2020

Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Mother Road’ brings powerful journey to Arena Stage

William Joad is a proud Oklahoma farmer with roots to the land as old and deep as the fields his family has tended for generations. But after decades of dedication, dust and sweat poured into the...

‘The Boy Detective Fails’ is a charming success at American University

“I’m good at finding out the truth,” says Billy Argo (Spencer Coben), the boy-prodigy detective, near the beginning of this clever, quirky, and quite touching musical. So observant of clues is Billy...

A fascinating rendering of ‘The King’s Speech’ at the National Theatre

Given that so many plays and films these days are based on, drawn from or inspired by each other, it is worth examining the differences between these media and the treatments they require. The King’s...

It’s a wild wine-day Wednesday in ‘Happy Birthday Doug’ at SoHo Playhouse

Following his smash hit run with Bright Colors and Bold Patterns in 2017-18, writer/performer Drew Droege returns to SoHo Playhouse for a limited engagement of his latest comedy Happy Birthday Doug....

The New Orchestra of Washington presents a love so powerful it hurts in ‘A Poet’s Love: It’s Complicated’

While much of the city is abuzz with romantic romping this Valentine’s Day weekend, the New Orchestra of Washington will concern itself with the transformative power of love and loss when it presents...

Beethoven in its bones: Faust-Queyras-Melnikov Trio at UVA’s Tuesday Evening Concert Series

When an elite chamber music trio has Beethoven in its bones, the ensemble apparently doesn’t need to spend most of their time together or even come up with a coherent name for the group. All the more...

‘Heroine’ at The Kennedy Center tells the searing true story of a woman’s rape in the U.S. Army

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...

The power of romantic love endures in American Ballet Theatre’s ‘Giselle’

After almost two centuries of gracing the ballet world, American Ballet Theatre’s Giselle, sometimes called the Hamlet of ballet, still has the redemptive power to transform a story of deception and...

DC theater community mourns passing of Victor Shargai

Update: February 13, 2020: The Washington theatre community remains in mourning over the loss of Victor Shargai, long-time theatreWashington board chair, theater lover, and philanthropist, who passed...

Monumental Theatre Company Presents Regional Premiere of ‘Head Over Heels’

Head Over Heels, a jukebox musical comedy featuring music by The Go-Go’s, will launch its first D.C. metro area production opening Monumental Theater Company’s 2020 season. With a book by James...

Pulitzer Prize-winner Nilo Cruz discusses his new play ‘Exquisite Agony,’ now playing at GALA Hispanic Theatre

In a particularly poignant scene in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz’s Exquisite Agony, a heart transplant recipient named Amer has an intimate conversation with Romy, the pregnant daughter...

‘The 39 Steps’ at Constellation: a walk on the hilarious side

For an evening of dry wit and sophisticated, subtle humor, make your way…Oh forget it. Just come to Constellation Theatre’s The 39 Steps for a couple hours of cheesy lines, old situations, new...

Megan Hilty on her upcoming Kennedy Center concert, ‘Smash,’ and love

Football and musicals rarely overlap, but it was eight years ago this month – in the coveted slot right after the 2012 Super Bowl – that Smash, the NBC series about developing a Broadway musical,...

Mint Theater Company pairs two Russian giants in ‘Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories’ at Theatre Row

For the first time on stage, Mint Theater Company brings together two short stories by two of Russia’s foremost authors in Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories, playing a limited engagement at Theatre Row....

Surviving abuse in ‘Chasing the River’ at Chain Theatre

Chain Theatre’s world-premiere production of Chasing the River by Jean Dobie Giebel offers an intense, gripping, and momentous examination of the devastating trauma and ongoing repercussions of...

Synetic Theater delivers visually stunning, ballet-driven adaptation of ‘Phantom of the Opera’

As Synetic Theater races through its rowdy teenage years (not quite 20, yet), they have earned a reputation for finely-honed narrative dance, brilliant original music, and spectacular visual effects....

Women wow in all-female production of ‘A Doll House’ at the University of Maryland

Director Kathryn Chase Bryer’s bold staging of A Doll House—beginning with the alternative translation of the traditional title of this classic by Henrik Ibsen—transforms a 19th-century firebrand of a...

‘Exquisita Agonía’ at GALA examines two families connected by one heart

Playwright Nilo Cruz labels his latest work, Exquisita Agonía, a “family drama.” Actually, the show that is currently playing at GALA Theatre is two family dramas that converge. The first family...

Pianist Ahmad Jamal celebrates seven decades of playing ‘American Classical Music’ in Kennedy Center performance

Nothing speaks louder about a musician’s accomplishments than receiving a standing ovation and cheers from the audience before he plays a single note. NEA Jazz Master and recipient of the Officer de...

Behind the lines: Laura C. Harris talks about seeing stars in ‘Silent Sky’ at Ford’s

When Laura C. Harris bursts onto the stage in Silent Sky at Ford’s Theatre, she is Henrietta Leavitt—hoop skirt and all—fresh out of college, brimming with confidence, and determined to find her place...

A holy night: Folger Consort performs ‘Palestrina’s Perfect Art’ at the National Cathedral

What would it have felt like, I’ve sometimes wondered, to listen, in sublime surroundings, to sounds conveying the deepest devotions of Christian belief, long before the “melancholy, long, withdrawing...

Who is Black? Signature Theatre’s ‘Gun & Powder’ hits a national nerve

It may surprise you (as it did me) that the title of this melodic world-premiere musical does not refer to gunpowder. The word gun means there’s a pistol (which gets dramatically deployed). But the...

Providence Players of Fairfax presents intimate pop-up performance of ‘Venus in Fur’ at Italian Café

Providence Players of Fairfax presents David Ives’ Venus in Fur, a provocative two-person play-within-a-play. In partnership with Falls Church’s Italian Café, this intimate pop-up captivates, thrills,...

Cliff Cardinal’s solo ‘Huff’ at Kennedy Center offers a theatrical high

At the start of this brave performance, we see on a dark stage a young man who is making a suicide attempt. He is wearing cargo pants, a tee, and sneaks and has a food-storage bag over his head. The...

Signature Theatre’s commanding ‘Gun & Powder’ pulls no punches

Raw one moment, richly comic the next. Subtle in one scene, directly challenging the audience the next. The world premiere musical Gun & Powder at Signature Theatre is strikingly effective...

All the world’s on stage as Shakespeare Theatre Company announces 35th anniversary season

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Simon Godwin announced the Company’s 2020/21 Season to a gathering of dedicated theatergoers at the Michael R. Klein Theatre at the Lansburgh on...

‘Red’ director James Bunzli talks about Compass Rose Theater’s new production

James Bunzli, the director of Red, was recently named a Producing Director at Compass Rose Theater. He has been involved in several shows at Compass Rose, from acting and directing to movement and...

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater kicks off a week long run at the Kennedy Center

Looking for a respite from the political chaos that surrounds us? Care to leave your troubles behind? How about an escape to the world of energizing, uplifting dance? Catch America’s favorite dance...

Rorschach’s ‘The Toxic Avenger’ is the campy musical you didn’t know you needed in your life

Poor Melvin Ferd the Third just can’t catch a break. The ladies shun him, the jocks harass him, and the pretty blind librarian he has a crush on? Well, she thinks he’s a scrawny dweeb. But don’t fret...

Shakespeare Theatre Company rescues James Baldwin’s ‘Amen Corner’ from the vault

In May 1955, when Howard University staged James Baldwin’s play, The Amen Corner, Washington Post reviewer Richard L. Coe deemed it a “fine play that merits not only your attention but also future...

Beyond the script: Playwright Steven Dietz talks about ‘Bloomsday,’ a love story in which past and present collide

You don’t have to read Ulysses—or, for that matter, know anything about James Joyce, its author, or Leopold Bloom, its hapless hero—to love Bloomsday. The play, a gentle romance now blossoming in its...

The New Group revisits the Swinging Sixties in ‘Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice’ at The Pershing Square Signature Center

The creative team of Jonathan Marc Sherman (book), Duncan Sheik (music and lyrics), and Amanda Green (lyrics) takes a look back at the sexual revolution of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ through the lens of...

‘The Royale’ at 1st Stage bares a Black brother’s big heart

This play about a boxer packs so many emotional punches into its compact six rounds, you might not know what hit you. As fists fly, bells clang, terse words burst, and the cast claps out each...

Brave Spirits Theatre’s ‘Henry the Fourth, Part 1’ is a triumph of excellent characterization

If you like your Shakespeare characters to behave and react like flesh and blood people, and not esoteric abstractions, Brave Spirits Theatre’s Henry the Fourth, Part 1 is a play you’ll love. Director...

An up-close and personal evening of songs and stories in ‘Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway Starring Patina Miller’ at The Town Hall

“We’re all friends here, right?” And she didn’t just ask; that’s exactly how the radiant Patina Miller, award-winning star of stage and screen, made everyone feel with her open and gracious...

2020 Helen Hayes nominations are announced

At a February 3, 2020 celebration honoring theatre excellence on stages across the Washington area, theatre artists, administrators, patrons, and special guests gathered in the National Theatre’s...

Visionary Bill T. Jones creates a community in ‘What Problem?’ at George Mason University

Known internationally as a visionary man of the theater, Bill T. Jones has built a reputation over the past 38 years for his ability to visualize the human condition through choreography and dance....

‘Loserville: The Musical’ at The FrederickTowne Players celebrates being true to yourself

A high energy musical premiere blasts onto the stage in the FrederickTowne Players production of Loserville. Excellently directed by Matt J. Bannister, with rocking musical direction from Matthew...

Agatha Christie’s ‘A Daughter’s a Daughter’ by The Arlington Players depicts biting family strife

Agatha Christie’s A Daughter’s a Daughter at The Arlington Players features the character of Sarah Prentice: the most hateful, self-centered, pampered, jealous, possessive, resentful, rotten little...

‘Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson’ at Dominion Stage rethinks how racist history rocks on

Dominion Stage has given this rowdy, irreverent, and rollicking rock musical a remarkably woke production that is as rousing as it is reflective and as satiric as it is unsettling. Set in 1800s...

The political becomes personal in Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Miss You Like Hell’

At Friendship Park, on the US-Mexico border just south of San Diego, from 10 am to 2 pm Saturdays and Sundays, 10 people at a time on the US side can see, and talk through a fence, with friends or...

The Mason Cabaret is in splendid voice with ‘The Great American Songbook!’ at GMU

With personality galore and voices full of pizzazz and warmth, The Mason Cabaret in Concert delivered a wonderful evening of Celebrating the Great American Songbook! Under the direction of James...

Carlo vs. Carlo clash in Best Medicine Rep’s ‘Comedy of Venice’

John Morogiello’s new “based-on-a true-story” play Comedy of Venice, having its debut performance at Gaithersburg’s Best Medicine Rep, centers on a feud between two 18th-century Venetian playwrights....

Fellowship for Performing Arts delivers with challenging ‘The Great Divorce’

C.S. Lewis is not for the fainthearted. While his Narnia series may have been the most successful in capturing the public imagination, his fascination with—and ability to articulate—advanced...

Matthew M. Nielson on bringing Shakespeare’s ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ into the 1970s through original music and sound design

Bright and jaunty as a hippie’s tie-dyed shirt, the opening musical number for Folger’s The Merry Wives of Windsor lets the audience know what’s in store. It’s a farce set long ago–well, 1972, to be...

A community torn apart in ‘Book of Days’ is built back up by the St. Mark’s Players

In this small Missouri town, everyone knows everyone and everything. The church where people notice when you’re not in your pew, the factory where your high school classmates put in their shift...

‘The Simon and Garfunkel Story’: beautiful sounds and rapt silence at the National Theatre

Success strikes like a cobra. It mesmerizes, then it strikes. It paralyzes its target, freezes it in the moment. Simon and Garfunkel found that cobra, that success, in 1966 as “Sounds of Silence”...

That adorable bear hits the New York stage with ‘Paddington Gets in a Jam’ at the DR2 Theatre

The latest leg on Paddington Bear’s journey from his native Peru to his adoptive home in London to TV and movie screens everywhere is his stage debut in New York City at the DR2 Theatre in Paddington...

‘Grey Rock’ at the Kennedy Center spotlights the extraordinary in the ordinary

In Grey Rock, Playwright-Director Amir Nizar Zuabi invites us into the home of an ordinary Palestinian family in a small West Bank village. We soon recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary — the...

‘Next to Normal’ makes a triumphant DC return at the Kennedy Center

In 2020, isn’t all of DC just trying to get by with something “next” to normal? We’re going about our daily lives while there’s an impeachment trial going on. A foreign leader was recently...