The Puppet Co’s rendition of Rapunzel snaps with the vigor of fresh vegetables, which is what rapunzel actually is, a vine in the radish family. Master Puppeteer Christopher Piper passes along such delish nuggets in telling the familiar story with an innocent charm. He portrays all of the characters, sophisticated rod puppets with such distinct […]
Archives for September 2014
Three Sistahs at MetroStage
These are things that break hearts: worn letters to and from a war, recalling memories with loved ones in your newly-sold childhood home, and a triangularly folded flag with a single dog tag, the other buried just today. Three Sistahs, returning to MetroStage from a run in 2007, contains all of these heart-breaking objects and […]
Henry Strozier remembers Tana Hicken. Tribute is Monday Sept 29 at Studio Theatre
“She was fun to be onstage with. She was always there, and giving and generous.” I was talking to the actor Henry Strozier, long-time member of the Arena Stage acting company, about his friend and colleague Tana Hicken. They acted in dozens of plays together over the years at Arena. When news came last month […]
Amadeus at Center Stage
How can something so sumptuous also be so balanced? That’s the delicious riddle of Center Stage’s production of Amadeus, which, under the assured direction of artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah is both visually and aurally lavish, yet empathetic.
Barbara Bear, theatre patron, 2014 outstanding audience member
One of the most recognizable faces in Washington D.C.’s theater scene isn’t an actor, isn’t a high-profile writer or even an artistic director—it’s fan and patron Barbara Bear, who regularly sees more than 100 productions a year and has totaled over 5,000 theater performances since moving from Newport News to Arlington in 1961.
2014 Gary Maker Audience Award presented to Barbara Bear
Barbara Bear, who regularly attends more than one hundred theatrical productions a year in the DC Area, has won the 2014 Gary Lee Maker Audience Award.
A Raisin in the Sun at Compass Rose Theater
There is a scene in Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark drama A Raisin in the Sun where the troubled, young husband and father Walter Lee Younger feels he has lost any chance of finding his dream. But his loving, lioness of a mother, Lena, looks him in the eye and tells him she never stopped trusting him […]
Florencia in the Amazon
Washington National Opera’s new production of Florencia in the Amazon carries us through many auditory and visual delights taking us on a trip up the Amazon with hints of magic as it “bathes us” in the atmosphere of its inspiration, the very special dreamworld-as-shape-shifter-of-reality of Columbian writer Gabriela Garcia Márquez.
Marie Antoinette at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
So, the great nation of France is saddled with crushing national debt. They’re battered from war, the people are starving, and a revolutionary ember crackles quietly beneath the surface of the political landscape.
The Shoplifters at Arena Stage
We all do things that bend the rules. Sometimes we break them, sometimes we ceremoniously throw them out the window. In Arena Stage’s season opener, the world premiere of Morris Panych’s The Shoplifters, these bends and breaks are elevated to dizzying heights, until there’s nothing to do but laugh at dreary realities and their role […]
The return of R+J: Star-Cross’d Death Match
You are a Capulet or you are a Montague, and so when you enter the DC Reynolds Bar you get a red cup or a blue cup. Thereafter, in a prelude to the saddest romantic tragedy in all of English literature, you have a drinking game. First you raise your cup, then you chug the […]
The Devil in His Own Words
We love to see the Devil on stage because – let’s be honest – he’s the character who is most like us. When he shows up in our stories, it is always with a wounded sense of entitlement. He has a contract, signed – in blood – by some hapless sap with poor impulse control. […]