Happy Days

If, at times, theatre-going makes you painfully aware of the hours you spend sitting immobile in one spot, you start to have a teeny tiny inkling of how Winnie feels. The high-spirited heroine of Samuel Beckett’s play may have her head in the clouds, but the rest of her body is stuck in a deep, dense mound of earth, visible only from the waist up. [Read more...]

WSC Avant Bard turns the Henry plays inside out

The newly re-named company announces casting for its Falstaff-centric comedy

We all know this story…the one about Happy Hal, the Prince Who Stayed out Late. The heir to the English throne who drank, wenched, gambled and cavorted with cowards, petty thieves and whoremongers while the great monarch Henry IV fretted – and then who, miraculously, recovered his powers when England needed him most, and thereafter set fire to history. [Read more...]

This weekend – WSC’s biggest yard sale in theatre history

Come to Clark Street Playhouse this weekend, where, for three days (June 10 – 12), twenty years of Washington theater history accumulated by Washington Shakespeare Company will be for sale – at yard sale prices.  [Read more...]

The Tennessee Continuum

Playwright Tennessee Williams wrote the truth as he saw it. By having the courage to share his own troubled personal life, he revolutionized American theater. [Read more...]

Night and Day

To say that Tom Stoppard has a way with concepts and words is like saying birds have a way of flying in the air, or the Beltway has a way of congesting in rush hour. He can be trusted to grasp complex ideas and relay the issues via well crafted characters without sounding (too) polemic. [Read more...]

Juno and the Paycock

To understand Juno and the Paycock, and the masterful production it’s getting from the Washington Shakespeare Company, imagine Laurel and Hardy in Beirut. Imagine Ralph Kramden meeting Moammar al-Gaddhafi, or Fred Flintstone at the moment the comet hits, or anything, really, by Brendan Behan. Sean O’Casey creates – and WSC delivers – an uproarious domestic comedy, but instead of a punch line, it delivers a sucker-punch to the gut, which lets in all the cold sad air of the real world. [Read more...]

Let’s get Klingon

WASHINGTON SHAKESPEARE TO REPRISE THE BARD IN KLINGON FOR BBC

TaH latlh heglu’meH. That is the question. In Klingon! And to answer it, acclaimed British actor Stephen Fry (“Wilde“, “Blackadder”, “Bonesto name a few and occasional guest on the BBC hit motor show Top Gear ) will perform a scene from Hamlet in Klingon here next month. [Read more...]

Mary Stuart

Few dramatic works illustrate the twisted and self-serving aspects of politics in as entertaining a fashion as Friedrich Schiller’s Mary StuartMary Stuart is an inspired choice for a time of elections and governmental transition, and it receives an inspired production from the Washington Shakespeare Company. [Read more...]

Richard III

Loaded with action and intrigue and bursting at the seams with an uncommonly large cast of characters, William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Richard III inspires controversy and discussion whenever and wherever it’s staged. And the Washington Shakespeare Company’s new production of the drama is no exception. [Read more...]

Every Young Woman’s Desire

Veronica (Kari Ginsburg), looking frightened and vulnerable, opens the door to her home and walks inside. Before she can close it, a mysterious, mustachioed stranger (Christopher Henley), dressed in black and wearing an enormous handgun, slips in behind her. He demands that she tell him about Peter Brown, someone she immediately claims not to know. [Read more...]