Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is a moveable feast for the eyes, ears, heart and mind.  The time period shifts between 1809 and modern day, characters express their philosophical meanderings at the slightest provocation, [Read more...]

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Blake Robison
Produced by Folger Theatre
Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Can Blake Robison, with imaginative staging and a vigorous and powerful cast, breathe sweetness and life into this tired old warhorse of a play? Hah! You might as well ask whether Mike Tomlin can use the old-school virtues of a fierce defense and a low-risk offense to win yet another Super Bowl for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Of course he can! And he does! [Read more...]

Henry IV, Part 1
by William Shakespeare
directed by Paul Mason Barnes
produced by Folger Theatre
reviewed by Tim Treanor

Oh, what a wonderful story this is, the apparently fictional but well believed and beloved account of England’s greatest King, when he was but a drunken sot, the scourge and embarrassment of his father. And what a magnificently powerful job Folger does with it, thrusting us through four-hundred-year-old dialogue into a world almost two hundred years older than that. [Read more...]

• The School for Scandal
• by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Directed by Richard Clifford
• Produced by Folger Theatre
• Reviewed by Leslie Weisman

The Folger’s done it again: taken a classic from an earlier era and turned it into a contemporary cautionary tale of a situation so in-the-moment as to have been heralded, just four days into its run, by a Washington Post Style article dissecting the very phenomenon it portrays.  [Read more...]

• Macbeth
• By William Shakespeare
• Directed & conceived by Teller and Aaron Posner
• Produced by Folger Theatre
• Reviewed by Steven McKnight

In the spirit of an advertising campaign that once claimed “this is not your father’s Oldsmobile,” Folger Theatre’s new production is not your English teacher’s Macbeth (and you should be glad of it!).  This dark, violent thrill-ride of a production is a revelation, one that uses modern staging techniques to return to the play’s core.  Shakespeare himself would heartily approve of a production that emphasizes the bloodshed, supernatural elements, and the madness that give the play timeless appeal to audiences ranging from his lower-class groundlings and to sophisticated modern fans. [Read more...]

• The Second Shepherd’s Play
• By an Unknown Author
• Directed and Adapted by Mary Hall Surface
• Produced by Folger Consort
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

The key to understanding The Second Shepherd’s Play is to realize that the customary penalty for stealing a sheep is death. It seems somewhat counterintuitive to we who can buy a nice package of lamb chops for $5.99. But in a society whose economy was as close to the bone as was that of the shepherds Coll (Bob McDonald), Gib (Aaron Cromie), and Daw (Chris Wilson), stealing a sheep was an act of terrorism.  When, at the height of the Christmas season, the buffoonish Mak (Andy Brownstein) and his shrewish wife and accomplice Gill (Holly Twyford) hit upon the astonishing scheme to disguise a stolen sheep (a Cromie creation, expertly manipulated by Paige Hernandez) as their own infant, they signed their death warrant. [Read more...]

• As You Like It
• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Derek Goldman
• Produced by Folger Theatre
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

As You Like It is kind of a crazy play, and the Folger Theatre’s pleasant production of it does not add to coherence.   In a nutshell:  Orlando (Noel Vélez), youngest son of the late Roland du Bois, goes to the house of his father’s sworn enemy, the usurper Duke Frederick (Conrad Feininger), in order to take on the house wrestler (Scott McCormick).  Why?  Likes wrestling, I guess. 

[Read more...]

By William Shakespeare

Produced by Folger Shakespeare Theatre

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Aaron Posner is one of the best directors at work in Washington. He is an unparalleled interpreter of Shakespeare who justly won two Helen Hayes Awards in three years for his direction of Shakespeare plays.  This time around, he has made a decision so wrongheaded that it has sucked most of the comedy out of Shakespeare’s last comedy.

Posner forgot Trinculo and Stephano.

When I say “forgot”, of course, I don’t mean it literally.  Trinculo and Stephano are there, after a fashion.  Stephano is Caliban’s hand.  Trinculo is a bottle from which Caliban has drunk.  And their riotous, rustic, half-drunken dialogue has been transformed into a babble which Caliban hears, and translates, as voices in his head. [Read more...]

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Co-Produced by the Folger Theatre and the Classical Theatre of Harlem

Reviewed by Tim Treanor

Shakespeare Theatre Artistic Director Michael Kahn has called Shakespeare "a playwright for our town" and in no play is it more evident than in King Lear.  In Lear, power is acquired through lies and flattery, maintained through blood violence, and surrendered, kicking and screaming, in abject humiliation.  The Classical Theatre of Harlem (clearly the lead partner in this production, at least on the artistic side) readily identifies the surreal, hallucinatory intensity of the play, and delivers the goods with the physicality for which it has become justly celebrated.  The cast is stuffed with award-winners, including Emmy awardee and Tony nominee Dr. André De Shields as Lear, and the Director, Alfred Preisser, is a co-founding member of Classical Theatre of Harlem. [Read more...]