Usually when theatre tackles the subject of art is does so through the eyes of artists (Red, Sunday in the Park with George), or at least looks at art through the lense of educated men (Art). Yet the brilliance of Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters comes from its fresh approach of showing the impact of […]
Archives for September 2013
Gee’s Bend
MetroStage’s production of Gee’s Bend is everything I could possibly hope for. The story spans seventy years in ninety minutes and explores characters behind the famed Gee’s Bend quilts by focusing on a mother and two daughters in an isolated part of rural Alabama. The small African American community tucked into the “bend” of the […]
Tristan and Isolde
There are many brave aspects of this elegantly sparse production, including its hypnotic single set of rippling silk walls and composer Richard Wagner’s romantic yearnings stripped-down to their essence. Director Neil Armfield has pared so much “production” away that it feels like a chamber opera with the focus concentrated on the interior thoughts and emotional […]
GALA’s world premiere: interludes from Spain’s Golden Age. We talk with director Jose Luis Arellano Garcia
A play composed of interludes? In pursuit of tracking down what I suspected would be an interesting story about GALA Hispanic Theatre’s world premiere of Cabaret Barroco: Interludes of Spain’s Golden Age, I sit across a table from the director, José Luis Arellano García, from Madrid, Spain. Right away, there is rapport. He tells me […]
Philip Goes Forth
George Kelly is one of those excellent playwrights who flourished in the Golden Age of Broadway. Born in 1887 in Schuylkill Falls, Pennsylvania, he was the seventh of ten children born to the ‘remarkable “Philadelphia Kellys”. One of his brothers, Walter C. Kelly, was a vaudeville headliner, brother John sired Grace Kelly the film star, […]
National Geo debuts Bell
Bell rings with truth, a fitting tribute The tribute to the life-loving and life-changing inventor Alexander Graham Bell would be welcome on any stage but feels very much at home in the Grosvenor Auditorium, where National Geographic Live is debuting the new one person play, their first foray into theatre production. The National Geographic Society […]
Heidi Blickenstaff in cabaret at Signature
Like any respectable musical theatre nerd, I reveled in seeing Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen’s ‘little show that could,’ [title of show], make it to Broadway in 2008. The hilarious musical theatre jokes, strong score and book, and more than solid cast, it was all so good that – after seeing the insanely electric first […]
Agnes Under the Big Top
I did not enjoy the circus growing up. The attractions smelled of woodchips and perspiration, the animals looked too large for their cages, and God only knows, I’d think to myself, when that so-called tent-pole is going to give. There seemed to be so much at stake. Written by Aditi Brennan Kapil and directed by […]
Margo Seibert lands starring role in new Broadway musical, Rocky
If we ever wonder what the true worth of regional theatre is, and, as one of the busiest theatre hubs in the country, in particular what it is here in Washington, perhaps part of the answer is that it gives actors a place to start and develop professionally. It is with great pleasure that we […]
The Glass Menagerie
Just when you think you don’t have it in you to see a classic play for the bazillionth time and you clump to your seat thinking that it is too dang nice out to sit in the dark for nearly three hours and that the Orioles really need your support, something happens. A set by […]
The Abduction from the Seraglio
Many operas lose their voluptuous richness when they’re flattened into modern translation and costume. Not so with this sumptuous In Series update. Librettist Bari Biern closely knits Mozart’s German text of The Abduction from the Seraglio by Bretzer and Stephanie, into English, transforming the silly story about the rescue of entrapped heroines from a Turkish […]
Torch Song Trilogy
Do we still need Torch Song Trilogy? We’ve come a long way since 1981, when Torch Song Trilogy broke new ground with its presentation of homosexual men who wanted (gasp!) the option to have stable lives and loving families. The protagonist Arnold Beckoff is a drag queen, but not an alien. Minds were blown. Playwright […]