2018

Review: ‘Motown the Musical’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

The fun of seeing Motown the Musical starts a few hours before leaving for the theater. Just the promise of that glorious oldies playlist is like inner ear foreplay. There isn’t much that puts a...

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...

Shirley Jo Finney and Paige Hernandez Discuss ‘2018 Black Theatre & Dance Symposium’ (Interview)

The University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance is bringing students, faculty, and the community-at-large together for their 2018 Black Theatre and Dance Symposium (BTDS) on...

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: ‘Children of a Lesser God’ at Studio 54

When Mark Medoff‘s award-winning play Children of a Lesser God premiered on Broadway in 1980, followed by the highly-lauded film adaptation in 1986, it provided groundbreaking insights into the need...

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...

Putting It Together – ‘Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,’ by Todd S. Purdum (Book Review)

How do you solve a problem like translating music into words? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Music is a gossamer thing, difficult to pin down with language. As the critic Winthrop Sargeant...

A View From ‘The Mountaintop’: Actors Gilbert Glenn Brown and Karen Malina White on Martin Luther King’s Life, Death, and Legacy (Interview)

50 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on the balcony outside of his room at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. His death at age 39 still reverberates throughout the country, which still battles...

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...

Review: ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ at Spotlighters Theatre

By Kylie Miller Spotlighters Theatre is halfway through their run of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, a musical comedy with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts. This...

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....

Report: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids Perform at the Library of Congress

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 student musicians in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program performed at Library of Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium as a part of a collaboration with the Library....

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: ‘She Kills Monsters’ at Green Globe Theatre

Eighties and Nineties nostalgia is big right now. Adults newish to marriage and mortgages and over the hump of deciding to spend the $10 in their wallet on laundry or beer are starting to daydream...

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: ‘Mean Girls’ at the August Wilson Theatre

If you’ve ever witnessed (or worse yet, experienced, encouraged, or participated in) the “girl-on-girl crime” of high-school cliques, malicious gossip, fierce competitiveness, and vicious...

Review: ‘Wicked Frozen’ at St. Luke’s Theatre

What do you get when you cross the super-popular hits Wicked and Frozen with a Boston accent? The laugh-out-loud musical parody Wicked Frozen, presented by John Lant and making its Off-Broadway debut...

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,...

Review: ‘The Orphan Sea’ at Cohesion Theatre Company

By Kylie Miller Cohesion Theatre Company opened their third production of the season with La Llorona by Cecelia Raker and The Orphan Sea by Caridad Svich, which are playing in repertory. The...

Interview: Dancer Sebastian Haynes on ‘Nederlands Dans Theater’

Nederlands Dans Theater makes its Kennedy Center debut April 4-6. Artistic director Paul Lightfoot brings a program of distinctive works: “Shoot the Moon” (Glass/León & Lightfoot), “The Statement”...

Review: ‘Migratory Tales’ at GWU Corcoran School of the Arts & Design

The inspiration for Migratory Tales comes from multiple sources, according to the play’s creator and director, Leslie Jacobson. Our current and painfully divisive debate on immigration was foremost...

Interview: A Conversation with Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra

The orchestra that makes its home in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall has only had one American music director in the last two generations. So it’s easy to forget that the 100-strong band is, after...

Review: ‘Lobby Hero’ at Second Stage Theater

In the current American climate of daily accusations of “fake news,” public denials of misdeeds, not-so-secret cover-ups of illegal activities, and arbitrary job terminations of public officials at...