To be honest, I’m a little bit scared to review Fringe veteran John Feffer’s new play, Interrogation. For one, he makes it very clear that he has access to my name, email address, and employer. For another, the fun and innovation inherent in this show come from the secrecy surrounding it. And yet, one of […]
Archives for July 2014
The Dish
Directed by Strother Gaines, The Dish pokes fun at the seriousness and hierarchical attitude of those in the food industry. Everyone is an expert, everyone wants to blog and if one more person pulls out their phone in the middle of dinner service let’s all scream.
The Interpersonal Underworld
What makes the perfect team? How do individuals develop into a group? Taking its name from a theory by behavioral scientist William Schutz, ACW Dances’ The Interpersonal Underworld explores the dynamics of relationship building through beautiful and thoughtful modern dance. Trust, power, control, collaboration, harmony and more are explored and deconstructed in this finely wrought […]
The Inaugural Election for President of Mrs. Jacobson’s Sixth Grade Class
Out from the mouths of babes comes this heartwarming parody of the American political process. The Inaugural Election for President of Mrs. Jacobson’s Sixth Grade Class opens under somber blue lights, a funeral for the class hamster. The solemn affair is closed with a 21 spitball salute beginning a show that’s a hoot and half.
Report to an Academy
I’ll refrain from using phrases like “monkey business” and “going bananas” in the opening of this review, but that’s not for any disdain for bad puns. It’s simply because the show doesn’t warrant that kind of enthusiasm.
Coriolanus
Set in a very particular world with a very particular social and political structure, Córiolanus is not a play that lends itself particularly well to a “concept.” As director Elena Velasco proves with Elysian Theatre’s production, however, sometimes all it takes is a few strong casting choices to reinvigorate an otherwise straightforward Shakespearean tragedy.
Dracula . A Love Story
Dracula moonlighting as a blood-sucking lobbyist in downtown DC? Brilliant. A young Washingtonian concerned life should be more than the humdrum of laws, policies, and phone calls. Accurate. An ongoing pontification of life vs. death? Yep. Love—the kind you would die for? Of course!
The Road to High Street
For a little home-brewed, laid-back conversational, and oh-so compelling storyteller’s journey as a street performer, Andrew Potter juggles the art of sharing home movies or what we used to call “Pictures-on-the-Wall,” giving it all a 21st century shine. The show combines music, video production, story telling, and “nostalgic” digital scrapbooking in a most entertaining way.
Giant Box of Porn
It’s fitting that there’s a joke about Tumblr early on in Field Trip Theatre’s production of Giant Box of Porn, because the feeling I had when I first read about the show’s conceit is the same I have when I stumble upon a new, brilliant Tumblr for the first time: thrilled by how genius it […]
Bethesda
With a wife devoted to quinoa and Whole Foods, a husband who loves poking jabs at the Washington Post, and two kids who hate looking up from their cell phone screens, Bethesda pays plenty of homage to its titular Maryland locale. But Jennie Berman Eng’s dark comedy isn’t a big-picture commentary on a place and […]
Letters to and from Me
It is difficult to pin down a race of people, but the six ladies of Wild Women Theatre attempt to do just that with their hilarious but truthful interpretation of being a black woman in Letters to and from Me. Reading letters addressed to oneself, the women who refer to themselves as the Gone Postal […]
Tomorrow’s Dawn
France has given the world many important contributions to arts and culture. Literature. Fashion. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Superior cheeses and wines. Voltaire. Cezanne. Proust. And then they’ve given us Tomorrow’s Dawn.