Reviews by Steven McKnight

Steven McKnight DCTS Reviewer Steven McKnight is a recovering lawyer who now works in a lobbying firm and enjoys the drama of political theatre on both sides of the aisle. He admires authors, actors, athletes, teachers, and chefs, and has dabbled in all of those roles with mixed (and occasionally hilarious) results.

Source 10 Minute Plays - Groups A & B

June 28, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Our Reviews

How much play can you fit into ten minutes?  More than you think.  Source Festival 2009 opens with three groups of shorts, before expanding to one act and full length plays.

The Seagull on 16th Street

June 25, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

It takes chutzpah to write new dialogue for Chekhov’s classic The Seagull and to insert Russian Jewish themes that didn’t exist in the original.  While the setting and basic plot remain the same, Theater J’s The Seagull on 16th Street adds dramatic conflicts over the extent

Lincolnesque

June 10, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

A delusional janitor, believing he is Abraham Lincoln, helps write speeches that inspire a political campaign.  In lesser hands, this premise would run sitcom thin. 

Cyrano de Bergerac

June 10, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

Usually, the success of Cyrano de Bergerac depends upon the perfomance of the actor playing the French swordsman with the heart of a poet and the prodigious proboscis.  Yet in the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s quality outdoor staging of the classic work,

Radio Golf

May 28, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

How can African Americans achieve success in a country where they still are a minority in numbers and wealth?  That’s the intriguing issue posed by Radio Golf, the last play in August Wilson’s twentieth century cycle. 

Woman and Scarecrow

May 12, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

A woman on her deathbed faces the regrets of a half-lived life and her imminent departure from a philandering husband and eight children. 

The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall

April 22, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

Henry Blume (Josh Lefkowitz) worships at the altar of Woody Allen, eats anti-anxiety drugs (without effect), writes about paranoia and anti-Semitism to an audience of zero, and lives off the largesse of his furniture-selling parents. He is about to blunder into the funniest play I have seen in DC this year,

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Small Craft Warnings

April 20, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

Draw up a chair at Monk’s Place and have yourself a cold glass of Tennessee Williams. Believe me when I tell you that this is not a bar where you will want everyone to know your name. Small Craft Warnings is a story about lonely losers at a seedy seaside bar; a character study of [...]

Call of the Wild

April 15, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Features, Our Reviews

Rarely do two acts differ so much in content and quality as in the new musical Call of the Wild at Olney Theatre Center.  After a difficult and challenging first act, the work is redeemed by a terrific second.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

April 8, 2009 by Steven McKnight  
Filed under Our Reviews

If you have ever needed an argument for the intimacy and immediacy of the theatre experience, consider Round House Theatre’s outstanding production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Even though the same novel was the basis for an Academy Award® winning 1975 movie, this deeply involving drama impacts the audience in ways that the [...]

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