Once in a while all of the stars align to create a magical theatre event like MetroStage’s production of John Patrick Shanley’s Savage in Limbo. The script, the cast, the direction, the performances, and the venue are all so perfectly in tune that the production inspires nothing but praise.
Archives for September 2011
Theatre community mourns the loss of Gaurav Gopalan, Artist and Scientist
Gaurav Gopalan, an aeronautical engineer who brought boundless energy, a vigorous intellect and startling insight to theater in the Washington area, was found dead in Columbia Heights on Saturday, September 10. He was 35. No cause of death has been announced. [update posted here]
Fahrenheit 451
The cast of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” had a great year last year. Contracts, promotional tours, endorsements, and millions of adoring fans at their feet. What did the cast of “Jersey Shore” do to earn these accolades? They got on television. What do they do on television? They live. And the public lives off the spectacle […]
Stop Kiss
Who can predict what will happen the moment after a first kiss? Those tender, uncertain seconds can reveal worlds about the heart you’ve just touched. But they can also reveal the secret heart of the world around you — an unnerving notion at the core of Diana Son’s gentle, intelligent 1998 drama.
Much Ado About Nothing – Riot Grrrls style
It seems there are three simple rules to staging Shakespeare successfully. One: put the play in a modern setting, like, say, a dive bar in Anytown, country unknown. Second, inject as much action as possible into the working script, quickening the pace to modern tastes. Third, no matter how clunky or inappropriate it may sound, […]
The Habit of Art
To begin with, The Habit of Art is not a play about an imagined encounter between W.H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten, late in their lives. It is a play about a play about this fictional encounter. Imagine Stoppard’s The Invention of Love having a love child with Noises Off, and you begin to […]
Don’t Dress for Dinner
If you are looking for a crowd pleaser to open your theatre’s season, a fine farce like Don’t Dress for Dinner is an excellent choice. 1st Stage launches its new year with an enjoyable production of a famous French classic work from the late Marc Camoletti, best known as the author of the recent successful […]
Knickerbocker Holiday – Concert reading
Some musicals become identified with a single hit song from their scores. The downside of that is that such fame or notoriety can keep us from discovering the pleasures of the rest of the score.
Tosca
Opening night of the Washington National Opera celebrated both a new leader at the helm and a new partnership with The Kennedy Center. Like a marriage ceremony, there is now a commitment on both sides to make this relationship work and contribute to the thriving of both parties. Showing up Saturday night were Washington’s well-heeled […]
Follies
Sondheim’s Follies is back on Broadway, and in this time of earthquakes, hurricanes and political chaos, that’s a good thing. Set in 1971, for two and a half hours it permits us escape into the complicated psychological landscape of four very average folks, two of whom graced the stage as chorus girls in an imagined […]
The Hollow
Who is that boogeyman scaring the gullible and accommodating? Is it the headless Hessian wreaking terror on the residents of Sleepy Hollow, immortalized in Washington Irving’s classic 1820 tale, or playwright Hunter Foster through his world premiere musical The Hollow, at Arlington’s Signature Theatre?
A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun was groundbreaking in 1959 and is heartbreaking in 2011. Lorraine Hansberry’s play about a working class black family in Chicago chasing middle class dreams is vivid, vital and fiercely wrought more than 50 years later in an eloquent and robust production at Everyman Theatre.