“There are sixty nine hundred languages in the world,” according to the linguist George, the central of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive.” Half of them are doomed to disappear in the next century.” But there’s one language that, in this Forum Theatre production, is alive and well: ceaseless bickering among couples entering late middle age.
Archives for February 2012
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
Nothing wishy-washy about Olney Theatre Center’s exuberant, child-sized production of the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Here, the Peanuts gang is rendered with such bright, broad strokes they seem to have leapt from the pen of Charles M. Schulz himself.
Betty Blue Eyes – Original London Cast Recording
This is a disc that may be of more interest intellectually than aesthetically for American fans of musical theatre. It is a classic illustration of a basic truth of the musical theatre – Broadway and London’s West End are more than 3,470 miles away from each other. They span a gap greater than the crow […]
Natsu Onoda Power, creator of Astro Boy and the God of Comics
Renaissance woman Natsu Onoda Power is generating a reputation for original, highly inventive performance pieces. Writer, director, designer, theater prof at Georgetown University, Onoda Power is being celebrated for her collaborative, creative process, her exuberant drive and her brilliant devising of new ways to experience theater.
The Magic Flute
Mozart’s Magic Flute at The Puppet Company is as engaging and expressive as it gets for full family fun and entertainment. The story is true to the original with the major songs and arias in tact and colorful characters who bring you into the story.
Cosi fan tutte, so fresh the evening becomes a romp at Washington National Opera
Così fan tutte is one of Mozart’s less popular works and is revered more amongst the cognoscenti than general audiences. Despite its beautiful music, the story has always seemed thin to me, the plot hard to sustain convincingly for its length. Acclaimed director and designer Jonathan Miller has reset this classic tale of love and […]
the 2012 Helen Hayes Awards — and the nominees are …
An impressive array of veteran artists and rookie contenders share the nominees’ list for this year’s Helen Hayes Awards, now in its 28th year celebrating achievement in Washington, DC professional theatre.
Soul stirring Aisha de Haas heats up Josephine Tonight! at Metro Stage
Recently I sat down with Aisha de Haas, jazz chanteuse, Broadway singer, and repertory actress. I had just watched her performance in Metro Stage’s Josephine Tonight! where she’d knocked my socks off playing both Josephine Baker’s mother, Carrie, and “Big Bertha Smith”, Josephine’s vaudeville mentor. I wanted to learn more about this powerhouse singer.
From Shuffle to Showboat
I want you to imagine it is 1927; the week after Christmas. You have bought your tickets, and now your chilly bones sit in a dark corner of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Theater in New York. The billed show is Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. But it isn’t starting; it has already begun. […]
Mime and Clowning classes by Happenstance at Shakespeare Theatre
Shakespeare Theatre Company is accepting registration for two classes being taught by Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell, who together create original stylized works as Happenstance Theater.
Intersections Festival at the Atlas features 700 performers
Philanthropist Jane Lang, who turned the abandoned Atlas 1930’s movie house on H Street into the Atlas Performing Arts Center, a $20 million, modern, state of the art venue was interested in more than running a new facility. She was also interested in those places where dance, music, film and live performance touch one another, and […]
Two world premieres, new LaBute to head up CATF 2012 festival
The Contemporary American Theater Festival, held each year in Shepherdstown, West Virinia is one of the Washington area’s favorite out of town summer festivals. This year’s season, just announced, will feature world premieres by Bess Wohl and Johnna Adams, a new Neil LaBute play about secrets between siblings, a story about an interrogation of Nazi war […]