Washington DC

Review: ‘Oberon, or The Elf King’s Oath’ at The In Series

“I’m stuck with writer’s block!” Who among us—be we beginners, practitioners or professionals, list makers, blog posters, PhD thesis or diary writers—has not been visited by that alarming thought?...

Review: ‘The Sound of Music’ at The Kennedy Center

Art has a way to awaken the senses and make you feel alive. Art shakes the dreariness of everyday life off you as you bathe in the beauty of a live musical performance. The Sound of Music at The...

Preview: Thunderous Productions’ ‘Murder on the Nile’ Opens on Friday, June 23rd at the Greenbelt Arts Center by Aref Dajani and Emily Canavan

Thunderous Productions’ Murder on the Nile is not your parents’ or grandparents’ version of Agatha Christie. Opening Friday, June 23, 2017, at the Greenbelt Arts Center – with a cast that screams...

Magic Time!: ‘Still Life with Rocket’ at Theater Alliance as Voyage to a New Form: A Q&A with Director Mollye Maxner

Still Life With Rocket is greater than the sum of its arts. The diverse forms of installation, choreography, and character-driven drama come together in this collaboratively devised experience in what...

Review: ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ at The Kennedy Center

It’s hard to believe that almost 20 years have passed since John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s ground-breaking, genre-bending, glam-rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch first emerged, but the...

Interview: Playwrights Hanna Eady and Edward Mast on ‘The Return,’ Now in US Premiere at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Seeing The Return – the stunning new play that has just burst upon the stage at Mosaic Theater Company of DC – is like watching fireworks up close. In fact, the heat from this drama is so intense that...

Report: Source Festival 2017: ‘Best of 10-Minute Plays’

A destination awaits for theater-goers ready for a high-quality evening taking in a marketplace of intriguing 10-minute plays. The destination is DC’s ever-changing 14th Street and this year’s edition...

Report: ‘Will on the Hill’ an Annual Bipartisan Comedic Event at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Now in its fifteenth year as a fundraiser for the educational programs of Shakespeare Theater Company, Will on the Hill joins a few celebrity actors with a gaggle of professional politicians to...

Review: ‘A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline’ at Infinity Theatre Company

Patsy Cline’s spirit inhabited the theater when Laura Stracko sang some of Cline’s later and best known songs including “Sweet Dreams,” “She’s Got You,” “I Fall to Pieces” and “Crazy.” Directed by...

Review: ‘How I Learned What I Learned’ at Round House Theatre

August Wilson was a high school dropout who went on to receive two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and he’s regarded as one of the five most celebrated playwrights in the history of American theater. After...

Review: ‘She Speaks’ at The Rude Mechanicals

William Shakespeare wrote memorable female characters, many of them laced within male-dominated plays. The Rude Mechanicals’ She Speaks came about when director Leanne G. Stump realized that “If you...

Review: ‘The Return’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC, Part of the 2017 Voice From a Changing Middle East Festival

Mosaic Theatre Company of DC concluded their 2017 season with a riveting, deeply provocative examination of a State’s National Security apparatus on dissident individuals living and loving beneath it....

Review: ‘Some Enchanted Evening: The Songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Some Enchanted Evening: The Songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein, a gorgeous, glamorous revue that celebrates the works of two greats from the Golden Age...

Review: ‘The Mikado’ at The Victorian Lyric Opera Company

From the moment the curtains opened, we knew we were not going to see a traditional version of The Mikado. The Victorian Lyric Opera Company’s production, directed by Helen Aberger, at the F. Scott...

Review: ‘Sister Act’ at Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre

Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre’s production of Sister Act, directed by Clare Shaffer, is a funny spectacle of a musical. Based on the movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, with music by Alan Menken, lyrics...

Review: ‘Still Life with Rocket’ at Theater Alliance

A few facts are laid at your feet as you move through a couple of simple rooms. Black and white video on old portable television shows a boxing match, which is no match for the clutter. A person...

DC Mega Hits ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ and ‘Come From Away’ Honored at The Tony Awards

DC Mega Hits Dear Evan Hansen and Come From Away were honored at last night’s Tony Awards. The shows had sold-out runs at Arena Stage and Ford’s Theatre. Dear Evan Hansen was victorious in six...

Magic Time!: ‘School for Lies’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The set that we see is a towering eyeful, The interior decorator spared nary a trifle, For decked all about are amusing objets d’art On loan from museums with tastes tres bizarre. Claes Oldenberg’s...

Review: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Creative Cauldron

America’s beloved franchise The Wizard of Oz gets a sprightly and spectacular makeover at Creative Cauldron this month. The musical — with music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, as adapted...

Review: Source Festival 2017: ‘Exquisite Depths’: Artistic Blind Date

One of the elements of the Source Festival 2017 is two Artistic Blind Dates. These collective creations bring together area artists from different disciplines to devise an original performance piece....

Review: ‘Gilligan’s Fire Island’ at Dominion Stage

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a cheeky flip, begun with fun by castaways, who do everything but strip. Gilligan’s Fire Island is a parody, bringing back nostalgic memories of...

Review: ‘Jean and Dinah – The Play’ at The Essential Theatre

A disheveled bedroom in Port of Spain, Trinidad — home to the nearly incapacitated Dinah – is playwright Tony Hall’s incubator for an important and wide-ranging drama about the destructive effects of...

Review: ‘The Curious Savage’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

The Curious Savage by John Patrick, directed by Nick Cherone and produced by Maureen Rogers, is a comedy which premiered in 1950, and it provides much laughter and warmth. The story seems simple. Mrs....

Review: Source Festival 2017: ‘Perfect Arrangement’

Perfect Arrangement by Topher Payne was a smash hit at Source Festival when it debuted there four years ago, and the comedy’s return to Source on the occasion of the festival’s tenth anniversary is...

Review: Smithsonian Associates with Actor Alan Alda: ‘The Art and Science of Communicating’

Thursday night on a beautiful Spring evening, Alan Alda fans descended upon the George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium to hear him speak about his passion…communication! The event, during...

Review: ‘Something’s Afoot’ at The British Players

A musical murder-mystery who-done-it is a strange bird indeed. But it can work if expertly executed. Something’s Afoot, with book, music and lyrics by James McDonald, David Vos and Robert Gerlach—and...

Review: ‘Inheritors: The Nature of Keys’ at Howard Community College’s Arts Collective

Inheritors: The Nature of Keys is an original collaborative drama by Howard Community College’s Art Collective, directed by S. G. Kramer, that opened at the HCC’s Horowitz Center Studio Theatre on...

Review: New York City Ballet: 2 Programs of Works by Balanchine, Peck, Ratmansky, and Wheeldon

Urgency propels them forward. In a blink there are flashes of precise articulation and rapid fluidity as sweeping curves carry a leg overhead or propel a body high in the air. Dancers merge from...

Report #2: ‘Callado Conmigo’ (‘Silenced Within Me’) at GALA Hispanic Theatre

It was an informal gathering. Barefoot. Casual attire. Just a handful of women standing in a semi-circle, reciting words from a page. They were from a variety of South and Central American countries,...

DC Theatre Scene and DCMetroTheaterArts Announce Agreement to Share Review Coverage of Capital Fringe Festival 2017

The two media companies combine writing strength to review 70 openings in 6 days Washington, DC, June 9, 2017—The editors and publishers of DC’s two major theater websites—DC Theatre Scene and...

Preview: Columbia Festival of the Arts Come Home to the Lakefront, Celebrating Columbia’s 50th Anniversary

Under new Director David Phillips, the Columbia Festival of the Arts will be back at the Lakefront in Town Center Columbia this year. Phillips, who has a background as Associate Dean for the Visual,...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis

Colonial Players of Annapolis’ production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a hilarious reimagining of Chekhov in 21st Century Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Written by Christopher Durang and...

Review: ‘New York City Ballet: Works by Balanchine, Peck, and Ratmansky’ at The Kennedy Center

Last evening’s ballet concert at The Kennedy Center was one of those magical evenings of dance. Sipping champagne and not talking politics, balletomanes gathered on the sprawling deck that surrounds...

Report: ‘Noche de Estrellas’ Benefit for GALA Hispanic Theatre at the Organization of American States

GALA Hispanic Theatre’s Noche de Estrellas benefit was a brilliant success, raising money for GALA’s youth education programs and offering inspired performances and speeches from diverse artists who...

Review: ‘The School for Lies’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

David Ives brings the comedy of Molière, with this hilarious “translaptation,” into the 21st century to delight us all. With The School for Lies, Shakespeare Theatre Company presents another...

Report #1: ‘Callado Conmigo’ (‘Silenced Within Me’) at GALA Hispanic Theatre

The idea of using theater to educate people is not new. The Greeks were doing it way back when, using the great amphitheater at Epidaurus to teach the populace that murder and mayhem would not be...

Magic Time!: “Never Fear Your Own Radical Ideas”: A Q&A with Malic White, Who Plays Max in ‘Hir’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

The young performer, playwright, and self-described gender warrior Malic White is in town from Chicago making a singularly significant debut on a DC stage playing Max, a whip-smart radical queer...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Providence Players of Fairfax

The open living room has a well-lived in look: easy chairs, love seat, kitchen nook off to the side, and plenty of collected knick-knacks. It’s a cozy setting for an adolescent argument, except the...

Review: ‘Doubt: A Parable’ at SeeNoSun OnStage

We live in a world where self-righteous anger is the new god. It’s getting to the point where we can barely shift our torches and pitchforks aside long enough to tweet or post on Facebook. We hate so...

Review: ‘Independence Eve’ at UrbanArias

The two men stand at opposite ends of an urban park, on a day that is a mere heartbeat away from the landmark midpoint in the calendar year. Summer and it is an evening to capture the heat that won’t...

Review: ‘Red, White, and Tuna’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The title alone is fair warning. Red, White, and Tuna is irreverently reverse-patriotic. Let’s break it down: red state (Texas), mixed with a dash of white supremacy and a tangy, Southern flavor that...

‘Doubt: A Parable’ has Press Night Tonight at SeeNoSun OnStage at the Anacostia Arts Center

SeeNoSun OnStage will open a four-week run of Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley’s controversial Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama. The play examines the Catholic Church abuse scandal...

Review: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ at 1st Stage

The late self-taught playwright and poet August Wilson’s ten-play Century Cycle has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, with movie star Denzel Washington committing to bringing that cycle to the...

Review: ‘Bernadette Peters’ at Wolf Trap

There’s something special about outdoor summer concerts: the light breeze, the chirping crickets, the enjoyment of good music in summer. But when you have all that and the performer is Broadway legend...

Review: ‘The Jungle Book’ at Encore Stage & Studio by Emma Kiely

Man’s desire to know the ways of the jungle and its creatures has been captured in Encore Stage & Studio’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The story of Mowgli’s (Ryely Rogers)...

Dangereuse: An Interview with Dorea Schmidt, Eliante in ‘The School for Lies’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

David Ives’s The School for Lies (adapted from Le Misanthrope by Molière and directed by Michael Kahn) has arrived at the Shakespeare Theatre! This charming comedy is at the Lansburgh Theatre now...

Review: ‘Crazy Mary Lincoln’ at Pallas Theatre Collective

Crazy Mary Lincoln, has received an appealing, open-hearted, ardent regional premiere production from Pallas Theatre Collective. The musical focuses new light on the long, woe-filled life of Mary Todd...

Who’s in Town?: Jaime Camil from TV’s ‘Jane the Virgin’ to Receive the Inspiration Award at GALA Hispanic Theatre’s Noche de Estrellas on Monday, June 5 at 6:30PM

Ok, I admit it. I’ve become slightly obsessed with the CW show Jane the Virgin this week. The love triangles, the mysteries, the heartwarming family moments, what’s not to love? In preparing to...

Dangereuse: ‘King Lear’ at WSC Avant Bard

King Lear has sometimes been called the Everest of classical acting. Every great Shakespearean actor must sooner or later face the physically and emotionally exhausting task of playing the part. Some...

Report: ‘A Centennial Celebration of John F. Kennedy’ at The Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (The Kennedy Center) paid elegant tribute to the legacy of its namesake in A JFK Centennial Celebration on May 29, 2017, the 100th birthday of our...