Could a feeling send a jolt through the fabric of time and space and make the universe shiver? And is the material that weaves our past, present and future merely and illusion?
Archives for June 2015
Stage Briefs by Keith Loria
A roundup of some of this week’s theatrical news and notes from Capital Fringe Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Kennedy Center, The Welders, Molotov Theatre, DC Hip-Hop Festival, Wolf Trap, and National Theatre.
Politicos get in on the act at STC’s Will on the Hill 2015
We are all actors, but none more so than our public representatives. It is one thing to invite the wind to blow and crack its cheeks, but quite another to introduce legislation which would actually make the wind do that, in the name of climate change. Or: it takes a fine actor to play Proteus […]
Chesapeake Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors in the ruins (review)
While not considered one the Bard’s richest works or given the most revelatory treatment, The Comedy of Errors makes for ideal picnic blanket theatre in Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s lively and communal outdoor In-The-Ruins production. Its numerous twists, capers, and broad characters prove a great frame for the company to fill with seemingly every kind of […]
Source Festival: (a love story): fresh, funny and poignant
If you are at all like me, as you are watching the new play (a love story) at this year’s Source Festival, memories of the most intense of feelings will mingle with thoughts of small moments from your past. Your mind will veer between considering the most existential of questions to thinking about the most […]
Occupied Territories at Theater Alliance: visceral and stunning (review)
As any horror movie will tell you: don’t go into the basement. You never know what you’ll find there. In the case of Occupied Territories, a visceral and stunning new work from Theater Alliance in association with Kicking Pig Productions, a suburban basement contains gut-wrenching insights into the inner life and combat past of a […]
The Good Counselor at 1st Stage (review)
The Good Counselor is a brilliant play that probes uncomfortably around the chambers of the human heart. It’s a masterfully written and directed treatise on where a woman’s responsibility as a mother ends and her responsibility to herself begins. Packed with uneasy questions, with no easy answers, it follows two seemingly disparate women, struggling to […]
Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters – a spectacle of superhero action (review)
… a thrilling physical showcase with heart and laughs to spare. Cirque du Soleil plus Superheroes. That’s the easiest way to quickly describe the wildly inventive Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters…and yet it still feels woefully insufficient. Genre-busting company Flying V’s latest production represents the best kind of fan service, using iconic comic book […]
New Madwoman of Chaillot from WSC Avant Bard (review)
Framed in a certain way, The Madwoman of Chaillot nearly reads like a news headline. Whether the media outlet is CNN or The Onion depends entirely on what you focus on – because this French satire by Jean Giraudoux blurs the lines between sanity and insanity, real and absurd.
Source Festival: The Word and the Wasteland: gutsy and on point (review)
A razor-sharp critique of media and justice in post 9-11 America In this age of 24/7 media witch hunts and instant mass outrage, any national security issue can morph into World War III overnight. The Word and the Wasteland explores the psychic aftermath of a terror attack on American soil, issuing a crackling rebuke to splashy, media-generated narratives that […]
Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, comedy gold at Theater J (review)
“I am the greatest loser of the world!” So claims Marjorie Taub in the twisted comedy The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. But she is such a lovable loser.
Tartuffe at Shakespeare Theatre Company: brilliant and shocking (review)
I don’t often think about blasphemy. Neither do most of you, I’d hazard to guess. But if you see the production of Molière’s Tartuffe now playing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, you will be forced to think about it. And we should, given that people are being murdered in its name globally, along with the […]