Washington DC

Review: ‘Midwestern Gothic’ at Signature Theatre

A native Midwesterner myself, I was eager to see Midwestern Gothic, Signature Theatre’s new show that is being touted as Misery meets Fargo, a thriller musical in the vein of Sweeney Todd set “in the...

Review: ‘Pike St.’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Even as fear and animus split the human race asunder, great authors have reminded us for millennia that we really are all one. From the ancient Roman playwright Terrence (“I am human, and nothing...

Review: ‘Improvaganza-A 3-Night Improv Festival’ Presented by Howard Community College’s Arts Collective

Thursday, March 30, 2017, the fun began in The Studio Theatre at Howard Community College with the start of Improvaganza-A 3 Night Improv Festival (with the additional bonus of three Master Classes in...

Review: ‘King Lear’ at George Washington University

Director Leslie Jacobson has book-ended Shakespeare’s dark tragedy King Lear with lyrical and lovingly-lit tableaux of the mad king’s court as if in a fairy-tale photo op—Lear regal on his throne, his...

Review: ‘Battlefield’ at The Kennedy Center

In The Empty Space Peter Brook declared that the stage has “two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.” In Battlefield, his collaboration with Marie-Hélène Estienne, those two...

Review: Hamburg Ballet: John Neumeier’s ‘The Little Mermaid’

In this production, John Neumeier adapts the classic 1837 tale by Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid. The production, not only explores the story of a young woman who wishes to have a human...

Review: ‘Faun’ at The Next Ice Age

The Columbia Figure Skating Club put on its annual spring show at the Columbia Ice Rink last Saturday and Sunday. The theme this year was Sing into Spring with two distinct parts. The first part...

In the Moment: A Talk with the Pipeline Playwrights: Part Two: Patricia Connelly and Jean Koppen

This is the second installment of In the Moment columns focusing on the Pipeline Playwrights. Pipeline Playwrights is a small collective of accomplished Northern Virginia women playwrights. Pipeline’s...

Review: ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, directed by Jen Sizer and produced by Maureen Rogers, opened at Laurel Mill Playhouse on Friday, March 24th. The script was written in 1939 at the end of the...

Magic Time! ‘Dry Land’ & ‘What Every Girl Should Know’ at Forum Theatre

I’ve seen some harrowing-to-watch theater in my time, but I recall nothing as excruciating as a particular scene in Dry Land, now running at Forum Theatre. The play by Ruby Rae Spiegel is set in the...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘Three Sisters’ and ‘No Sisters’ at Studio Theatre

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DCMetroTheaterArts writers who saw the same production—in this case the same two productions, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Aaron...

Review: ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ at Providence Players of Fairfax

In a scene of fierce confrontation between Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell in Providence Players’ production of To Kill a Mockingbird, Ewell insults Atticus in such a vicious way, that one wonders why...

Review: ‘Well’ at 1st Stage

“Social ills” is a term often used to name a problem without caring about the people affected by it—as in the phrase “racism and other social ills.” It’s a way of keeping one’s distance by making the...

Review: ‘NSO Pops: Sophisticated Ladies: 100 Years of Ella & Company’ at The Kennedy Center

Acclaimed vocalists Capathia Jenkins, Sy Smith and Montego Glover joyously hopped the A train to Harlem along with the NSO Pops in tribute to the Queen of Jazz in Sophisticated Ladies: 100 Years of...

Review: ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ at The Catholic University of America

Who would have thought that an evening of love, ambition, betrayal, violence, and death could be so enjoyable? That is precisely what last night’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor at The Catholic...

Review: ‘Tribulation Periwinkle: Civil War Nurse’ at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion

In commemoration of Women’s History Month, Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion’s Victorian Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Tribulation Periwinkle: Civil War Nurse. Adapted and directed by Josh...

Review: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Mount Vernon Community Children’s Theatre

I don’t think this is Virginia anymore, Mount Vernon Community Children’s Theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz transported the audience from Munchkin Land to the Emerald City all down a yellow...

Review: ‘Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali?’ in Collaboration with Sundance Institute Theatre Program at The Kennedy Center

Sometimes a story is so unique it needs no explanation. Sometimes a story dares you to disbelieve. Sometimes a story… Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali? is such a story. And as written and...

Interview: A Q & A with Arts Collective@HCC’s ‘IMPROVAGANZA’ Participants: Part One

Howard Community College’s Arts Collective’s What Improv Group?! is presenting Improvaganza, HCC’s (and Howard County’s, too) FIRST Improv Festival with Master Classes, on March 30, 31 and April 1,...

IMPROVAGANZA: Improv Festival and Improv Master Classes at Arts Collective @HCC

Howard Community College’s Arts Collective’s What Improv Group?! presents… IMPROVAGANZA! A Three-Night Improv Festival Mar 30, 31 & Apr 1, 2017, at 8pm in HCC’s Studio Theatre at the Horowitz Center....

Meet the Cast of Providence Players’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Part 2: Mihara India, playing Calpurnia – by Julie Janson

The Providence Players of Fairfax will soon premiere the third production of its 19th season, To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Christopher Sergel, directed by Beth Gilles-Whitehead. Tickets for this...

Meet the Cast of Greenbelt Arts Center’s ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’: Part Four: Christa Kronser, and Joey Rolandelli

In Part Four of a series of interviews with the cast of Greenbelt Arts Center’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, meet Christa Kronser (playing Olive Ostrovsky), and Joey Rolandelli (playing...

Review: ‘Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo’ at The Kennedy Center

Men in tights and pointe shoes ballet super seriously and have fun doing it. The all-male comic ballet company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo returned to the Kennedy Center March 21 with a...

In The Moment: ‘The Sound is the Kicker’ in Scena’s ‘The Night Alive’

Another superior night with Irish playwright Conor McPherson, this time at Scena Theatre under Robert McNamara’s illuminating, layered direction of McPherson’s earthy, sideward glance at damaged...

Review: ‘Antigonón, un contingente épico’ at The Kennedy Center

As the audience gathers in the Eisenhower, antique footage rolls on the screen: people gathering, moving, marching. José Martí, Cuban national hero, poet, and revolutionary flashes on the screen. The...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Prince William Little Theatre by Tamela J. Ritter

It’s probably helpful to be well versed in Chekhov and Greek tragedies to understand many of the in-jokes and allusions in Christopher Durang’s 2012 Tony Award-winning play Vanya and Sonia and Masha...

Review: ‘The Night Alive’ at Scena Theatre

Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive is a story of lost souls seeking redemption, of searching for a light in the darkness. Presented by Scena Theatre, the characters’ cheeky banter...

Review: ‘Donizetti’s Don Pasquale’ at The In Series: Opera & More

Happiness is a theatrical adaptation that successfully reinvents the original. The In Series’ production of Gabriel Donizetti’s 1843 comic opera Don Pasquale, now playing at GALA Hispanic Theatre (for...

Review: ‘Three Sisters’ at The Studio Theatre

As improbable as it may sound, the plays of Anton Chekhov are vivid proof that there is such a thing as joyful melancholy. You can commune with his characters’ misfortunes and acknowledge the...

Review: ‘Mnemonic’ at Theater Alliance

Just now when the world is wracked with wave upon wave of ethnic animus—just now when our country has succumbed to xenophobia not seen on these shores for decades—there comes a work of theatrical art...

Review: ‘No Sisters’ at The Studio Theatre

A shout-out to Studio Theatre co-founder Russell Metheny, who designed the complex on 14th Street, for installing a backstage stairway connecting the dressing rooms of the second-floor Milton and the...

Review: ‘What Every Girl Should Know’ and ‘Dry Land’ in Rep at Forum Theatre

One hundred years separate the young women in What Every Girl Should Know and Dry Land, now playing in rep at Forum Theatre. In Monica Byrne’s What Every Girl Should Know, the four teenage girls are...

Riverside Center For The Performing Arts’ ‘Saturday Night Fever’ Plays Through May 7th

The Riverside Center for the Performing Arts in Fredericksburg, Virginia is excited to present the disco musical, Saturday Night Fever starring Michael Notardonato as Tony Manero. Located at 95...

Review: Jay Leno at The Kennedy Center

Iconic television host, celebrated comedian and 2014 Mark Twain recipient Jay Leno returned to the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall Friday night amped to get the trifecta of St. Patrick’s Day, March...

Review: ‘Grug & the Rainbow’ at The Kennedy Center’s Family Theater

A colorful story wowed the kids and their parents at today’s 1:30 PM performance of the Windmill Theatre Company of Australia’s Grug & the Rainbow, directed by Sam Haren, which ends its brief visit...

Review: ‘Mad Libs Live!’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Mad Libs Live! sounds like a political gathering many would want to avoid. But happily it turns out to be a (Fill-in-the-Blank) musical providing peppy songs, millennial-rich humor, and random...

Review: ‘Not My Baby’ at Momentum Collective

What defines parenthood? Are children always a gift? The adoption-themed Hip Hop musical Not My Baby by Alexandria, Virginia-based playwright Jason A. Ellis, explores those questions and more. With...

Interview: Michael Bloom, Director of Lisa Kron’s ‘Well’ at 1st Stage

Amy Kotkin recently had a chance to interview Michael Bloom about his upcoming production of Lisa Kron’s Well at 1st Stage. Amy: What initially attracted you to this play? Have you directed it...

Review: ‘Needles and Opium’ at The Kennedy Center

Sometimes the viewer of a theatrical experience can only sit in wonder at the spectacle, not because elephants dance on soccer balls or trapeze artists spiral on silken threads, but because actors sit...

Magic Time! ‘Needles and Opium’ at The Kennedy Center

When I left the Eisenhower Theater last night after witnessing this mesmerizing multimedia marvel, I had a quibble. I had just one, but it could be the most peculiar cavil I’ve ever had about a show....

A Report on Smithsonian Associates ‘Are the Cards Collapsing?: A ‘House of Cards’ Season 5 Preview’ with Professor Stef Woods

Wednesday night I did something very DC, I attended a talk on politics through the Smithsonian Associates. Not divisive politics, but pop culture politics about the show based on DC/ British politics...

Review #2: ‘Parade’ at The Keegan Theatre

Arguments have been made that the theater is supposed to be a “safe place” where patrons can go to be entertained, away from the harshness of the world. Yet there is a large(r) number of people who...

Review: ‘Cinderella: A Magical, Musical Tale’ at The American Pops Orchestra

This is what theater is all about and it was my dream when I started DCMetroTheaterArts 5 years ago-to see a venue filled with parents and kids laughing and clapping and having a great time together....

Review: ‘Ragtime’ at Ford’s Theatre

Glorious! Dazzling! Verve! Bursting at the seams with voices and stories of America’s humanity and originating dreams. These are the words I felt as Ragtime, now at Ford’s Theatre, unfolded before me....

Meet the Cast of Providence Players’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Part 1: Sophia Manicone, playing Scout – by Julie Janson

The Providence Players of Fairfax will soon premiere the third production of its 19th season, To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Christopher Sergel, directed by Beth Gilles-Whitehead. Tickets for this...

Review #1: ‘Parade’ at The Keegan Theatre

An intriguing musical piece of consequential historical value, The Keegan Theatre’s production of the Award-winning musical Parade is unapologetically dark and honest. Based on actual events, the...

In The Moment: An Interview With Playwright D. L. Coburn on The MetroStage Production of ‘The Gin Game’

At a comfortable table at Alexandria’s Extra Perks Coffee Shop and Café, I had the happy opportunity to spend some delightful one-on-one time with The Gin Game‘s playwright D. L. Coburn. Coburn had...

Review: ‘Coolatully’ at Solas Nua

In the fictional village of Coolatully, a quartet of characters grapple with the effects of Ireland’s newest mass emigration. The brief and heady era of the Celtic Tiger was over; a mass exodus was...

Review: ‘Night Watch’ at Bowie Community Theatre

The setting is mysterious, the music is strange, and the lighting is ominous. This is what one will experience when attending Bowie Community Theatre’ Night Watch, a murder mystery by Lucille...

Review: ‘Night at the Wax Museum’ at Encore Stage & Studio

Encore Stage and Studio presents Night at the Wax Museum, a play by Craig Sodaro. A company known for theater “by kids, for kids!,” Encore leads and encourages children who show interest and promise...