2020

A dazzling design in a new adaptation of ‘Paradise Lost’ at Theatre Row

Now playing a limited engagement at Theatre Row, Fellowship for Performing Arts’ production of Paradise Lost – Tom Dulack’s stage adaptation of John Milton’s epic poem of the 17th century – is a...

Britches and Hose Theatre Company presents bold, beautiful ‘Richard III’

By Kelly Hanson William Shakespeare’s Richard III is a masterpiece rife with intrigue, violence, and dark humor. Undertaking such a complicated and beloved production is a bold choice, and Britches...

‘Silent Sky’ at Ford’s Theatre celebrates early female astronomers who reached for the stars

Two generations before the African American space scientists immortalized in the film Hidden Figures propped up America’s nascent space program, another group of pioneering female “computers” huddled...

Behind the lines: A talk with Hend Ayoub, the actor whose performance in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ radiates fury, hope, and joy at Arena Stage

“Read the book. But see the play first!” That’s what Hend Ayoub—the actor who plays Mariam, the empowered first wife of A Thousand Splendid Suns—told me about the show, now in its first DC run at...

Round House’s ‘Spring Awakening’ captures the essence of teenage angst

With her green roots and sneakers that spout “fuck you,” Billie Eilish, who swept Sunday night’s pop Grammys, sings a new song for a new generation. Her 2020 teen angst recalls hardcore punk and rock...

Going for laughs in the doldrums of marriage in ‘Grand Horizons’ at the Helen Hayes Theater

After 50 years of marriage and their move to a retirement community, Nancy and Bill want a divorce and their adult sons Ben and Brian want to do anything they can to prevent it. Amidst the unexpected...

‘The Royale’ Director Paige Hernandez talks boxing, hip hop, and the virtue of politeness

Multidisciplinary artist Paige Hernandez is not a fan of boundaries. Whether performing, directing or teaching, the Baltimore native has made a career out of blending artistic forms and reaching...

‘Red’ by Compass Rose Theater asks provocative questions about art

Compass Rose Theater’s production of Red is a wonderfully powerful production. Set in New York during the 1950s, John Logan’s 2010 play is about the artist Mark Rothko, and it offers profound,...

Washington Stage Guild’s ‘Bloomsday’ is pleasurable, candid production for the heart

Washington Stage Guild’s Bloomsday is a flower of a production. One to gaze at, listen to, and revel in, enjoying the power of words, terrific acting, connections, and confessions. Written by Steven...

Prologue Theatre revisits the day after 9-11 in ‘Recent Tragic Events’

On September 12, 2001, after a stunning halt to nearly all normal activity, life resumed for most Americans. And yet, we knew that everything had changed. Our sense of security was shattered. More...

Clayton LeBouef’s dreamy ‘RS/24’ returns to Anacostia Playhouse

Summoning a galaxy of African American recording stars, this poignant one-act sometimes seems like a sublime dream with vintage music. There are ethereal visions, vivid Afrofuturist visitations, and...

The Kennedy Center’s Alicia Adams on playwright Femi Osofisan’s ‘Not All Canoes Sail Back Home’ and the 2020 ‘Boundless: Africa’ series

There was revolution in the air. Decolonization of Africa was taking shape. The world was on fire. And The Kennedy Center’s World Stages will be providing audiences a taste of those times. “The World...

Celebrating the Lunar New Year with ‘The Emperor’s Nightingale’ at Theatre Row

To coincide with the celebration of the Lunar New Year this weekend, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, now in its 43rd season, has presented a remount of The Emperor’s Nightingale (which made its debut...

‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ at Arena: women fighting their forever war

You will not this season see a more beautiful, emotionally wrenching portrayal of profound love than in Arena Stage’s production of Ursula Rani Sarma’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. Based on Khaled...

Fighting a war on two fronts in ‘A Soldier’s Play’ at American Airlines Theatre

Roundabout Theatre Company’s profoundly affecting Broadway premiere of Charles Fuller’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Soldier’s Play, now playing a limited engagement at American Airlines...

Updated for the 21st century, ‘Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures: Swan Lake’ soars at The Kennedy Center

As you enter The Kennedy Center Opera House, a muted image of a swan, wings spread, neck extended, warms the curtains. The theater darkens, the performance begins, and the movement of flight merges...

Washington Theatre to honor Victor Shargai with a region-wide dedication on February 14

The following news was released today by theatreWashington: The Washington theater community remains in mourning over the loss of Victor Shargai, long-time theatreWashington board chair, theater...

Theater and Policy Salon discusses Attainment, Fulfillment, and Resilience following January 30 performance of ‘Pipeline’ at Studio Theatre

Next Thursday, January 30, please join Theater and Policy Salon for a discussion on Attainment, Fulfillment, and Resilience at Studio Theatre following the 8 pm show of Pipeline. The panel discussion...

15 Questions in 15 Minutes with ‘Emojiland’ MIBSL Max Crumm

Pasadena native Max Crumm was catapulted to fame when he won the 2007 reality TV show Grease: You’re The One That I Want, which landed him the lead role of Danny Zuko in that year’s Broadway revival...

Interview with renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones ahead of world premiere of ‘What Problem?’ at Center for the Arts

Social commentary in a dance performance is not unusual, especially in the modern dance community. But in a week-long residency by The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company at George Mason University,...

Shakespeare meets the Mafia in ‘Romeo & Bernadette’ at A.R.T./NY Theatres

When their date at a lamentable community theater performance of Romeo and Juliet leaves a Brooklyn Girl in tears and a Brooklyn Guy bored to tears, he needs to prove to her that he really is smart...

Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer on directing her play ‘Be Here Now’ at Everyman Theatre

I’d say Deborah Zoe Laufer is having a bit of a moment right now, but it’s been going on so long I think it’s fairer to say she’s having a bit of an amazing career. Laufer’s plays have been produced...

Lampooning the biggest hits of the Great White Way in ‘Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation’ at The York Theatre Company

Conceived, written, and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation, the latest installment in his outrageous parodies of the shows and stars of the Great White Way,...

Getting a hometown kick out of ‘Kinky Boots’

Sizzle sells, or as Kinky Boots proved on Broadway in 2013, “The Sex Is In the Heel.” Why was the musical named Kinky Boots? Maybe Fetish Footwear didn’t have quite the same kick. … Sorry. Toby’s...

‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ at Folger Theatre: stellar comedy and groovy fashions

There are moments when art and life are so wittily and intimately entwined, you can feel the vibe without a word being said. Given the joyful display of color and power at this weekend’s Women’s...

Channeling chutzpah in ‘Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World’ at Mosaic

Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World—the award-winning play now enjoying its DC debut at Mosaic Theater—is as delicious a romp as any that’s come along in a while. Billed as a romantic comedy,...

StateraArts Launches DC Area Mentorship Chapter for Womxn+ in the Arts

Female, female-identifying, GNC, and Trans theater artists in the Washington, DC area will soon have a new opportunity for career mentorship. Statera Mentorship recognizes that women, gender...

Mosaic goes rom-com with ‘Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World’

This thoroughly delightful offering from Mosaic Theater Company has all the makings of a lighthearted rom-com. Boy picks up girl. He invites her to his place. She initiates sex. It’s hot. Though they...

‘Spring Awakening’ is more relevant now than ever. Round House’s young actors tell us why.

Spring Awakening has never been a shy musical. Based on German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1891 tale of teenagers awakening to their sexuality amongst adults who failed to provide any sexual...

Laughs aplenty in Ken Ludwig’s ‘The Game’s Afoot’ at Reston Community Players

Reston Community Players’ production of The Game’s Afoot is a lighthearted, murder-mystery comedy. The comedy was written by American playwright and Tony Award winner Ken Ludwig, of Lend Me A Tenor...

In the ‘Pipeline’ at Studio Theatre, a Black son’s legacy of rage

The set for Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline at Studio Theatre could not be any whiter. Its white walls of freshly painted concrete blocks span the breadth of the stage and extend around the audience....

2019 WATCH Award Nominations

In a ceremony at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, the WATCH Award committee announced the 2019 WATCH Award nominees. 101 productions (40 musicals, 61 plays) were adjudicated in 2019. The...

Mother and son fight to stay afloat in ‘Pipeline’ at Studio Theatre

The pipeline in the title of Dominique Morisseau’s play is the “school-to-prison pipeline” affecting young African-American men. Fueled, as Studio Theatre’s dramaturgical notes explain, by a...

Haunting memories of a troubled past in ‘My Name Is Lucy Barton’ at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre

Is it ever truly possible to escape the pain and turmoil of the past or will the disturbing memories always be there to haunt you and to impact your present life? That’s the issue at hand in My Name...

Comedic twist on Hamlet, John Barrymore, and theater archetypes in ‘I Hate Hamlet’ at The Castaways Repertory Theatre

I Hate Hamlet invites the audience to spend an evening with a young man plagued by indecision in a marvelous modern re-telling of Hamlet’s own quandary. With ghosts that appear upon the clock striking...

‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria is a comedic romp through the lines of succession and love

After a lifetime of believing he was a humble nobody, Montague “Monty” Navarro learns he is a long-lost member of the D’Ysquith family and the 9th in line for the family earldom. Determined to seek...

American Pops Orchestra cleverly re-imagines ‘The Pied Piper’ at Arena Stage

The weather outside was surely cold and cranky. But the outside world could be quickly forgotten as the American Pops Orchestra (APO), led by Maestro Luke Frazier, gently took children and adults by...

Learning to improvise with confidence and commitment in ‘Show Up, Kids!’ at The Kraine Theater

Imagine you’ve got tickets to the theater and the star attraction gets stage fright and sends a note that she’s not coming. But the house is full and the show must go on, so if you’re...

Jazzmeia Horn makes her return in the new jazz club at the REACH

Jazz vocalist, Jazzmeia Horn, returned to her home at the Kennedy Center on Saturday evening to deliver the first performance in the REACH’s jazz club, Studio K. Perhaps there is no better artist to...

4615 Theatre’s gripping ‘A Measure of Cruelty’ rips open three men’s wounds

The casual cruelty that constructs men’s certainty they’re real men—and the cost of that violence to others and to themselves—comes under scathing scrutiny in Joe Calarco’s shattering one-act A...

TOSOS celebrates blues legend Alberta Hunter in ‘Leaving the Blues’ at The Flea Theater

From her meager beginnings in Memphis through her rise to international fame and triumphant comeback after 20 years of service as a nurse, the life and times of renowned blues and jazz...

Charming ‘Leading Ladies’ pleases at Vienna Theatre Company

Leading Ladies is a charming little farce written by Ken Ludwig. Directed by Eleanore Tapscott, this production at Vienna Theatre Company is sure to be a popular, audience-pleasing production. The...

Songs of love and war in UrbanArias’ brilliant ‘Glory Denied’

If your parents taught you that opera is the ultimate blend of words and music, where both elements are dependent on the other and that the end result is far more than the sum of its parts, and if you...

Pianist Yefim Bronfman dazzles, while NSO disengages under guest conductor Gemma New

Nature, nuance, or its lack thereof, were central themes when the National Symphony Orchestra welcomed conductor Gemma New, pianist Yefim Bronfman, and the young composer Salina Fisher to Washington...

For actor Justin Weaks, the diverse content produced in DC theaters was reason enough to move here

In his five years on DC stages, actor Justin Weaks has played an impressive array of characters written by contemporary African American playwrights. It is a dream he feared would never become reality...

‘Sheltered’ at Theater J hits home in America right now

A gathering stormcloud looms over this exquisitely wrought play by Alix Sobler. “How bad is it going to get?” a character wonders aloud. No one can answer. “It can’t go on like this much longer, can...

Theater J examines world history, good and bad, in ‘Sheltered’

Alix Sobler’s play Sheltered, based on real-life characters, is a rarity. It is a history play that doesn’t fall into the trap of portraying a period in history in such detail that it forgets to...

Rueful romance in ‘Now and Then’ by Upcounty Theatre

Sean Grennan’s Now and Then, receiving its East Coast premiere courtesy of Upcounty Theatre in Germantown, Maryland, deals in regret anticipated and recollected, and inquires about the possibility of...

MLK’s final evening is imagined in NextStop Theatre’s ‘The Mountaintop’

The Mountaintop by Katori Hall is a remarkably affecting play full of humanity, faith, unexpected humor, and the Almighty. Strikingly directed by two time Helen Hayes award recipient Kevin S....

‘Quadrille’ at Greenbelt Arts Center is a four-handed game of romance and chance where true love prevails

In a veddy, veddy proper tale about class differences, gender roles, secret lovers and the pitfalls of an arranged marriage, playwright Melynda Kiring is quite right that “the fun in this play is the...