Three Victorian ladies time-travel through the Terra Incognita of man’s recent recognizable universe in Overmyer’s comedic adventure filled with cultural references, wordplay and looming possibilities. As one traveler says, “I have seen the future and it is slang.” By Eric Overmyer Directed by Jackson Phippin
Archives for April 2010
Drama continues over Pulitzer Award
In selecting Next to Normal, the musical about a family dealing with mental illness which received its second chance at Arena Stage, to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Pulitzer Board rejected the advice of its own jury,
Fiddler on the Roof
The national touring production of Fiddler on the Roof, under Sammy Dallas Bayes’ direction, proves to be quite run-of-the-mill. There is still the galloping, finger-snapping rendition of “If I Were a Rich Man”, and the silly yet sincere satire of the small Jewish village of Anatevka. And keeping with tradition – pun intended –
Singing Our Hearts Out cabaret
Life is a Valentine: Courtney Tisch & Karen Lange on Singing Our Hearts Out When I got the call from Karen Lange and Courtney Tisch that they were performing a Valentine’s Day-themed cabaret Singing Our Hearts Out at The Bethesda Theatre. I had recently fallen in love
[title of show]
Backstage shows, such as A Chorus Line, Noises Off! and Kiss Me, Kate are catnip for theater lovers and [title of show] will definitely induce looped swoons in diehard Broadway geeks. You thought you got all the jokes in MetroStage’s Musical of Musical: The Musical? [title of show], a fetching musical-within-a-musical at Signature Theatre, kicks […]
The Last Five Years
After making a splash in Chicago and Off-Broadway in the early 2000’s, Jason Robert Brown’s soulful and intensely personal musical The Last Five Years has gradually become a minor sensation among colleges, local theater, and larger companies alike. Limelight Theatre and 1st Stage have pulled off a production that ably manages the complex storytelling, wildly […]
The Mikado
Delightful, charming, and fun. That pretty much sums up the Washington Savoyards’ lively new production of The Mikado, which opened last weekend in the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Sprenger Theatre. This classic Gilbert & Sullivan confection has been modernized and infused with fresh political jokes that cast well-deserved zingers down both sides of the aisle.
The Liar
Michael Kahn’s robust staging of The Liar whips past at high-speed, like spun sugar gathered from a cotton candy machine. At night’s end, what passes for plot and character has dissolved, leaving only those bouncy rhyming couplets smacking sweet on your lips.
El Retablillo de don Cristobal
Top Pick — On a set littered with sandbags, rifles stand in wooden gun racks. Strains of catchy guitar music filter through muffled explosions of mortars. In the middle of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Federico Garcia Lorca is dead but we’re about to see his playful side in a puppet show that is bawdy, […]
Next to Normal wins the 2010 Pulitzer for Drama
Mon, April 12, 2010 – The Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey musical Next to Normal was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. According to today’s Playbill article, the Pulitzer prize went to Next to Normal, because it “expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.”
Son of a Stand Up Comedian
Starring the acclaimed singer/songwriter Paul Scott Goodman. An authentic Scottish Jewish guitar playing rocker, Goodman tells his story of an artist’s struggle
The Trip to Bountiful
Horton Foote’s classic play The Trip to Bountiful tells the story of widow Carrie Watts, who hopes to escape her Houston apartment to return to her girlhood home in Bountiful.