Washington DC

Review: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been…’ at MetroStage

In the current political zeitgeist, which includes Russian hackers manipulating opinion through Facebook ads, playwright Carlyle Brown’s Are you now, or have you ever been… is germane to the truism...

Review: ‘Lotus’ at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater

Tap dancers are family. As family they gather together, catch up, trade stories, reminisce, honor their forbears and simply, yet profoundly, enjoy each others’ company. Saturday evening’s sold-out...

Review: ‘The Mistress Cycle’ at Creative Cauldron

Creative Cauldron presents The Mistress Cycle, with Book and Lyrics by Beth Blatt and Music by Jenny Giering. Matt Conner directs a cast of five women in this ambitious musical that, while an...

Review: ‘The Effect’ at Studio Theatre

When two lovers in life or on stage display an intense interaction of attraction, they are said to have “chemistry.” That elusive feeling may be more than a metaphor, according to Lucy Prebble’s...

Review: ‘Our Town’ at Olney Theatre Center

Thornton Wilder’s New Hampshire creation, Grover’s Corners, sits on some of the oldest rock in the world: “a shelf of Devonian basalt” crossed with “vestiges of Mesozoic shale,” we’re told. The oldest...

Review: VelocityDC Dance Festival

Velocity is speed with purpose: a change in distance over time, crucially defined by direction. The VelocityDC Dance Festival took us in many. In its ninth iteration, the variety-style performance,...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at The Highwood Theatre

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov believed the role of the artist was to ask questions, not answer them. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Christopher Durang’s 2013 Chekhov-inspired Tony Award...

Review: ‘Night Witches’ at Ground Rush Productions

“We all had things we had to let go of,” says the woman flanked by her six sisters-in-arms in Night Witches, directed by Kathleen Anne Hefferon, and created by the seven women who comprise the...

Review: Catholic University of America’s Chamber Orchestra Performs an Evening of Music by Rossini, Bizet and de Falla

The neoclassical room at the Former Spanish Ambassador’s Residence was the perfect backdrop for the sold-out concert of the Catholic University of America’s Chamber Orchestra. On October 5, in...

Review: ‘Assassins’ at Pallas Theatre Collective

This season for whatever reason—and far be it from me to speculate—three theater companies in the nation’s capital are presenting Stephen Sondheim’s tunefully insolent tribute to presidential...

Review: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing is an amusing spectacle. Directed by Sally Boyett and set in the 1950’s, it is a visual and musical treat, with talented acting,...

Review: ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ at Providence Players

The play is set in 1953, and the Hays’ once-proud stage careers are fading due to the increasing popularity of television and cinema, and actors who haven’t been paid in a few weeks are quitting the...

Spine: Love and Menace in ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Early Pinter is marked by menace. The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming leave a chill in the air, and in the audience’s agitated brain. We are disturbed as much by what we don’t know as by...

Review: ‘Blood at the Root’ at Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts

Hard to imagine a dramatic work more perfect for undergraduate actors or more pertinent to the racial tensions of our times than Dominique Morisseau’s trenchant Blood at the Root, now playing in a...

Night Witches – A New Play About WWII Soviet Female Fighter Pilots To Workshop at Local Airports and the Hylton Performing Arts Center

Night Witches, a new play following the true story of the first all-female Soviet combat pilots of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, will be performed at The Hylton Performing Arts Center on...

Review: ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The pairing of a director and a playwright is a mysterious thing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But sometimes, as here, it is a perfect marriage. The Lover and The Collection by Harold...

Review: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

The vignette “Secret” encapsulates the ingenuity of Forum Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information. Two office workers sit at their computers, back to back. One (Samy El-Noury)...

Magic Time!: ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The great Irish actor Lisa Dwan is in town doing something with the playwright Harold Pinter right now at the Lansburgh Theatre that is utterly amazing. She is both doing Pinter and undoing Pinter....

Interview: Leah Mazade Discusses Peace Mountain Theatre Company’s ‘Lost in Yonkers’

Please give us your name, part you are playing in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, and a brief description of your theatrical background. My name is Leah Mazade, and I’m playing Grandma Kurnitz in the...

Interview: Dominic North Discusses ‘The Red Shoes’ and Life As a Dancer with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures Company

Based on the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Red Shoes comes to The Kennedy Center October 10 – 15, 2017. The Red Shoes received two...

Terrace Theater to Re-Open with Series of Events at the Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will officially re-open the Terrace Theater on Friday, October 6, kicking off a month-long suite of performances that highlight the theater’s unique...

Magic Time!: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

This is a most peculiar play, but in a very good way. It’s more about its form than its content. And that’s what makes it one of Forum Theatre’s most fascinating offerings. The famously unorthodox...

Review: ‘The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt’ at Aldersgate Church Community Theater

Aldersgate Church Community Theater presents the world premiere of local playwright Rich Amada’s The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt, an award-winning historical drama about one of the most famous...

Review: ‘Sense and Sensibility’ at Aquila Theatre at the George Mason University Center for the Arts

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is the story of the two older Dashwood sisters. In a delightful Aquila Theatre production at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts, the two sisters –...

In the Moment: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Ford’s Theatre

“There’s just no spot for you,” is the terse way that Willy Loman’s “snotnose” boss-man Howard tells Loman he is fired. Just go and don’t look back, “cause you gotta admit, business is business.” With...

Review: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Ford’s Theatre

It’s hard to believe that nearly 70 years have passed since Arthur Miller penned his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece, Death of a Salesman; the perennially relevant social drama seems as timely as ever in...

Review: Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Performance of ‘EroSpace’ and ‘When Snails Collide’ at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

It’s often difficult to shake off the pre-conceived notions and expectations of what a particular dance concert is going to be like. I am not exactly clear on what I expected with from EroSpace and...

Review: ‘The Wild Party’ at Constellation Theater Company

In 1928, Joseph Moncure March wrote a racy narrative poem that was received quite successfully, despite a ban resulting from its controversial content, called “The Wild Party.” And in 2000, a musical...

Review: ‘Stones in His Pockets’ at Keegan Theatre

Engaging with warm-hearted humor and disarming in the depth of scenes about lost boys and bitter men with their dreams crushed, the Keegan Theatre production of the Marie Jones’ Stones in his Pockets...

Review: ‘Shiloh Rules’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis – Final Weekend Starts TODAY

Colonial Players of Annapolis’ production of Shiloh Rules is a funny, yet thought-provoking play, a wonderful way to begin their 69th season. Written by Doris Baizley and directed by Beth Terranova,...

Review: ‘Almost, Maine’ at Rockville Little Theatre

Oh, love! What a fickle proposition you are! In Rockville Little Theatre’s (RLT) production of John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, we witness a variety of romantic love dilemmas, with comical and heartfelt...

Report: ‘National Symphony Orchestra Season Opening Gala Performance’ Conducted by Maestro Gianandrea Noseda and Featuring Yo-Yo Ma and Cynthia Erivo

Listen up, DC! There is a new Maestro in town. Maestro Gianandrea Noseda, whose impressive resume ranks him as one of the world’s most sought after conductors, opened his inaugural season as music...

Review: ‘The Liar’ at Compass Rose Theater

Compass Rose Theater’s production of The Liar is a hilarious farce with a great deal of charm. Written by acclaimed Restoration French playwright Pierre Corneille in 1642, it became his most famous...

Review: The In Series: Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ at the D.C. Scottish Rite Temple

If you’re a Mozart fan – and if you aren’t, you should be – you probably have your favorite ‘conspiracy theory’ about why the composer met his untimely death at the age of 35. Thanks to Peter...

Report: Kelli O’Hara Performs at the ARTS by George Benefit at George Mason University

Kelli O’Hara’s concert last night was the culmination of a wonderful evening at George Mason University’s “ARTS by George” benefit. The concert hall at the Center for the Arts was full of an...

Review: ‘Bernstein on Broadway’ at The Kennedy Center

It was a glorious evening for Leonard Bernstein and musical theater fans at The Kennedy Center. It was the exceptional, one-night-only opening to the worldwide celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s...

Review: ‘How I Became a Pirate’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

A few days ago, you might have heard more than your fair share of “scallywags” and “lily-livered land lubbers” if an acquaintance or loved one elected to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘Lela & Co.’ by Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their exchange in...

Review: ‘Bridges of Madison County’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

The Bridges of Madison County turns out to be an ideal musical for an ambitious youth theater looking to build bridges to a wider audience of grown-up fans. A sensitive, artfully realized production...

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

In a recent satire published on Medium, the San Francisco writer/actor/comedian Alison Page listed five dozen “Honest Theatre Awards.” Among them was one that struck me as an apt accolade for the...

Event: ‘MUCHO KLUNCHO TALENT SHOW a Parade of Raw Ridiculousness’ Presented by The Klunch

Opera singers, jugglers, tango dancers, strippers, puppets, and way more gather for the Mucho KlunchoTalent Show! An epic assemblage of talent, the likes of which DC hasn’t seen in centuries;...

Review: ‘Native Gardens’ at Arena Stage

Native Gardens is a bloomin’ hysterical comedy at Arena Stage Need something to boost you up? Perhaps something to make you, temporarily, forget the current political and social climate? Or, the...

Review: ‘Respect! A Tribute to Aretha Franklin’ at the American Pops Orchestra

Five fabulous divas joined the innovative new American Pops Orchestra to celebrate the music of Aretha Franklin at the Arena Stage’s Fichandler Stage on September 16. An energized audience sang,...

In the Moment: Matt Haimovitz Brings Mobile Music to Northern Virginia

In these days of the end of the brick-and-mortar retail shops, and in these times when new audiences are less likely to purchase subscriptions to the performing arts as Baby Boomers once did, what can...

Review: ‘Lady M’ – A Co-Production of Collective Eleven, Women from Mars and Gitana Theatre at Atlas Performing Arts Center

In the first scene of LadyM, a show devised by Francesca Chilcote, Rachel Hynes, Vanita Kalra, and Anastasia Wilson, a woman dressed in white dumps an entire bottle of ketchup onto a burger. She tears...

Review: ‘The Addams Family’ at Washington County Playhouse

The Addams Family, made famous by American cartoonist Charles Addams in 1938 in The New Yorker, became well-loved in the 1960s when adapted for television, starring John Astin and Carolyn Jones. This...

Review: ‘I Killed My Mother’ at Spooky Action Theater

Andras Viskey’s I Killed My Mother, now in production at Spooky Action Theater, is a challenging bit of business. Its wordless opening is several minutes of wandering by various members of the company...

Review: ‘Deathtrap’ at Silver Spring Stage

The opening of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap this weekend marked the start of the 50th Season for Silver Spring Stage. The play, which opened on Broadway in the late 1970s, is a suspense thriller with lots of...

Review: ‘Clover’ at Ally Theatre Company

But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters, they want to know which tools; They never ask why build. — Anne Sexton, “Wanting to Die” Laura Rocklyn and Ty Hallmark’s new work, Clover, now...

Review: ‘Lela & Co.’ by Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center

The story of Cordelia Lynn’s Lela & Co. is a universal story, told across many borders and many nationalities, ethnicities, and races; during wartime and peacetime, at Super Bowls, World Cups, and...