Washington DC

Review: Herbie Hancock at The Kennedy Center

Legendary Oscar and multi-Grammy-winning pianist and Kennedy Center Honoree Herbie Hancock solidified his avant-garde artistry on the Concert Hall stage Tuesday night, highlighting “smatterings” of...

Review: ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ featuring Tom Teasley at Constellation Theatre Company

When The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari hit German movie screens in 1920, it baffled and delighted audiences who had primarily been entertaining themselves with annual Film Festivals of Fred Ott’s sneeze and...

Magic Time!: ‘Big Fish’ at The Keegan Theatre

The musical Big Fish is by any measure a feel-good show for the whole family, as evidenced by the buoyant and beautiful production now playing at The Keegan Theatre. But the main narrative arc in Big...

Review: ‘Big Fish’ at The Keegan Theatre

Family-friendly musicals are relatively rare these days. Family-friendly musicals that have adult themes are even rarer. Big Fish, with book by John August and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, is a...

Magic Time!: Sweet Spot Aerial Productions’ ‘Smoky Mirrors’ at Atlas Performing Arts Center

No sooner did some aerial apparatus drop from the fly space—ropes, straps, silks, hoops, trapezes—but what some artist-athletes would take hold of it and make acts of suspended animation. These...

Benefit: ‘One Night in Bangkok’ Featuring Members of ‘The King and I’ to Benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS on August 14

Join members of The King and I’s royal court as they step out of character for good fun and a good cause at One Night in Bangkok, a one-night only cabaret benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS...

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ at Wildwood Summer Theatre at the Arts Barn

Spring Awakening (co-created by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik and now playing at the Arts Barn in The Kentlands) has a circular tragedy to it. Teens, struggling through youth and confusion and bodies...

Review: Blondie & Garbage – The Rage and Rapture Tour at Wolf Trap

Despite the torrential downpour Thursday night, Blondie and Garbage devotees came in droves to Wolf Trap, with rain ponchos and umbrellas in hand, to hear two distinctively powerful and iconic...

Review: “The Secret Garden” at Other Voices Theatre

Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s The Secret Garden boasts one of the most gorgeous scores in the history of musical theatre, but is rarely undertaken by community theatre groups due to its musical and...

Review: ‘Lysistrata Jones’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Red Branch Theatre Company continues to amaze with its 2017 season premiere of the perky and impertinent Lysistrata Jones. Thanks to savvy staging and choreography, this short-lived 2011 Broadway...

Review: ‘Alice and the Book of Wonderland’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Alice and the Book of Wonderland is an entertaining treat for all ages, with delightful acting, colorful costumes, a creative use of technology, excellent...

Interview: Performers from the Upcoming ‘Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed!’ – Part II

Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed! was inspired by James Taylor’s Shocked and Amazed: On and Off the Midway, the world’s leading journal on weirdness in entertainment for over 30...

Interview: Performers from the Upcoming ‘Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed!’ – Part I

Catching Up With Atomic Doll Productions! Sideshows and carnival acts have always offered normies a safe space to vicariously scratch that thrill itch. It’s equal part “I want to watch and also not...

Interview: David Rohde Interviews Violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt

Is “star viola player” an oxymoron? Not if the viola player – a “violist” as opposed to a violinist – casts her net as wide as Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt. Milena, who last appeared in Washington in...

Review: ‘Legally Blonde’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The Little Theatre of Alexandria (LTA) production of Legally Blonde is a laugh-fest for summer audiences. Gauging from the hoots and cheers of appreciation at the curtain call, this campy musical –...

Review: ‘Anne and Emmett’ at MetroStage

Anne and Emmett, by Janet Langhart Cohen, is a play about an imagined conversation between two figures from history – teenagers, who were the victims of institutional terrorism. MetroStage produced...

Review: Aretha Franklin at Wolf Trap

Last night was a miracle of sorts. The heavy rains forecast to wash out the Aretha Franklin concert at The Filene Center of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts didn’t show up. And,...

Review: ‘King Kirby’ at Off the Quill, Performing at Greenbelt Arts Center

Who could guess that a play about the life of the renowned comic book artist, Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), would be filled with so much humor, pathos and fact-dropping narrative?...

Avant Bard Announces 2017-2018 Season

The exhilarating musical The Gospel at Colonus returns, Lauren Gunderson’s fiery genius Emilie makes her DC debut, and Shakespeare’s fantastical The Tempest takes the stage by storm For its 28th...

Review: National Theatre Live: ‘Angels in America’ Part Two in HD

Tony Kushner divided his epic play, Angels in America, into two parts. The second half, subtitled Perestroika, was beamed live to cinemas worldwide on July 27 from London’s National Theatre where it’s...

Review: National Theatre Live: ‘Angels in America’ Part One in HD

Angels in America remains a sad, hilarious, hallucinogenic theatrical achievement. The juxtaposition of those seemingly-opposite qualities is what makes the play memorable. It has even greater impact...

Review: ‘A Grand Night for Singing’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II have been called the greatest writing partnership of the 20th century. Their work spans from 1943 to 1959 and includes some of the most...

2017 Capital Fringe Announces 5 Best of Festival Awards and 16 Show Extensions

Out of nearly 90 shows in this year’s Capital Fringe Festival, 5 captured Audience Awards, as announced Monday, July 24. And a total of 16 shows got coveted extensions because they became so popular....

Interview: Joan Almedilla Discusses Playing Lady Thiang in ‘The King and I’ at The Kennedy Center

It’s difficult to imagine a more lush or beautiful production to take the stage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts than Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. The revival, which...

Review: ‘Thurgood’ at The Olney Theatre Center

Thurgood, a one-man-show by George Stevens, Jr., is playing at the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at the Olney Theatre Center in Olney. The play is a about the late Supreme Court Justice and respected...

Review: ‘Nana’s Naughty Knickers’ at Bowie Community Theatre

In Bowie Community Theatre’s latest offering, Nana’s Naughty Knickers, Sylvia Charles (Shelley Rochester) is a modern-day New York widow who has a pretty big secret. When her granddaughter Bridget...

Review: ‘The King and I’ at The Kennedy Center

Swapping one beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein’s national tour production for another, the Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center Theater revival of The King and I made its Washington, D.C. premiere at The...

Review: ‘Bonnie & Clyde The Musical’ at Monumental Theatre Company at the Ainslie Arts Center

The history of Bonnie and Clyde is well-known. Lovers, living a life of crime. Since their infamous streak of robberies and murders, which ended with the two being killed in an ambush on May 23, 1934,...

Review: ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ at the Summer Dinner Theatre at Montgomery College

In 1850 Oregon, Adam Pontipee (a velvety-voiced Da’Von Moody) has come to town to trade some furs and look for a bride. We know he’s a romantic because his opening song is “Bless Your Beautiful Hide”...

Review: ‘An Octoroon’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (remount)

Honestly, I am still reeling after seeing Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon last night. I’ve been wandering around the house all morning, eyes glazed over, wheels turning in my head while my family...

Review: ‘to tell my story: a hamlet fanfic’ at The Welders at Silver Spring Black Box Theater

Maybe the only way the play Hamlet could ever make sense is to filter it through a teenaged girl perspective. Watching a 30-year-old man galumph and philosophize his way through Elsinore – casually...

Review: The Kinsey Sicks in ‘Things You Shouldn’t Say’ at Theater J

There’s virtually nothing a drag queen won’t say, or do, in public or private, say the Kinsey Sicks. The San Francisco-based beauty shop quartet that puts the show into show business, the bawdy into...

Review: ‘The Mark of Cain’ at Synetic Theater

Fans of Synetic Theater’s music-and movement-based works derived from classic texts will find a surprise twist in the company’s latest offering. Typically, a Synetic extravaganza creates a vivid other...

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): ‘Welcome to Fear City’

Fear City is the South Bronx in July 1977. There is nothing particularly unique about that July in that year in that place. Fear, it seems, is a way of life in the South Bronx. Kara Lee Corthron’s...

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): ‘Everything Is Wonderful’

The Amish with their horse and buggy, 19th century culture; their simple, old world uniforms and habits; their infamous Rumspringa where the teenage Amish is given the opportunity to choose between...

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): ‘The Niceties’

Eleanor Burgess’ The Niceties is a political play that takes the gloves off. It’s bare knuckled and it’s bloody, though no bones are broken and no souls crushed. But who knows what tomorrow will...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a colorful, spirited spectacle. Co-directed by Donald Hicken and Sally Boyett, The Tempest is performed outdoors, in the...

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): ‘Byhalia, Mississippi’

Evan Linder‘s Byhalia, Mississippi pulls theatre-goers into familiar territory: the “white trash” world of Laurel and Jim. Once there, however, the unfamiliar takes shape: amidst the gutter talk, the...

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): ‘We Will Not Be Silent’

David Meyers’ We Will Not Be Silent places American audiences within an interrogation room in Nazi Germany in 1943. Leaders of the White Rose, one of several resistance groups to Hitler and his Third...

Review: ‘Bon Voyage! A Happenstance Escapade’ at Round House Theatre

Sunny and cheerful is how I felt after an hour or so with Happenstance Theater’s Bon Voyage! A Happenstance Escapade. The original production, currently at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, made this...

Review: ‘Wig Out!’ at Studio Theatre

The world of Wig Out! is a glittering fantasia on house ballroom culture. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s ingeniously metatheatrical 2006 script sets this play with music in the urban underground that came to...

Review: ‘Night Seasons’ at Quotidian Theatre Company

Horton Foote, the Oscar and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of hundreds of plays for stage and screen, was known as the American Chekhov. As such, his work is a perfect choice for The Quotidian Theatre....

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): ‘Wild Horses’

Last year there was Not Medea; this year there is Wild Horses, Allison Gregory’s rollicking one-woman ride through a 13-year-old’s adventures in horse country. Though structurally not as well defined...

Review: ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill’ at Anacostia Playhouse

“These are my friends,” Billie Holiday (Anya Nebel) tells her accompanist (LeVar Betts), gesturing at the audience. It is March of 1959, and Holiday will be dead in four months. She’s singing at...

Review: ‘Oklahoma!’ at Prince William Little Theatre

Feel jaunty and energized after Prince William Little Theatre’s production of Oklahoma!. Enter into a land of wide open prairie fields, great company and even greater gossip. This cheery town blooms...

Review: ‘King John’ at 4615 Theatre Company

Scandals, sibling rivalry, adultery and divorces represented daily living for England’s royal Plantagenet family, which held the dynastic reigns of power from approximately 1120 to 1490. The...

Review: ‘The Gun Show’ at 1st Stage

Among the issues polarizing America (and degrading public discourse) is the hot-button question of what to do about guns. Proponents of positions right and left talk past each other. Both camps have...

Review: ‘The Lion in Winter’ at 4615 Theatre Company

The Lion in Winter, written by James Goldman and directed by Jordan Friend, opened this weekend at The Highwood Theatre in Silver Spring; it is being performed in repertory with King John. The play is...

Review: ‘Monty Python’s SPAMALOT’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Top-notch performers, frequent laughter, applause, audience sing-alongs, and an all-in standing hymn recital characterized a night at Rockville Musical Theatre’s production of Monty Python’s SPAMALOT....

Review: ‘Teresa’ at Seventh Street Playhouse

Now playing at Greenbelt Arts Center (GAC), Seventh Street Playhouse’s Teresa is a thought-provoking, historical dramedy written by Anthony Ernest Gallo and inspired by the life of Saint Teresa of...