and deadly human-made upheavals. Playwright...

Review: ‘The National Symphony Orchestra with Cellist Kian Soltani’ at the Kennedy Center

The National Symphony Orchestra delighted with a superb program on Thursday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Acclaimed cellist Kian Soltani performed with panache as he joined forces with...

Review: ‘Oleanna’ by Providence Players of Fairfax

By Rob Cuevas The current production of Oleanna by Providence Players of Fairfax, hosted at Italian Café in Falls Church, VA, is the perfect night out for both delicious Italian cuisine and hearty...

Review: ‘Heathers’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Heathers: the Musical is an intense roller-coaster of a show, careening from biting satire and dark comedy to touching and intense emotion to hope. In the 2013 Off-Broadway debut, based on the 1989...

Avant Bard Announces Sudden Casting Change for ‘Topdog/Underdog’

Avant Bard regrets to report that Khalil Kain has had to withdraw from the cast of Topdog/Underdog due to unforeseen personal circumstances. But Avant Bard is happy to announce that Jeremy Keith...

Review: ‘Confection’ by Third Rail Projects at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Note before you begin: Confection is a unique, multimedia, multisensory, ambulatory, audience-interactive, site-specific theatrical experience — “a rollicking rumination on teeny-tiny desserts.” If...