There is art, and there is proselytizing. Great art can contain proselytizing — if you doubt me, go to Round House this month — but proselytizing is not art. That, in a nutshell, is the problem that besets The Loser Letters, Jeffrey Fiske’s adaptation of Mary Eberstadt’s novel of the same name, getting a […]
Archives for October 2016
The Little Foxes at Arena Stage (review)
The Little Foxes is at once an old-fashioned melodrama and a biting critique, seemingly written for today, of the hotly resented “1 percent”. The play’s set up and mechanics feel like an old-time curio at times, or a look into the past, but is also unmistakably and curiously relevant to the socio-political discourse of this […]
Staceyann Chin in MotherStruck (review)
Staceyann Chin is a memoirist, a spoken-word poet, and a live wire. The best qualities of all three are on display in her autobiographical show, MotherStruck now at Studio Theatre.
Dante’s Inferno at Synetic Theater (review)
This isn’t Dante’s Inferno. It isn’t disco inferno either. I don’t know whose inferno this is. But it’s not Dante’s. Dante’s Inferno is a story of a poet’s visit to Hell, where he views the wrath of God being visited upon sinners, each in their own measure. Dante’s Inferno may be a hell of a […]
“Uninhibited allure” Iron Crow’s The Wild Party (review)
“Queenie was a blonde and her age stood still,/And she danced twice a day in vaudeville.” With those hardboiled, magical words, Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 Jazz Age poem “The Wild Party” begins, as does Andrew Lippa’s darkly glittering musical adaptation.
Kushner’s Angels in America: Perestroika at Round House (review)
The standard take on Perestroika, the second part of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, is that it is not of equal quality to the masterful first. Perhaps this is why there’s a slight sense of trying too hard in this Round House Theatre-Olney Theatre Center production, where director Ryan Rilette occasionally overuses back-wall projections and […]
Audrey Cefaly’s The Gulf at Signature Theatre (review)
You might have heard about the Deepwater Horizon flick that just came out. I’ve not seen it, but based on the trailers it’s a big, bloated action disaster action movie that focuses on explosions and derring-do but reportedly gives very little time to consideration to the disastrous long-term effects of the eponymous rig’s massive oil spill […]
Theresa Rebeck’s What We’re Up Against at Keegan (review)
The daily challenges faced by women in the workplace have increasingly become a cultural touchstone. In addition to traditional discussions of glass ceilings and equal pay, there is now an expanding awareness of the more subtle but equally problematic systemic inequalities women encounter in the office every day. Especially relevant? The phenomena Time recently called […]