Many of us crave the excitement and immediacy that comes from a really memorable live experience. Sports fans dream of making the pilgrimage to a World Series game, an NBA final series, a Stanley Cup game, a championship boxing match, or most hallowed of all, football’s Super Bowl. While I actually do love seeing talented […]
Archives for September 2013
Caught on camera, Synetic paints The Picture of Dorian Gray
Synetic Theater has built their artistic identity on arresting visuals, stunning physicality, and frequently audacious wit and creativity in storytelling. All of these elements came into play when I stopped by a rehearsal for their upcoming production of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The scene they were rehearsing surrounds the creation of the supernaturally-powerful portrait […]
Animal Crackers
Dismay for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer. The show he’s in’s a snorer. Dismay, dismay, dismay! Poor Captain Spaulding (Bruce Randolph Nelson)—a role immortalized by the original rude boy, Groucho Marx—the other Marx Brothers Chico (Jonathan Brody) and Harpo (Brad Aldous) and any other hard-working performer lashed to this airless and laughs-challenged rendition of the […]
After the Revolution
Getting a leg up from your family is awfully nice. But what happens when that lift suddenly falls away? Such a precarious moment arrives for the idealistic young activist Emma Joseph early on in this appealingly intellectual drama by Amy Herzog, penned in 2010 and smartly produced at Theater J this month as an area […]
Cabaret Barroco: Interludes of Spain’s Golden Age
The sound of a heart pounds pa-pum, pa-pum, and blends into the strumming of a classical guitar. The original music composed and directed by David Peralto is refreshing and primes us for a new world. Eight boisterous troubadours, jeering and cheering, with black stools balanced on their heads, enter from the aisles, to recreate street […]
New Helen Hayes Awards system announced; the community responds
TheatreWashington, the nonprofit entity which conducts the Helen Hayes Awards, Washington’s annual celebration of theater excellence, last night announced that it would henceforth be giving two awards in most categories, based on the number and percentage of Equity actors in each production. The announcement, which theatreWashington made in the Washington Post’s 15th Street Conference Center, […]
Don Juan
Moliere certainly didn’t invent the chauvinist, but he knew a thing or two about the concept. Faction of Fools proves they know a little bit about gallivanting as well with their adaptation of Don Juan. For those not versed in the legend of the centuries-old seducer, Don Juan (Sun King Davis) is a wealthy libertine […]
Detroit
The street names in Lisa D’Amour’s play Detroit sound sunny and full of promise, but the reality is dark and scary for the inhabitants of this first-ring Motor City suburb. The once house-proud and active ‘burb is divided between the Haves, the Have Nots and the Never Hads—everyone clinging to their houses as if to […]
Come Blow Your Horn
American Century Theater’s charming new production of Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn follows the comically mismatched Baker brothers as they deal with mistaken identity, family drama, and romantic misadventures. As the play unfolds, American Century’s snappy, heartwarming production quickly proves it can stand toe to toe with Simon’s massively popular The Odd Couple on […]
Stop Kiss
When Diana Son’s Stop Kiss premiered at New York City’s Public Theatre in November of 1998, the questions caused by the tragic death of Matthew Shepard still hung in the air. Words like “hate crime” and “homophobia,” though much a part of the American experience, had only begun to fall on to the ears of […]
The Marriage of Maria Braun
SCENA Theatre continues to mount vital international works in its 26th year, kicking off the season with a stage adaptation of the 1979 film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, The Marriage of Maria Braun. This cult favorite from the New German Cinema movement is a cultural import worthy of SCENA’s brand, and it’s about time that […]
Hands on a Hardbody, Original Broadway Cast Recording
When you say “the recording is better than the show was” sometimes it is a positive comment on the recording and sometimes it is a negative comment on the show. In this case, it is both. The recording captures fine performances by the likes of Keith Carradine, Hunter Foster, Keala Settle, Jim Newman and the […]