Americans increasingly seem to have a love-hate relationship with “stuff”. Visitors from abroad find themselves amazed at the vast array of artisanal cheese available at any grocery store. Our enthusiasm for decamping to distant exurbs where we can build ever-bigger houses for all of our toys continues unabated by troubles in the real estate market, […]
Archives for May 2016
All That Fall by Beckett (review) Pan Pan Theatre production is theatrical nirvana
Pan Pan Theatre’s stage production of Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall, playing four more times in the Terrace Gallery as part of The Kennedy Center’s Ireland 100 festival, is theatrical nirvana.
Patina Miller at Strathmore gala (review) proves she’s ready for her next Broadway show
If that long-promised revival of Smokey Joe’s Cafe does come to Broadway this year, the producers could do worse than to put Patina Miller front and center — assuming they can afford her now that she’s got a Tony Award, a TV series and a couple of Hunger Games blockbuster credits under her belt.
Fun Home part of The National’s next season and Hamilton deal announced
When announcing their upcoming season, Washington’s National Theatre also announced a Hamilton tie-in. As with The Kennedy Center’s offer, subscribers to the National Theatre’s 2016-2017 season get first choice of seats to the National’s 2017-2018 season. Those subscribers will have priority access to tickets for Hamilton’s 14 week run at The Kennedy Center mid-June to mid-September, 2018 before single […]
Turn Me Loose Review: Scandal’s Joe Morton in play about Dick Gregory
“Don’t get me wrong, I do care about this country,” Joe Morton as comedian Dick Gregory says in Turn Me Loose. “Where else but in America can a poor black boy like Michael Jackson grow up to be a rich, white man?”
Abbey Theatre’s Plough and the Stars (review)
It is one hundred years almost to the month since the Easter Rising, the insurrection that began the armed struggle of Irish Nationalists against British occupation. It is ninety years almost to the month since the premiere at the Abbey Theatre of Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, inarguably the most significant play written […]
City of Angels (review) at NextStop Theatre a snappy, stylish film noir musical
NextStop Theatre Company’s City of Angels is grand – a swan song to film noir and its backstage action, a gem of a show that won multiple Tony Awards in 1989 including Best Musical. And NextStop has applied a plenty of polish to an already sparkling score and lyrics.
Honoring the Helen Hayes nominees: Craig Wallace, actor and director
It is an extraordinary thing to commit yourself to work in theater despite the long hours and low pay. Why do people do it? This is the third in our series highlighting this year’s Helen Hayes nominees: their work, their life, their art, their passion.
Celebrity, Chivalry and Very Bad Manners in Compass Rose’s 2016-2017 season
Compass Rose’s 2016-2017 season will include an acclaimed musical, a play which became an acclaimed musical, perhaps the most acclaimed play of all time, and a play about an acclaimed twentieth-century stateswoman. Oh, yes, and a play about very, very bad manners.
Man in the Iron Mask (review): Synetic Theater speaks
All over the promotional material for Synetic’s Man in the Iron Mask, there is a dire warning: THIS PRODUCTION WILL HAVE DIALOGUE. As if audiences have to be warned of talking actors as much as they must be warned of flashing lights, deafening gunshots, vomit-inducing gore, or, heaven forfend, titillating nudity.
War of the Worlds (review) from Scena Theatre
The storied 1938 CBS Radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air allegedly created a panic by individuals who believed that the dramatization of a deadly invasion by Martians was real. That now famous Halloween week event helped establish the growing reputation of Orson Welles as […]
Honoring the Helen Hayes nominees: Anu Yadav, playmaker and performer
DCTS covers the 2016 Helen Hayes Awards It is an extraordinary thing to commit yourself to work in theater despite the long hours and low pay. Why do people do it? This is the second in our series highlighting this year’s Helen Hayes nominees: their work, their life, their art, their passion. It is fall, and […]