Landless Theatre is at it again.  Yes, the company that brings you inane post-modern theatre, has hit another one: Devil Boys from Beyond, premiering this February, and though it’s a triple to the right field wall rather than a grand slam, it’s still worthy of a trip to Adams-Morgan. [Read more...]

The Dark Knightmare Before Christmas and  Breaking Hunger

Recent years have seen the music industry taken over by “mashup artists” – DJs who meld numerous popular songs into a surprising, coherent whole. There’s a similar philosophy at work behind the second year of Landless Theatre Company’s wacky, genial Mashup Festival, which invites audiences to see some of pop culture’s most varied and enduring characters clash on stage.  The four-play Mashup Festival is split into two halves, with the first two “all-ages” plays, The Dark Knightmare Before Christmas and Breaking Hunger, showing earlier in the evening­. (My colleague, Steve Hallex, reviewed the latter, raunchier half of the festival). [Read more...]

Night of the Living Golden Girls and TarXXXanadu

This Saturday, I attended DCTS’ annual party at a lovely Thai restaurant near DuPont Circle.  I must say that every moment was enjoyable, but the party really started with Tim Treanor’s toast, followed by the obligatory game of Who Said That.  As we sipped our non-adult adult beverages, slips of paper were passed around with a quote from a reviewer’s work this past year.  After (usually correctly) guessing the reviewer who penned it, we voted on our favorite.  [Read more...]

In his play The B Team, David Holstein, who, it should be noted also writes scripts for the Showtime series “Weeds”, asks and partially answers a question kind of fundamental to our times: can terrorists—and terrorism and suicide bombers—be funny?

The answer will likely come out as something like this: well, yeah, kinda, maybe, sometimes, are you kidding me?, or “Sure, but I’ll deny that I ever said such a thing.” [Read more...]

As paper-thin and disposable as a one-sentence fortune and about as filling as the cookie it came in, Mark Brown and Paul Mirkovitch’s musical pseudo-homage to China is getting a silly, sporadically successful production at DCAC in Adams Morgan, thanks to the eager and disheveled efforts of Landless Artistic Director Andrew Lloyd Baughman, his brother Matt Baughman, and relative newcomer Ben Demers. [Read more...]

Billy (Charles Johnson) is just like you. You have a J.D., an M.D. or a PhD in Political Science; Billy has a PhD in Horribleness. You hunger for a position with those powerful K Street lobbyists or that white-shoe law firm; Billy longs to join the Evil League of Evil. You have someone who you admire at the pinnacle of your profession; Billy has Bad Horse (briefly, Clay Comer wearing the head of a horse). Like you, Billy desires to take over the world. Also, you pant after that hot person at the Laundromat (Stefanie Garcia); so does Billy. You have a moronic wingman; Billy has the sweat-spewing Moist (Matt Baughman). You have an arch-nemesis, who gets all the things you want, and so does Billy. His is named Captain Hammer (Comer). Finally, you have a nom de plume (check out the comments section in this website, or any other). So does Billy: Dr. Horrible. [Read more...]