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Peace
By Callie Kimball
Produced by Washington Shakespeare Company
Directed by Alexander Strain
Reviewed by Tim Treanor 

This, this is why Washington theaters need to produce Washington playwrights - because Washington playwrights understand what Washington audiences want to see from their theaters. We don’t want plays about politics. We work in politics all day, and many of us for several hours afterward. We want to see plays about the things which make politics important in the first place: (more…)

1984
Adapted from a novel by George Orwell by Christopher Gallu
Directed by Jim Petosa
Produced by Catalyst Theater Company
Reviewed by Tim Treanor

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. And Catalyst is in the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, rather than its old digs at the Capital Hill Arts Center. I know this last one is true because I saw them there, with my own eyes, producing a visually arresting, technically flawless, intellectually faithful adaptation (more…)

Maria/Stuart
By Jason Grote
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Here is what happened, all those hundreds of years ago, as re-imagined in Friedrich Schiller’s play Maria Stuart: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, is framed by a forged letter and executed for a treason she never committed, even though her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, knew that she was not guilty. Here’s what happens in the absolutely astonishing world premiere now playing at Woolly Mammoth: Stuart (Eli James) has had his romantic dreams sustained for his entire adult life by a letter which he hides in a bust of Friedrich Schiller - a letter which may have been forged. (more…)

• BEST PLAYS OF 2007-2008
• by Tim Treanor

Have Washington theater prices shot out of sight? When the Helen Hayes Awards announced that attendance for 2007 had dropped for the fifth straight year, we asked our readers why.
(more…)

• BEST PERFORMANCES OF 2007-2008
• by Tim Treanor

Imagine an actor of such power, of such imagination and self-control, that he transforms the stage into a palace, and the steaming heat of downtown Washington into an icy winter’s day in 1352. Such an actor needs no set, or special effects, or lighting beyond bare illumination. The words, written by Shakespeare or Arthur Miller or Moliere, come rolling out of this actor as though he had just thought of them this minute. (more…)

• Theories of the Sun
• By Kathleen Akerley
• Produced by Longacre Lea
• Directed by Kathleen Akerley and Jonathon Church
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Having already established herself as a premium Washington-area actor and director, Kathleen Akerley has now written a startlingly good play - not about playwriting and literature, as you may have been led to believe, but about the sweetness of life itself, and the need for its closing in order to give it meaning. (more…)

• Thicker than Water  
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

 A Fringe Festival invites artists to take risks, and undertake radically innovative techniques to remake storytelling anew. In Thicker than Water, writer-actor Annie Houston uses the riskiest, most radical, and oldest storytelling technique of all: honesty. (more…)

• Thousands of Years - Rome  
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

 This is kind of a cute idea - first-century lovers whose bond is so powerful that it compels them to reappear again and again over the next two thousand years in the Eternal City, notwithstanding war, heartache and death. (more…)

• We Three  
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

 Subtle, closely observed, full of compassion, We Three is a wonderful little play animated by some superb acting, including the best performance I have seen at this year’s Fringe. (more…)

• The Object of My Obsession  
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

 ”We have free Ex-Lax after the show,” playwright Mike Fox announces cheerily during the intermission. He’s joking, of course. But the thought is appreciated, since never before has there been a play so much in need of an enema. (more…)