“Top billing Monday, Tuesday you’re touring in stock…” If there was a Helen Hayes category for quick turnaround, the award would undoubtedly go to Sherri L. Edelen. Last weekend, she closed Gypsy at Signature Theatre, where her Mama Rose won rave reviews. (On DCTS.com, Jayne Blanchard wrote that “Miss Edelen’s Rose commands the stage in […]
Archives for January 2014
Meena’s Dream: Let It Live On
Meena’s Dream closed two weeks ago at Forum Theatre at Round House Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, but the artistic team and D.C. audiences want the dream to live on. The Meena’s Dream team (Anu, Anjna, Rajna, Sam, Ronee, and more) are raising money to take Meena’s Dream on tour. The funds will go toward recording […]
The Importance of Being Earnest
As perhaps the pinnacle of high comedy in the English language, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest should never lose its place among classic dramatic literature. Each carefully placed word and phrase works to rattle the Victorian status quo and shed light on the trivialities society placed in high regard.
At Folger, a new way of seeing Richard III. We talk with director Robert Richmond
Folger Theatre is extremely excited about its upcoming production of Richard III. And the play’s director, Robert Richmond, seems to be the most excited of all. “It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever staged,” he told me. “It will be one of the most exciting experiences in DC this year.”
Ella Fitzgerald: First Lady of Song
When the spotlight hits Freda Payne in the opening number, its dusty light swirling around her evoking a club atmosphere, you could swear the first lady of song has been reincarnated. Payne not only sings in Ella’s key, she scats and lets her hands move as if pulling notes out of the air. Payne even […]
Update: Arts journalist Randy Gener survives vicious attack
Update: New details have emerged in the case of the assault on Randy Gener. According to the article filed on GMA News by L. P. Pelayo, witnesses have come forward, and the person responsible for the injury to Gener has been identified. Witnesses including Leighton Jennings who caused the injury, claim that Gener was involved […]
Signature, Shakespeare, Woolly, dominate Helen Hayes nominations
Next year, theatreWashington President Linda Levy promises, the Helen Hayes Awards will be bifurcated, with separate awards going to productions based on the number of Equity cast members. It couldn’t come soon enough, one suspects, for Washington-area small theaters, who saw this year’s nominations dominated by the big theatre companies.
Stones in His Pockets
The Hollywood dream factory proves both a boon and a bane for the residents of a small Irish town in Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets, a play that gives us a laugh as well as moments of sober reflection.
Freda Payne on playing Ella Fitzgerald
Freda Payne is starring in the MetroStage production of Ella Fitzgerald: First Lady of Song. Over the course of the last four decades, Payne has toured the world in concerts, theater performances and one-woman shows. We had the chance to talk with her as Ella was getting ready to open.
Opera on Tap arrives in DC with “Love is in the Air” at the Black Fox
Mark Vanhoenacker of Slate declared classical music dead last week, but DC divas aren’t going down without a fight. The new DC metro chapter of Opera on Tap, a non-profit organization devoted to stomping out the stereotype “opera is stuffy,” will make its premiere on Wednesday, February 5 at the Black Fox Lounge.
Monty Python’s Spamalot at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
We Americans have no creation myth (although sometimes we mythologize our creation) but Britain, having staggered forth fifteen hundred years before we did, does, and it is the legend of Arthur. In the legends of Arthur, this fifth-century King, having united the Britons in their battles against the Saxons, is thereafter charged with recovering the […]
John Sanders on playing Black Stache in Peter and the Starcatcher
Coming up as a young actor in Chicago’s theater scene, John Sanders played his share of bad guys and villains in original productions, but none that prepared him for playing one of the most notorious scoundrels in 20th Century pop culture—Peter and the Starcatcher’s Black Stache, the man who would become Captain Hook.