The “seafaring life” has taken many forms over time: fearless explorers, bloodthirsty pirates, hopeful pilgrims, grizzled Hemingway-esque mariners, and modern sailors endlessly plying vast shipping routes.
Archives for March 2015
Venus Theatre learns to make a show, first chop up a car
“I’ve never cancelled a show in my life,” Deb Randall told me last Sunday, speaking of Venus Theatre’s production, God Don’ Like Ugly by Doc Andersen-Bloomfield.
Blue Viola, a bluesy, jazzy new opera from UrbanArias
What would you call the blend of music and genre in UrbanArias’ world premiere Blue Viola? Standard terms like “chamber opera,” “folk opera,” or “comic opera” fall short. Is it Chicago opera? Rosewood blues? Whatever you might call it, it is funny, thought-provoking, absorbing, and certainly not what most of you imagine when you think […]
The Norwegians. Funny? You can bet your Lutefisk
If Scena Theatre’s production of C. Denby Swanson’s The Norwegians was a food, it would be a chocolate mousse. It is a darkly delicious black comedy about two spurned women in Minnesota who consider hiring Norwegian professionals to kill the lovers who jilted them. Yet despite the murderous subject, it has an entertaining lightness that […]
Going to Anacostia? Try Mama’s Pizza Kitchen
Residents around Anacostia Playhouse and Anacostia Arts Center know where to head for quality takeout or a quick dine-in meal. Ask, and they’ll tell you – “I go to Mama’s”.
In the battle over the Constitution, The Originalist emerges the winner
The business of judges is to understand and interpret statutes, and in order to do that they commonly try to uncover the intention of the legislature which passed that law. When your job, like Antonin Scalia’s, is to interpret the Constitution, you are divining the intentions of men (and they were all men) who wore […]
Blossom’s Rainbow, must-go show for the wee ones
I can’t recommend Blossom’s Rainbow highly enough. This wonderfully magical new play for very young audiences just opened at The Athenaeum in Alexandria, and moves to Atlas in DC in April. If you are looking for something aesthetically stimulating and engaging for the zero to six year-old set (the demographic that this six year-old company […]
Entremeses at Iberian Suite festivel
A lone tree trunk, with spiky, bare branches, is the minimalist set. Immediately, I felt thrust into a landscape for Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, uninviting for Spanish hospitality. Yet that tree serves as a perfect symbol for what we see.
Angela Lansbury’s spirited turn in Coward’s classic Blithe Spirit
It’s been six years since Angela Lansbury won her fifth Tony for playing Madame Arcati in a Broadway revival of Blithe Spirit. It’s been nearly sixty years since she made her stage debut here in town at the National Theatre. It’s been seventy years since she got her first Oscar nomination.
Source Festival play among six Steinberg Award finalists
For the second year in a row, a play which debuted at DC’s Source Festival is in line for a playwriting award. Last year, Topher Payne’s Perfect Arrangement received the American Theatre Critics Association’s $1,000 M. Elizabeth Osborne Award for top play by an emerging writer.
Nehal Joshi, from Man of La Mancha, credits Chris Henley and his DC roots
Some readers may remember Nehal Joshi from his years as an actor in D.C. Others may know him from the roles he’s played when he’s come back to town, most recently Swiss Cheese in Mother Courage and Her Children at Arena Stage. When we talked, he was rehearsing Sancho Panza in the Shakespeare Theatre Company […]
Don Giovanni, a seductive romp from In Series
The In Series Pocket Opera Company is using its gifted creative team, librettist Bari Biern and stage director Tom Mallan, to the utmost, for a bold, new venture, Don Giovanni, one of Mozart’s most demanding operas.