The Golden Dragon
November 10, 2011 By 2 Comments
It started with just a simple toothache…and then everything went wrong. Studio Theatre’s tense, darkly comic production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s The Golden Dragon follows disparate lives forever changed by a single random event. It’s an arresting allegory for the turmoil plaguing our increasingly intertwined global community. [Read more...]
Venus in Fur opens on Broadway to strong reviews
November 9, 2011 By 1 Comment
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
November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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...]
Wilder Sins
November 9, 2011 By 5 Comments
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
November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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...]
John Raitt and Alfred Drake on the Bell Telephone Hour
November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Alfred Drake and John Raitt must have been the two most important Broadway leading men of the 1940s. There were others of note. There were the Ray Bolgers and the Danny Kayes and the Gene Kelleys. They had hits of note: Lady In The Dark for Kaye, Where’s Charley? for Bolger, Pal Joey for Kelly. There was even the opera star turned Broadway star, Ezio Pinza, who lit up the great white way in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s third big hit of the decade, South Pacific. [Read more...]
Mozart’s Sister
November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Success stories in the theater world, like in music, film and every other form of art, are predicated first and foremost on one thing: circumstance. All of Rodger’s or Hammerstein’s talent and drive wouldn’t mean bupkis if they hadn’t been born men in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. You spend enough time thinking about history’s greatest also-rans – those who could’ve brought generations untold riches, if only they hadn’t been born at that time, in that place, to that person – and your head starts to hurt a bit. [Read more...]
American Buffalo
November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
If you’re like me, you find it easy to justify an eighty-mile trip to see a hot actor – one never seen on Washington stages – play a classic role in a great play. So for that reason, I hied myself hence to Fredrick yesterday in order to see Jeff Keilholtz take on the role of Teach in David Mamet’s American Buffalo at Maryland Ensemble Theatre.
It was everything I expected it to be…and much, much more. [Read more...]
The Boys from Syracuse
November 7, 2011 By 4 Comments
Usually, I am not one for concert opera or musicals, but the concert-style staging this weekend of Boys from Syracuse by Rodgers and Hart at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is a delight. The pre-production materials all announced that this would be a scripts-in-hand event, but we the audience, like most of the performers on stage, soon forgot they were carrying anything. In fact, the lack of behemoth sets and lots of busy staging sets this little gem free to put the emphasis where it belongs – on the music.
[Read more...]
[Read more...]
