Anyone who knows me will tell you that as a critic and sometime creator of mixed-disciplinary performance, I have a particular proclivity for highly experimental theatrical works and perhaps especially combinations of contemporary dance-theatre from Japan and other parts of Asia. So why, I must ask, did Miwa Yanagi’s “Zero Hour:Tokyo Rose’s Last Tape” leave […]
Archives for February 2015
Lady, Be Good! at Encores
At the conclusion of the Saturday matinee during the seven performance run of each Encores! presentation at New York’s City Center, there is always a talkback with members of the company, or artists connected to the original productions will speak to us. In the case of George and Ira Gershwin’s first collaboration to hit Broadway, […]
Last of the Whyos, a time traveling tale of Coney Island
In the final five minutes of her life, a nameless hot corn girl (Tia Shearer) shivers in the cold winds off the Atlantic, argues with her pimp, Eddie Farrell (Michael Kevin Darnall), and worries about coyotes. And then, the night suddenly fills with creatures far more dangerous than any coyote. She feels the cold sharp […]
Petite Rouge Cajun-style at Adventure Theatre MTC
Petite Rouge, a Cajun Red Riding Hood is so steeped in Louisiana back-water country you can almost smell the wafting aroma of gumbo and need cornbread to sop it up.
Lessons for the White House from Macbeth sequel Dunsinane
The question of the year for theatre wonks has been answered: Does the sequel hold up to the original? We’ve waited a long time for this particular answer — for more than four hundred years. That’s even longer than anyone’s waited for the follow-up from Harper Lee. With the opening on Tuesday night of the […]
Chicago’s John O’Hurley is back playing his favorite role, slickster Billy Flynn
John O’Hurley is one of those actors who everyone seems to recognize. The veteran character actor has been a fixture on TV for more than three decades, finding his breakout role as J. Peterman on Seinfeld.
Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith: creating the new musical Turn of the Screw at Creative Cauldron
The latest in our area’s world premiere productions takes us back to a literary classic. The Turn of the Screw, now onstage at ArtSpace Falls Church, is the inaugural production in Creative Cauldron’s initiative to create new plays for smaller venues.
Imagination Stage expanding to U Street NW
Roadside Development and Sorg Architects have been selected to redevelop the former Grimke School at 1923 Vermont Ave. NW, as well as an adjacent lot at 912 U St. NW, into a new cultural hub on the U Street corridor.
Feminism on the hot seat in Round House comedy Rapture, Blister, Burn
The F-word. Not exactly a rarity in contemporary theater. But another F-word is—feminism. Feminist theory and the compromises women make combine into a snappy and rueful comedy by Gina Gionfriddo, Rapture, Blister, Burn, which sparkles and saddens at Round House Theatre.
Acclaimed English playwright Doug Lucie, rarely produced in the states. Until now.
LOUISE: I’m writing a book, you know. I’ve nearly finished. Self-help. A loser’s handbook. It’s dreadfully down-market, I’m afraid, but that’s where the money is, and that’s why I’m writing it. I already have an American publisher. So I shall probably amass tons of money and buy myself an island, or a piece of one, […]
T. S. Eliot’s Becket play, Murder in the Cathedral
Faith and politics. God and king. Those are the weighty affairs teetering in the balance of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. Compass Rose Theater recently turned its intimate space into a feline playground when it produced another work featuring the verse of the American-English poet, Cats. Now, the Spa Road location stands in for […]
Norris and Twyford are brilliant in Mary Stuart
Folger’s gorgeous, sumptuous Mary Stuart is a bodice-ripper for the brainy, distilling a life-and-death moment to its constituent elements of pride, resentment, entitlement and loss. It is a dissection – not bloodless but full of torrential passion – of human values on the stage of history. On the one side is God-ordained righteousness, and the […]