If you’re too ADHD to make a habit of seeing Shakespeare on the stage, there’s now a special show for you. The We Happy Few DC theatre company has bought a rollicking, movement-based, celestial liquor-filled 90 minute version of The Tempest to The Shop at Fort Fringe. The actors wear simple, tight-fitting costumes, there’s original […]
Archives for May 2013
A stunning Show Boat has docked at The Kennedy Center
It’s nearly certain that most aficionados of the American musical theatre would agree that Jerome Kern (Music) and Oscar Hammerstein II’s (Book and Lyrics) Show Boat, based on Edna Ferber’s novel, is one of those memorable shows that has – and will continue to – withstand the test of time for good reason. Its glorious […]
A handsome production of Pinter’s No Man’s Land by WSC Avant Bard
“This is a very pleasant room,” the garrulous Mr. Spooner (Christopher Henley) says to his host, the silent, opaque Mr. Hirst (Brian Hemmingsen), and indeed it is, as it is festooned everywhere with alcohol, of every variety, in large bottles and small. Hirst has met Spooner in a bar in a skuzzy town midway between […]
Smash 2:14 The Phenomenon
My dear readers, I am so, so, so sorry. After my praise of last week’s episode, I have to imagine that a handful of you, or perhaps even one, responded along the lines of, “Oh, how exciting! John clearly knows what he’s talking about and I will hereby watch next week’s Smash with a renewed […]
Actéon
Opera Lafayette bounded onto the stage at the Terrace Theatre this week offering a “post-modern” baroque opera that was both elegant and fresh. Artistic Director Ryan Brown teamed up with choreographer Seán Curran in a remount of Actéon, a minor classic by seventeenth century French composer Marc-Antoin Charpentier, that Brown’s company has given us straight […]
Other Desert Cities
Jon Robin Baitz’ fitful exposé of a coiffured, political-celebrity family in extremis, Other Desert Cities, the hit of the 2011-12 Broadway season, is a cool, captivating examination of the cracks in family myth and the slippery nature of truth.
The Golem – a bracingly bizarre chiller
It’s great to say an actor is self-possessed, but a little extra so when describing Daniel Flint’s mind-warping, shape-shifting performance in his one-man adaptation of “The Golem,” Austrian author Gustav Meyrink’s deeply creepy 1914 novel about the inner — and outer — demons walking among the residents of Prague’s Jewish Quarter at the end of […]
Topdog/Underdog, searing commentary at Everyman
Something shocking happens at the end of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play Topdog/Underdog, now making its Baltimore premiere at Everyman Theatre, that is so shocking, it colors one’s memory of the entire play. What, at first, starts off as a rousing comic drama makes a conversion to searing social commentary, all in the span of […]
Beneatha’s Place, ready to open at CenterStage, to be featured in upcoming PBS special on Raisin in the Sun’s legacy
When the world premiere of CenterStage’s production of Beneatha’s Place by Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah joins with their production of Clybourne Park on May 15th, the full rotating repertory series which shares a single cast and set of designers will be complete.
OPTIMISM! or Candide’s Voltaire, sparkling wit in rhyme at Spooky Action
In which Spooky Action Theater’s production of OPTIMISM! and its bow to the great Voltaire inspires Hunter Styles to let loose his inner poet.