We will remember 2010 as the year in which Arena Stage received three Helen Hayes nominations for outstanding resident musical and no one else – not even the venerable musicmeisters at Signature – got more than one. We will remember 2010 as the year in which Folger Theatre received three nominations for outstanding resident play. […]
Archives for February 2011
Erin Weaver from Comedy of Errors
Erin Weaver on playing Luciana in the Folger’s The Comedy of Errors It didn’t surprise me when Erin Weaver was awarded The Helen Hayes Award for her performance as Thomasina Coverly in Folger’s Arcadia; I have been a fan of hers since I saw her face full of schmutz and swinging an oversized broom while […]
One Flea Spare
If Angels in America, given magnificent voice by Forum Theatre last year, showed us what love in the age of plague was like, Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare shows us plague spread out on a loveless plain, where pain thrives in the absence of mercy. Another way to say this is that One Flea Spare […]
INTERSECTIONS festival starts this weekend
INTERSECTIONS: A New America Arts Festival, now in its second year Artists know full well that when a new project debuts, it’s not always clear who’s going to show up to see it. Given the constant challenges of reaching and cultivating an audience, the idea of getting a whole festival up on its feet can […]
West Side Story on tour
Richard Seff, on vacation, leaves the beach to see the West Side Story touring company The Broward Center of the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale is currently presenting the recent revival of West Side Story, following its two year run at the Winter Garden on Broadway. When it closes here on February 27th, it will […]
Dancer Ryan Watkinson tells us how to succeed on Broadway
When a local talent makes it to the Big White Way – and is about to open in the new revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying starring Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter” and Equus) – you can’t help but smile and applaud his efforts.
Work by Austin, Bradbury, Platt to headline Round House season
Round House Theatre will continue its traditional attention to classic literature during its 2011-2012 season, the Company has announced, producing adaptations of much-revered novels by Jane Austin, James Agee and Ray Bradbury. But it will also feature the world premiere of a take on the Odyssey by emerging playwright Jason Grey Platt, whose seek/strive/find provoked […]
Project Brand New 2.0
Here and gone in the twinkling of an eye, Round Two of Solas Nua’sProject Brand New” opened and closed at Flashpoint’s Mead Theatre Lab in one weekend with a quartet of works-in-progress, direct from the always bubbling artistic cauldron of Dublin’s theatrical Fringe scene. More or less one-person shows, the featured works included excerpts from […]
Gary Lee Maker, superstar audience member, dead at 68
Gary Lee Maker, who once organized a little theater for the English-speaking community in Italy and later became one of the most loving supporters of professional theater in the DC theater community, succumbed to cancer on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at the Casey Hospice in Rockville, MD. He was sixty-eight.
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 […]
Cymbeline
Cymbeline is a rarely performed play by William Shakespeare. Washington’s own Shakespeare Theatre Company had never previously mounted it before its current production. Now there are two productions in the area, and, in many ways, the little Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has found a way to tackle the difficult play in a more honest rendition.
Jack and the Beanstalk
Fe-fi-fo-fum! This famous line from the classic Jack and the Beanstalk will resonate with pre and elementary school-age kids when they see the show currently playing at The Puppet Company in Glen Echo Park, Maryland.