Splinters

We have nothing in our lives as valuable or as vulnerable as our children, and for many parents their children’s youth is a nightmare of fragility. Their kids are at any moment potential prey to disease, to accident, to their own bad choices and, increasingly in our sad age, to slimy predators whose very existence is an insult to their Creator. [Read more...]

Johnny Meister and The Stitch

Pulsing with snarling, furious energy, Solas Nua’s headlong production of Rosemary Jenkinson’s streetwise play Johnny Meister and The Stitch is not for the faint of heart. A nifty and perhaps intentional prelude to DC’s upcoming Capital Fringe fest—it weighed in at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe –this down and dirty two-man drama whisks you away, uninvited, to the dangerous, impoverished back streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland where two angry young men square off for a final, inevitable smackdown. [Read more...]

The Pull of Negative Gravity

What is worse – the worry of having a loved one in a distant war or the pain of dealing with his return, crippled both physically and emotionally?  Both situations are experienced by the characters in The Pull of Negative Gravity, a dark but gutsy choice as the inaugural production of the Welders Theatre Company.  It is a powerful and haunting work, one that this reviewer won’t soon forget. [Read more...]