Washington DC's Liveliest Theater Website
with comments from director Michael Baron and choreographer Matt Gardiner
This winter, there were barricades, bipolar housewives, trombone sellers, biblical characters raising Cain, parodying Sondheimites, gaudy golden lamé jacketed and colorfully dressed dancers, cowardly lions, librarians, and lady composers stealing scenes and offering musical treats on our local stages. Here are eleven scene stealing moments that stole my heart. [Read more...]
Albee, who writes fierce dialogue, has a reputation as a fierce, and fiercely guarded, man. I found him to be completely otherwise – open, gracious, optimistic and full of laughter. His answers to my questions were enormously polished and succinct, but they were also thoughtful and substantive. He spoke extensively on his writing process, which many writers are unwilling to do, and he gave an understanding of characters and events in A Delicate Balance which help us unlock the human heart of that play. [Read more...]
in Montgomery College’s Cultural Arts Center in downtown Silver Spring, MD. “It’s going to be state of the art.” Artistic Director Richard Henrich told us. “An acoustically tuned space that will really surprise people.” Although Henrich breaks out in a big grin when asked, the company is keeping its season opener under wraps for now. [Read more...]
It is easy to praise Chazz Palminteri’s acting ability in bringing nearly a score of colorful characters to life in his one-man show A Bronx Tale. Equally impressive is his ability to craft such a rich and poignant semi-autobiographical memoir.
Palminteri paints an affectionate portrait of his childhood Bronx, a place where kids grew up on the street corner nurtured by doo-wop music and their mother’s pasta sauce. [Read more...]
Actress Kathleen Chalfant, perhaps best known for her role as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s Wit (winning her numerous awards including an OBIE), began her career in New York in 1972. She has played an astonishing range of roles written by playwrights such as Jules Feiffer, Christopher Durang, Eve Ensler, Samuel Beckett, Alan Bennett and Tony Kushner (Angels in America earned her a Tony nomination). She is in town to portray Agnes in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, now in production at Arena Stage.
In an Arena Stage interview, Ms. Chalfant described the playwright: “I admire Albee’s writing deeply. There is never a false word. Albee’s language carries an actor rather than the other way around. His language is the roadmap which leads me, the actor, into the world of the play.” Here, we investigate the world of A Delicate Balance, and the life of this celebrated actress. Our interview with Edward Albee will appear shortly. [Read more...]
I have always regarded the 1958 decision to award the Best Musical Tony® to The Music Man over West Side Story to be one of the greatest “what were they thinking” moments in theatre history. Yet after seeing the utterly charming Washington Savoyards’ production of The Music Man, I get it. [Read more...]
An old man with a corona of gray hair, (Brian Hemmingsen) sits like a sphinx, staring straight out in silence, palms face down on a beat-up desk. Let that image of Krapp nest in your mind. Rest assured, we’re in Beckett’s theatre-of-the-absurd, where every word is cherished, like a profound poem.
As Krapp stirs to life, he searches his pockets for a key ring, peers at one in the dim light, hobbles to the front of the desk, [Read more...]
This workshop production of Anna K provides a unique look at a well-worn tale. The adaptation by Jacqueline E. Lawton, set in 1920′s Paris, drops hints about pivotal social change along with elements of hedonism, early Dada artistic expressionism, and of course, the ever present tug of love and duty. So many disparate elements would have a tendency to be a muddled mess, and there are, in fact, some murky moments as characters struggle to find their voice and true motivation, [Read more...]
The Story of My Life - Broadway opened its doors to this little musical, giving it maximum exposure after its early days off Broadway in Canada and at the Goodspeed in Connecticut. That may have been a mistake. For I call it “little” in the sense that it has only two characters onstage, virtually no scenery, and a score that consists merely of monologues with musical underscoring. There are no “songs”, no choreography, and no size. What it does have in its collaborators, Neil Bartram (music and lyrics) and Brian Hill (book) are two writers of talent and imagination [Read more...]
The funniest part of this fitfully amusing 1920′s Russian comedy is its premise: a scientist transplants some human organs into the body of a dog, and the dog thereafter becomes an important Party apparatchik. But this is no Soviet Being There; Sharikov (f/k/a Sharik the Dog, played by James Gagne) rises to no position higher than Chief Catcher of Stray Cats. Bulgakov’s point (and thank God for program notes!) appears to be that contrary to accepted Marxist thought, there is no changing the basic nature of a living creature. A dog will always be a dog, and acquisitive man will always be acquisitive man. [Read more...]
I AM THEATRE (TCG) American Theatre Wing Interviews