Washington DC

In the Moment: Report on The Kennedy Center’s 2018 Arts Summit

The time is most certainly right for the arts to be disruptive; to assert and insert itself in national discussions about social justice and inclusion. Turbulent times call out for the arts–not merely...

Review: ‘SOON’ at The Highwood Theatre

Depending on whom you ask, climate change is either ongoing, its devastating progression towards the inevitable oblivion of life on Earth all but inarguable, or a hoax perpetrated by the ignorant or...

Washington Performing Arts Presents the Return of Kronos Quartet Featuring Pipa Virtuoso Wu Man in ‘A Chinese Home’

Collaborative multimedia work is a powerful reflection on tradition and transition. The Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet returns to D.C. on April 19, 2018, with longtime collaborator Wu Man to perform...

Review: ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ at Constellation Theatre Company

With admirable nerve and imagination, Constellation Theatre Company has mounted an endlessly inventive production of a work by a playwright who dares us to enjoy him. Bertolt Brecht wrote plays to...

Review: ‘En el tiempo de las mariposas’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

The play En el tiempo de las mariposas (In the Time of the Butterflies), making its D.C. debut at GALA Hispanic Theatre, tells one of the most inspiring and heart-wrenching stories to come out of the...

Review: ‘Shear Madness’ at The Kennedy Center’s Theatre Lab

Let’s face it: things have been a little stressful lately. Everywhere we turn we see violence, corruption, investigations, allegations. Shear Madness, a long-running (over 13,200 performances and...

Review: ‘Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

By Andy Arnold If you enter Greenbelt Arts Center expecting Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery to focus on Holmes and Watson, you will be disappointed. What you will find instead is a...

Review: ‘A Chorus Line’ at Compass Rose Theater

Compass Rose Theater’s production of A Chorus Line is an entertaining spectacle that also leaves audiences thinking. With music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James...

Review: ‘Use All Available Doors’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Dupont Underground

Sherry (Lady Davonne), a WMATA train driver, starts her day at Shady Grove in Derwood, MD. She has a word with the lead car of her train, “Forty-Twenty”: a soon to be decommissioned vehicle which she...

Review: ‘Fly By Night’ at 1st Stage

Recipe for a vexing evening of musical theater: combine cuteness, sweetness, quirkiness, clever and funny dialogue, and a sprinkling of amusing and melodic songs. Add a heavy dose of sentimentality....

Review: ‘The Mountaintop’ by L.A. Theatre Works at George Mason University

On April 3, 1968, a rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee, in a dingy hotel, there was a man working on a speech. This man had missed birthdays and anniversaries in pursuit of his dream. He was a man who...

Magic Time!: Bedroom Talk with Actors Dimitri Gann and Ryan Townsend About ‘Top and Bottom’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

Top and Bottom is a new gay comedy by Kevin Michael West and directed by Christopher Janson. It’s set in a hotel room where James, a wannabe “dom,” has planned an S&M-ish hookup with Tommy, supposedly...

Review: ‘The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence’ at Silver Spring Stage

Thematically, The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence is simple and relevant: the frightening trend toward rejecting selfless, mutual, unconditional love with a person in favor of a mechanical...

Review: ‘Robin Hood’ at Imagination Stage

Long live King Richard! Robin Hood (Chris Dinolfo) and his Merry Men (Jon Jon Johnson, Jason B. McIntosh, Nick DePinto) embark on their quest to steal from the rich, give to the poor, and join (not...

Review: ‘Sweeney Todd’ by The Arlington Players

Stephen Sondheim himself felt some uncertainty in categorizing Sweeney Todd, the 1979 show that many regard as the masterpiece of his long and spectacular career. In his annotated book of lyrics,...

From ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Evita’ to ‘Snow Child’ at Arena Stage, Bronx-Born Singer Natalie Toro Has Built a Career Belting Out Broadway Hits (Interview)

When Natalie Toro steps onto the Arena Stage in the world premiere of Snow Child this week, she’ll be adding a whole new role to the worldwide musical repertoire. But while the part is new, the...

Reston Community Players to Present ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ April 20-May 12

Raise your skirts and bob your hair, because the toe-tapping flapper frolic Thoroughly Modern Millie is ready to take the stage at Reston Community Players. Based on the 1967 Academy Award-winning...

In the Moment: ‘John’ at Signature Theatre

Taking in Annie Baker’s John at Signature Theatre gives me the rare opportunity to use a word I have always wanted to, but haven’t before–the word “anhedonia.” Yes, Baker’s play John has a full share...

Preview: The Kennedy Center’s 2018-19 Season Brings Theater Front and Center

We were promised surprises – guest artists and other treats – at the Kennedy Center’s 2018-2019 Theater Season announcement Tuesday in the Center’s cozy Terrace Theater. And, as expected, Kennedy...

Review: ‘John’ at Signature Theatre

An eerie sense of the supernatural combined with an almost ritualistic sense of the minutiae of daily living combine to form the aesthetic ambiance of playwright Annie Baker’s haunting and disarming...

Magic Time!: ‘Roz and Ray’ at Theater J

This is an absolutely absorbing medical drama performed with full-on passion by two of DC’s top-tier actors. Susan Rome plays Roz, a hematologist dedicated to her role as healer, and Tom Story plays...

‘Use All Available Doors’: A Conversation with Brittany Alyse Willis and Toni Rae Salmi

Pinky Swear Productions’ latest offering, Use All Available Doors, will open at the Dupont Underground this weekend. The popular DC arts and culture space in a subterranean trolley station is the...

Review: ‘Between the World and Me’ at The Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, Samori, was 15 when his father wrote a book addressed to him, Between the World and Me. Before that book won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, it was a...

Review: ‘The Front Page’ by Providence Players

There are few perfect things in life, let alone in theater. But Providence Players’ The Front Page comes darn close. Every aspect of the production is first-rate. The newspaper world created for this...

Review: ‘Roz and Ray’ at Theater J

Fierce. No word short of that can fairly describe the characters’ commitment to their consuming passions, and the actors’ commitment to their roles, in Theater J’s harrowing production of Karen...

News: Lauren Gunderson’s ‘Natural Shocks’ Reading to Address Gun Violence

WSC Avant Bard will present a reading of Natural Shocks, a new play by Lauren Gunderson, on Monday, April 23, 2018, at 7:30 pm at 1st Stage, 1524 Spring Hill Rd, McLean, VA 22102, as part of a...

News: Young Artists of America to Dedicate Upcoming ‘Ragtime’ in Concert to Joel Markowitz, Offer Chance to Win Hamilton Tickets

Young Artists of America & Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras Present RAGTIME in Concert Over 275 local student performing artists to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the production’s timeless score....

Review: ‘Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre)’ at American University’s Greenberg Theatre

Though he had a wide stylistic range, in America, Federico García Lorca’s fame as a playwright is mostly limited to his rural tragedy, Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) which was originally staged in...

In the Moment: Nicole Burton, Pipeline Playwright discusses upcoming MetroStage reading

Pipeline Playwrights, the Northern Virginia-based collective of accomplished women playwrights who support productions that explore the variety of women’s experiences, continues its new series of play...

Review: ‘Cabaret Noir’ by Happenstance Theater

The phrase “film noir” evokes both a particular sub-genre of the crime film as well as a particular era. Inspired by the moody expressionist dramas of the silent era that had come to an end a...

Review: ‘Honey’ by Nameless Theater

“Clutch my pearls!” one audience member remarks toward the end of Nameless Theater’s motel-room drama, Honey, which has at least three throat-clutching twists during its less than 30-minute run time....

In the Moment: ‘Florida’ from UrbanArias at Atlas Performing Arts Center

Life’s a bitch especially for those struggling with the angst of life — in this particular case, the characters of the world premiere opera Florida from UrbanArias. Now please don’t stop reading...

Review: Molière’s ‘Don Juan’ by Taffety Punk Theatre Company

There is always a good reason to see Tonya Beckman perform, and she is a superb Don Juan. Her rendition of the famous seducer is beguiling but at the same time horrifying, like watching a particularly...

Review: ‘Florida’ by UrbanArias

In the second production of their 2017-2018 season, UrbanArias brings the world premiere of Florida to the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Based partly on true events, Florida follows the 16-year-old...

Review: ‘Top and Bottom’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

Top and Bottom— written by Kevin Michael West, directed by Christopher Janson and produced by the Rainbow Theatre Project— is a unique comedy exploring the ways in which people express themselves via...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Vagabond Players

The opening night performance of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by the Vagabond Players in America’s oldest continuously operating theater in historic Fells Point turned out to be a festive...

Magic Time!: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

“What the fuck was that?” a friend asked me at the opening night reception for this show at Woolly. To which, still reeling, I could only answer, “Yeah, what the fuck?” The cringe-inducing show we had...

Review: ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood [Symphonic Metal Version]’ by Landless Theatre Company

The 1986 Tony Award best musical winner is playing in DC, and it has one different detail from any other production you’ve ever seen before: a symphonic metal score. Created by Landless Theatre...

Review: ‘Lucky Stiff’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis

Colonial Players’ production of Lucky Stiff is a fun romp of a musical. First performed in 1988, with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, this production, directed by Eric...

Review: ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

There are potholes in the road not taken. So discover many of the characters in Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, now being presented by the Maryland Ensemble Theater (MET) in Frederick,...

Review: ‘Paper Dolls’ at Mosaic Theater Company

From start to finish, Paper Dolls is a wildly entertaining and unapologetic dramedy filled with biting contradictions, provocative imagery, and endearing characters that you can’t help but root for....

Review: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

How can you unpack a show with as many racial, sexual, and historical bombshells as Underground Railroad Game? The conceit of the play (2017 Obie Award Winner, Best New American Theatre Work) is an...

Review: ‘Two Trains Running’ at Arena Stage

There’s simplicity in truth. Arena Stage’s Two Trains Running is August Wilson’s simple truth about the African American experience during the 1960s urban renewal of inner-city Pittsburgh. But simple...

Review: ‘The Improvised Shakespeare Company’ at The Kennedy Center

The Improvised Shakespeare Company is a show that has been performed to sold out, jam-packed houses in its Chicago hometown since 2005, and in New York City, L.A., San Francisco, Montreal and more...

Magic Time!: ‘Paper Dolls’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Paper Dolls has such an open heart and such largesse of spirit that you might well leave the theater verklempt with hope. The play with songs by Philip Himberg, directed by Mark Brokaw, tells an...

Review: ‘C.S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant...

Review: ‘Potted Potter’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Potted Potter, Potted Productions’ rollicking parody of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, is full of toy snakes, terrible wigs, and boatloads of physical comedy. The audience plays Quidditch. The...

Interview with Matt Torney, director of ‘Translations’ at Studio Theatre

It’s no coincidence that Matt Torney is directing Translations, the iconic Brian Friel play now on view at Studio Theatre. “It’s a play I’ve wanted to do ever since I first saw it in Belfast, when I...

Review: ‘The Pavilion’ at The Hub Theatre

Aching and raw, sweet and lamenting, Hub Theatre’s production of The Pavilion is a master class of three DC-area actors in command of playwright Craig Wright’s lyrical, melodic language about love,...

Review: ‘The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail’ at George Mason University

Despite period costumes, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail feels current, primarily because it is so topical. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote the play in 1969, but George Mason’s production,...