The name Susan L. Schulman probably doesn’t mean much to many of my readers, but it jumps off the page for me and for many of my fellow theater journalists. She’s one of the legion of press reps that we deal with to get access to the information about which we write. There’s a symbiotic […]
Archives for November 2013
Playwright turns actor for experimental White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
Earlier this month, actors Jennifer Mendenhall, Michael Glenn and Nadia Mahdi took up the challenge of Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (cold read before an audience, no set, no direction, no rehearsal). The series has five performances by five different readers still to go in 2013. Up next will be local playwright Gwydion […]
No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn
On March 20, 1973, Charles Goodrich, handsome, arrogant and rich, told Katherine Stoddard – who had believed, to that point, that they were man and wife – that their marriage was a fraud, that he was going to marry another woman, and that she needed to leave the premises which she had previously thought was […]
Jeffrey Johnson performs Edie Beale LIVE at Reno Sweeney!
Setting off for L’Enfant Café, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my evening with Jeffrey Johnson, Little Edie, and the intimate Adams Morgan haunt currently playing host to both. I had a passing familiarity with Edie: seen bits of performance by Christine Ebersole from the Broadway production of Grey Gardens, lots of publicity for […]
Red
In a time where kvetching over the Kardashians passes for civil discourse, it is bracing to watch a play like Red that depicts genuine intellectual arguments and two men passionately arguing about art—as if it really matters.
Richard III and Twelfth Night
International stage star Mark Rylance has offered us a holiday season treat by bringing us his remarkable Shakespearean double header of Richard III and Twelfth Night. He’s packed his London production cast and an assortment of chairs, tables, draperies and bric a brac along with several trunks full of gorgeous late 16th century doublets, pantaloons, […]
Washington National Opera reveals three new opera shorts
“Invest in what you love.” Washington National Opera and The Kennedy Center have put their considerable forces behind doing just that, and what Artistic Director Francesca Zambello loves is new American opera. Wednesday evening, November 13th, on the Terrace Theatre stage, she announced the second season of Washington Opera Initiatives, corralling three teams of composers-librettists, […]
theatreWashington releases its first cookbook
“It’s like bringing Washington Theatre into your kitchen.” the theatreWashington Web site enthuses, describing their first cookbook making its official debut this Monday, November 18th.
Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty
Fangs you very much, Matthew Bourne, for reimagining the classic story ballet Sleeping Beauty as a gorgeous, gothic, vampire-filled romance that substitutes brimstone for the treacle.
Mies Julie
Yael Farber’s Mies Julie, an unflinching adaptation of the Victorian shocker Miss Julie, clenches you tightly and doesn’t let go during its 90-minutes of fever-dream performance art staged at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre.
After Midnight
It all looks so simple, the making of a hit musical, when the creators and cast have done it right. After Midnight is a suitable example of the kind of success about which one might ask: “All you have to do is choose great material and cast it well — and voilà! – you’ve got […]
Bad Jews
Tracee Chimo’s performance as “Diana” in Bad Jews is not going to make any new friends. Her work in this acerbic new play by Joshua Harmon is masterful and brave as she tears at the throats of her antagonists.