Washington DC

A Great Weekend for Theater at George Mason University

George Mason University Center for the Arts has three stirring works of theater November 15-18 on the Fairfax campus. Friday features A Rap on Race, a modern spin on a monumental conversation about...

Review: ‘Our Class’ at Georgetown University

Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class opens in 1926 in a kindergarten classroom in a small town in northeastern Poland. Whereas most of Europe’s Jews had experienced a long history of expulsions and...

Review: ‘Reditum’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre Flamenco Festival

No more than ten minutes into Reditum – a Flamenco dance performance by José Barrios and Company, at the GALA Hispanic Theatre on Friday night – the man of the hour is drenched in sweat. Barrios, who...

Review: ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ by Sterling Playmakers

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, by Sterling Playmakers and produced by Shanna Christian, is an intense musical experience with just enough blood, murder, mischief, and mayhem to please...

Review: ‘Billy Elliot’ at Signature Theatre

Signature’s Billy Elliot the Musical soars with expressive, youthful dance energy and a liberating message of doing what you need to do to be who you want to be. Directed and choreographed by Matthew...

Ally Theatre Company Commissions Playwright Doug Robinson for Mapping Racism Project

Ally Theatre Company is pleased to announce Doug Robinson as the commissioned playwright for our 2019 Mapping Racism Project, produced in partnership with the Hyattsville Community Development...

In the Moment: Sound Design Enriches ‘King John’ at The Folger Theatre

Folger’s rendering of the seldom-produced King John is more than impressive Shakespearean rhetoric and the checking off on a bucket list of plays to produce. With a deft touch, director Aaron Posner...

A Youthful Fresh Take on ‘Our Class’ at Georgetown University

Long before the recent shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Derek Goldman had planned to direct a production of Our Class with student actors at Georgetown University. It is a play...

Dramaturg Becomes Playwright with The Welders ‘In This Hope: A Pericles Project’

The DC playwright collective The Welders bills itself as “the only playwright collective devoted exclusively to developing and producing new work.” When the second grouping of The Welders – whose...

Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Time Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton. A beloved classic,...

Review: ‘Beetlejuice’ at the National Theatre

You can’t miss Betelgeuse. A star in the constellation Orion, this supergiant is red as flame and one of the 10 brightest stars in the night sky. At approximately 10 million years old, Betelgeuse...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Kander and Ebb’s classic Cabaret is an intimate experience, with wonderful singing and choreography. Based on Christopher Isherwood’s stories, this...

Review: ‘A Piece of My Heart’ at Bowie Community Theatre

Female Vietnam veterans are saluted as actors give their whole hearts in Bowie Community Theatre’s A Piece Of My Heart, through November 18th. It seems likely that every veteran fights two wars: one...

Review: ‘Cinderella’ at Imagination Stage

Full disclosure: I love fairy tales. All of them. I always have, despite also being a girl who asked myself one day why Rapunzel couldn’t just make a ladder with all her own hair and escape the tower...

Review: ‘Brigadoon’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Below a luxurious burgundy velvet curtain, Rockville Musical Theatre’s Brigadoon Orchestra delivers the Overture under the Musical Direction of Joseph Sorge. The curtain opens as traveling New...

Review: ‘The Benjamins’ at the Music and Drama Ministry of Shiloh Baptist Church of Landover

“People that love money, they never have enough,” said a character from Director and Playwright Fay Brake’s engaging stage play, The Benjamins. With themes of overreaching ambition, greed and the...

Review: ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ at Creative Cauldron

Children’s theatre is almost always adorable but not necessarily a place where you will see fantastic performances. Peter Pan and Wendy at Creative Cauldron succeeds in telling the classic story of...

Review: ‘The Toxic Avenger’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

The small, low-ceilinged theater at the Greenbelt Arts Center, with intimate seating arrangements and limited space for sets, is a natural habitat for The Toxic Avenger, a quintessential small-cast,...

Review: ‘Dracula’ at We Happy Few

Halloween may be over, but the horror season is still in full swing. We Happy Few Theatre Company invites you to “listen to the children of the night” with Dracula, a repertoire production, at CHAW,...

Review: ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay!’ at Nu Sass Productions

Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay! (one of several English language renderings of the original title, Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!) opens as Antonia (Francesca Marie Chilcote) and her friend...

Review: ‘Things That Are Round’ at Rep Stage

The mental province that stretches from magical thinking to ordinary self-delusion is given a new survey in Callie Kimball’s Things That Are Round, now having its world premiere via the Equity players...

Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ by Damascus Theatre Company at Olney Theater Center

I doubt there was one person in the entire Carl Freeman Auditorium who hadn’t seen some version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (either the original animated film from 1991, the live-action version...

Review: ‘Anastasia’ at The Kennedy Center

Will you be swept up into the legend of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia? When her family was executed during the Russian Revolution, the rumor spread that...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Georgetown University

Last night I had the pleasure of visiting a 167-year-old drama society. Georgetown University’s Mask and Bauble Dramatic Society was established in 1852, making them the “oldest continuously running...

Shaina Taub Lovers Rejoice! ‘As You Like It’ Lands at Keegan

I’m a big fan of composer Shaina Taub. Her unique blending of socially conscious theater and pop-folk tunes has brought her great acclaim in recent years. After adapting and musicalizing two...

Review: ‘King John’ at Folger Theatre

King John is so rarely performed (indeed, it’s been a decade since I last saw it staged) that the current Aaron Posner-directed production at the Folger Theatre opens with a primer on the players and...

Review: ‘Venus in Fur’ at 4615 Theatre Company

One of the most remarkable things about D.C. theater is its abundance of good plays, professionally produced and performed, yet often staged in places that are, to put it mildly, a bit odd. Nowhere is...

Review: ‘The Agitators’ at Mosaic Theater Company

“Do you still believe there can be a country for all?” When that blunt question comes up in The Agitators—Mat Smart’s deeply affecting play about the friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick...

Talking Shakespeare with Ted van Griethuysen at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

How do you interview a legend? This was the question I pondered on the way to the Lansburgh Theatre to interview Ted van Griethuysen, one of the finest actors of his generation. Shakespearean par...

Review: ‘Long Way Down’ at The Kennedy Center

Long Way Down, adapted from the renowned young adult novel in verse by Jason Reynolds, is told in the voice of a 15-year-old named Will and performed by the prodigiously talented Justin Weaks. He is...

Review: ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ at Brave Spirits Theater

Words have lethal consequences in the clear-eyed, unflinching production of The Duchess of Malfi from Brave Spirits Theatre. Under the sure-handed direction of Casey Kaleba, The Duchess of Malfi is...

Review: ‘East of Eden’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Can one escape the sins of their ancestors? Can one choose their own course and overcome an evil background? These questions are explored in NextStop Theatre Company’s glorious new adaptation of John...

Review: ‘Sing To Me Now’ by Rorschach Theatre Company

What happens when human imagination runs dry? When the concept of artistic expression and creativity is stifled in a world that has become overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and despair? That is the...

Review: We Happy Few’s ‘A Midnight Dreary’ at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

Entering the black box theater space at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, it is clear that We Happy Few’s A Midnight Dreary is not a normal theatrical adaptation of classic literature. A simple paint...

Review: ‘The Crucible’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage’s spectacular and engrossing show, The Crucible, under Director Craig Allen Mummey’s expert guidance, tackles many contentious subjects, including sexism, racism, religious...

Review: ‘Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ at George Mason University

Big River is the musical adapted from the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. With music and lyrics by Roger Miller and a book by William Hauptman, the 1985 production on...

Magic Time!: ‘The Fever’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

If you’ve ever been in an acting class, a group-encounter session, a sensitivity training, or kindergarten, you’ll feel right at home in The Fever. Even if you’re by nature standoffish, an inveterate...

Magic Time!: ‘Actually’ by Theater J at Arena Stage

The vexing concept of consent in sex gets a seductively smart parsing in Anna Ziegler’s Actually. Now playing in an electrically well-acted Theater J production directed by Johanna Greunhut, Actually...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at the Kennedy Center

It has taken more than 35 years for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s iconic musical Little Shop of Horrors to reach the Kennedy Center. But it’s been worth the wait! The Kennedy Center’s Broadway...

A Conversation with Playwright Naomi Iizuka and Director Jon Jon Johnson

By Sophie Herreid, Caitlin Partridge, Lauren Patton I had so many hopes. I had so many dreams. But I died I died I died along the way. – Chorus of Refugees, ‘Anon[ymous]’ Playwright Naomi Iizuka...

Review: ‘The Fever’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Audience participation can so often be a painful and unwelcome component of a night at the theater, especially if, like myself, you’re prone to minor panic attacks at the thought of being randomly...

Review: ‘Illyria, or What You Will’ by Avant Bard

Illyria is fabulous, darlings. The clothes are to die for. The décor is out of its 1980s mind. The music is as eclectic as it is electric. And plot elements and characters drawn from Twelfth Night fit...

Review: ‘Actually’ by Theater J at Arena Stage

The idea of sexual consent might seem simple: no means stop and yes means carry on. In practice, however, nothing could be further from the truth. The predicaments stemming from this issue that so...

Washington Stage Guild Founder Ann Norton Steps Down as Executive Director

The Washington Stage Guild announced the stepping-down of Executive Director Ann Norton, one of WSG’s Founding Members. Norton’s 32 years in leadership roles helped nurture the Washington Stage Guild...

Magic Time!: ‘The Fall’ at Studio Theatre

There is so much to be blown away by in The Fall, the powerful and thrilling performance piece devised and performed by seven South African students. Their majestic musicality, their propulsive...

Magic Time!: ‘How I Learned to Drive’ at Round House Theatre

I’ve been wary of this play since it was first produced in 1997. I remember hearing that it was about a pedophile and his niece and that its treatment of the uncle was sympathetic. So I didn’t trust...

Michael Bobbitt’s ‘Aida’ Mixes Grandeur and Intimacy at Constellation

Michael Bobbitt gets around. This master-of-all-trades, whose adaptation of Aida is now playing to sold-out audiences at Constellation Theatre, has danced, directed and choreographed his way around...

Jiehae Park’s ‘Peerless’ Reimagines ‘Macbeth’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s ReDiscovery Reading Series

There was a significant “first” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) 2018-19 ReDiscovery Reading Series at the Lansburgh Theatre this week. It was a reading of the enthralling, fearless Peerless,...

Review: ‘Henry V’ by Faction of Fools

A current exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library explores Winston Churchill’s admiration for Shakespeare, above all the World War II-era patriotic inspiration of Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V....

Review: ‘The Babylon Line’ by The Colonial Players of Annapolis

Colonial Players’ production of The Babylon Line is an engaging drama that raises many questions about memory and writing. Written by Richard Greenberg and first performed in 2016, it focuses on a...