Like the character Amanda Prynne’s (Deborah Hazlett) heart, Private Lives is jagged with sophistication. Noel Coward’s oft-produced 1930 play—which he starred in with his great friend and co-conspirator Gertrude Lawrence—combines Brit wit, class and style in its wicked laceration of upper-class manners and unconventional mores.
Archives for November 2011
Relatos Borrachos/Tales Told Under the Influence
“I’ve been dying for a drink,” says Young Woman (Daniela Alvarado). That’s scene one’s startling first line that unreels Venezuelan playwright Enrique Salas’ glib dialogue. When one drink becomes one drink too many, the results can be high hilarity (pun intended) or a desperate search for dignity and recovery.
Behind the scene with Stay’s creators
A son’s bedtime wish was the creative spark for Stay A bottle of wine can lead to many things, but for playwright Heather McDonald and choreographer Susan Shields, it led to an artistic collaboration.
Arena to stage dinner and a show for our veterans
Arena Stage will be hosting a complimentary Thanksgiving dinner and an evening of theater for America’s veterans and their families on Friday, November 25th, the company announced yesterday.
The Golden Dragon
It started with just a simple toothache…and then everything went wrong. Studio Theatre’s tense, darkly comic production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s The Golden Dragon follows disparate lives forever changed by a single random event. It’s an arresting allegory for the turmoil plaguing our increasingly intertwined global community.
Venus in Fur opens on Broadway to strong reviews
David Ives’ Venus in Fur, which had an acclaimed and multi-extended run at Studio Theatre earlier this year, opened on Broadway last night to strongly favorable critical response.
It’s Give to the Max Day
Local theatres participate in Razoo’s first area 24 hour giving campaign If your inbox has been buzzing today like a door bell on Hallowe’en with theatres asking for small bits of money, it’s because they are taking part in a massive one day fundraising campaign for DC area nonprofits called the Greater Washington Give to […]
The Mistorical Hystery of Henry (I)V
No hystery mere: writer/director Tom Mallan’s purpose is to take the most powerful story in royal English history – Henry of Monmouth’s growth from a frivolous delinquent into the greatest of Kings – as written by the greatest of playwrights, and turn it inside out. In Mallan’s version, the transformance of Hal the Wastrel into […]
Wilder Sins
If your last name is an adjective, people are bound to have some fun on your behalf. For Thornton Wilder, at least, the puns are well-earned. Two of his best known plays — the quiet confidences of Our Town and the rambunctious time-warp that is The Skin Of Our Teeth — are wilder works indeed, […]
Russian play about judicial corruption comes to the Capitol
The City of Baltimore has recently found itself under the harsh gaze of the Russia Today: in a 500 word piece, shaped by an hour or so of immersion in Baltimore’s one-block red zone, and many hours evidently spent watching “The Wire,” a Russian reporter dutifully described Baltimore as a war zone of economic imbalance. […]
John Raitt and Alfred Drake on the Bell Telephone Hour
Alfred Drake and John Raitt must have been the two most important Broadway leading men of the 1940s. There were others of note. There were the Ray Bolgers and the Danny Kayes and the Gene Kelleys. They had hits of note: Lady In The Dark for Kaye, Where’s Charley? for Bolger, Pal Joey for Kelly. There was even […]
Mozart’s Sister
Success stories in the theater world, like in music, film and every other form of art, are predicated first and foremost on one thing: circumstance. All of Rodger’s or Hammerstein’s talent and drive wouldn’t mean bupkis if they hadn’t been born men in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. You spend […]