Venus in Fur opens on Broadway to strong reviews

David Ives’ Venus in Fur, which had an acclaimed and multi-extended run at Studio Theatre earlier this year, opened on Broadway last night to strongly favorable critical response. [Read more...]

It’s Give to the Max Day

Local theatres participate in Razoo’s first area 24 hour giving campaign

If your inbox has been buzzing today like a door bell on Hallowe’en with theatres asking for small bits of money, it’s because they are taking part in a massive one day fundraising campaign for DC area nonprofits called the Greater Washington Give to the Max Day. [Read more...]

The Mistorical Hystery of Henry (I)V

No hystery mere: writer/director Tom Mallan’s purpose is to take the most powerful story in royal English history – Henry of Monmouth’s growth from a frivolous delinquent into the greatest of Kings – as written by the greatest of playwrights, and turn it inside out. In Mallan’s version, the transformance of Hal the Wastrel into King Henry V was a tragedy, not a heroic romance, and he tells it not from the plains of Agincourt but from the cavernous Boarshead Tavern, where whores and drunkards cavort with the Prince of Wales. Except – they’re not whores and drunkards, but human beings, resolved to squeeze such joy and love as they can against the bitter cold and sea of endless civil war that is 14th-century England. [Read more...]

Wilder Sins

If your last name is an adjective, people are bound to have some fun on your behalf. For Thornton Wilder, at least, the puns are well-earned. Two of his best known plays — the quiet confidences of Our Town and the rambunctious time-warp that is The Skin Of Our Teeth — are wilder works indeed, stretching our understanding of what can happen onstage. [Read more...]

Russian play about judicial corruption comes to the Capitol

The City of Baltimore has recently found itself under the harsh gaze of the Russia Today: in a 500 word piece, shaped by an hour or so of immersion in Baltimore’s one-block red zone, and many hours evidently spent watching “The Wire,” a Russian reporter dutifully described Baltimore as a war zone of economic imbalance. A few days later, Russia Today parroted a Baltimore Sun piece describing Baltimore’s homeless problem. [Read more...]