Archives for July 10, 2016

Christopher McDonnell, producer, director, and star of In A Nutshell,  is to be commended for his ambition. For his production at this year’s Capital Fringe festival, he has chosen to present short plays by some of the great playwrights of the 20th Century, with an interlocking series of intermezzos meant to tie them all together […]

Fractals asks us to consider elemental questions about how we choose to see each other and the world. The work is broken into sections that are presented as parallels: science, art, relationships, etc. The sections are framed by monologues that transition into dance and in some sections the actors and dancers perform simultaneously.

  Here, let me be completely honest with you. I was not looking forward to this show. I had reviewed another play by playwright Luigi Laraia for Fringe last year and was not pleased. Laraia was clearly an earnest man, but his policy insights had overwhelmed his art, and the product was not satisfying.

Gender performance is a balancing act. This is the only-mildly pretentious thought that popped in my mind while watching the ambitious new local dance/circus/theatre company Steal A Step. Somehow it found purchase in between all the gasps, sighs, laughter and winces as their debut production Kick Before You Drown thrilled me more than any Fringe show […]

Ten Principles )’( stands as one of the more unique offerings at Fringe. Rather than a polished production, it’s more just a gathering of friends all belonging to the same community who have come together to share a story. Expect little in the form of theatrics or spectacle, but that in no way detracts from […]

Love in Ruins is a beautiful exploration of love, grief, and the healing process played out against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war. Based on the true story of the playwright’s parents-in-law, this is a gripping tale of love and loss.

The Root of All Knowledge is a beautifully violent production of a dense, high-minded play. A Man and a Woman fall in love and explore what it means to be alone or connected. Is true connection possible between separate entities?

The blurb for Lil Women in this year’s festival guide promises that the show will “Combine the classic Little Women with rap music.” And, well, it does that — but not much more than that. And it leaves you wondering why it did that in the first place.

We live in an ever shifting world, with things once considered “oddity” suddenly constituting “normality”. It’s the very change that we see permeating our “big topic” discussions. People struggle to use correct pronouns. Topics once taboo to polite society are now mentioned openly, almost casually in conversation. The world continues to spin towards a new […]

Near the beginning of Rain follows the Plow: A Dust Opera the matriarch of the Walker family describes the many hardships of life on the plains in the 1930’s. “But the sky, the impossible sky!” she sings with reverence and love “this luminescent dome / it truly is our home.”  To her, the grandeur of […]

Theater must lend itself more easily to humor than dance because one so rarely sees attempts at humor in dance. Maybe it’s the years of training required for even modest physical competence as a dancer, but choreographers overwhelmingly embrace serious abstract or story-based approaches. Sara Herrera’s And1! a dansical, then, is a breath of fresh air.