Archives for July 14, 2012

Native Washingtonian Ron Litman captures the underbelly of the city in his one-man musical satire DC Trash. For the past three years, Litman has worked as a garbage truck driver for the city and brings his experiences to stage in this hilarious and sentimental performance. It’s easy to stay awake and entertained with Litman’s animated […]

The fact that the blog Regretsy has an entire section of its website entitled “That’s Not Speampunk” is a sign that while it may be having a “moment,” there’s also a wide swath of this Victorian-meets-sci-fi genre’s fan base that doesn’t quite get it, often with hilarious results.

 Three days into Fringe and I finally laughed, a lot.  As a ten-year veteran of Fringe Festivals, here and in Edinburgh, James Judd knows how to entertain a room even when it’s only twelve people, at noon, on a Saturday, in the hot and sweaty Fort Fringe Bedroom.

The title should have been my first clue that I was a few decades shy of the AARP age demographic, and therefore may not find this show terribly compelling.  Add to that fact that this musical wasn’t really a musical, and there was little left for me to connect with.

Theatre Du Jour’s Nightmeria makes its intentions clear even before the first line is spoken. When entering the performance space, audience members are not greeted by friendly ushers but uniformed security personnel, metal detectors in hand. Once inside, you’re met with two flight attendants fixed with eerily vacant smiles and set against massive projections of […]

What if nothing that happened to Lord Hamlet actually happened to Lord Hamlet. That’s the question We Happy Few’s production of Hamlet attempts to explore. And they do a wonderful job doing so. 

When a show about death starts with video clips from Mork and Mindy, Woody Allen, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, you can safely assume it’ll have a comic bent. And it’s clear from the first two minutes of The New and Improved Stages of Grief that Mary Carpenter — the show’s creator and performer […]

Some people join the Occupy movement to rise up against a corrupt system. Tommy Nugent showed up with his picket sign to try and get the word “asshole” on national TV.

A middle-aged androgynous person rips off the diaper of someone’s grandmother in the kink-driven throes of a search for “a gift,” then later has that grandmother lick pudding (“I think,” s/he says) off her finger. Now, re-read that.

What was simultaneously the best and worst parts of those choose-your-own-adventure books we’d read as children (right, just as children …) was the fact that you just had to explore every avenue. If you went to the candy shop instead of the library, you’d go back and read the other option, until you’d read the […]