In a season of well-worn holiday traditions, nothing brings a more welcome blast of fresh good will than the image of Baby Jesus being lovingly serenaded by powerful gospel music and surrounded with luscious Afro-Caribbean trappings.  Theater Alliance’s spirited production of Black Nativity takes the audience on a joyful, unique ride through the Christmas Story, set to a foot stomping gospel hit parade. [Read more...]

As the doors were shut in her face again and again, the virgin Mary searched desperately for a warm place to bring her beloved child into the world. A blackbox theater is darker and quieter than most mangers – smells less like sheep, too – but fortunately the one at H Street Playhouse proves itself once again to be a bright, welcoming space, thanks to the fervent efforts these twelve singers and performers bring to Black Nativity. [Read more...]

Gretty Good Time is about a paralyzed woman’s fanciful explorations into the meaning of her life with excursions into the devastating aftermath of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Playwright John Belluso adds hefty doses of levity in what could otherwise be dismal and dire issues, and director Jeanette Buck seals the deal with a light touch of whimsy. [Read more...]

Watching Black Nativity, the Granddaddy of gospel musicals, is like going back in time, way back to the inception of what the Christmas season is all about.  [Read more...]

In Adam Bock’s Five Flights, dad so loved his dead wife, he built a huge, human-sized aviary as a Taj Mahal for her soul. Now, recently deceased, dad has left his heirs its crumbling structure. [Read more...]

Under a sunless frozen sky, a middle-aged schizophrenic calls her dyspeptic mother from a pay phone a block from the mother’s home. In a bedroom in a comfortable home, father is dead, mother is absent and a blackhearted young man is planning to do unspeakable things to his little brother. [Read more...]

• St. Mark’s Gospel
• Conceived by Alex McCowan
• Directed by Paul Takacs
• Produced by Theater Alliance
• Reviewed by Steven McKnight

If I ever see Michael Tolaydo at a party, I will make a beeline to his side because he is a brilliant storyteller.  Given the opportunity to tell “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (to borrow the title of a 1965 film about the life of Jesus), he lives up to a tremendous acting challenge.  [Read more...]

•  Ambition Facing West
• By Anthony Clarvoe
• Produced by Theater Alliance
• Directed by Jeremy Skidmore
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

There was a time, in the heart of human history, in which men who sought to escape the straightjacket of their society took to westward travel.  It began in the late 16^th and early 17^th  centuries, when Englishmen – second sons and other members of civilization’s backwater – went to America in great sailing ships, and settled in Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.  It continued through the shadow of the first War. In America, the restlessness drove families further west: to the Mississippi, and beyond.  To California, to Alaska, and to points yet further West. [Read more...]