The Penitent, David Mamet’s latest play, is about the ethical dilemmas facing a psychiatrist whose patient has gone on a killing spree. At least that’s what it seems to be about, but audiences might well identify with the psychiatrist’s wife when she says to him: “You must be holding something back. Or else I’m stupid.” […]
Archives for February 2017
Brother Mario brings video game to hilarious life (review)
The Mushroom Kingdom is in a tizzy. It’s perennial hero (and everyone’s favorite Italian plumber), Mario, no longer finds satisfaction in running, leaping, and rescuing, in facing his spiked, fire breathing nemesis, Bowser, in taking Princess Peach’s hand in his and riding off into the sunset, after a slice of cake. Repetitively.
Dead Man Walking at Washington National Opera (review)
The opera Dead Man Walking is a journey of harrowing truth and compelling beauty. If, as Sister Helen Prejean says, “ Grace is waking up to the gospel of encounter,” then Director Francesca Zambello and her company of stunning singer-actors has graced us with a revelatory theatrical encounter – that is to say an American […]
Craig Wallace opens Ford’s Theatre’s next season playing Willy Loman
Craig Wallace, who smashed icons as an African-American Ebenezer Scrooge in Ford Theatre’s A Christmas Carol this season, will not only reprise that role next November but help lead off the season as Willy Loman in Ford’s Death of a Salesman.
The How and the Why at Theater J (review)
Science is real—and really dramatic—at the Edlavitch DCJCC, the home to Theater J’s latest production, The How and the Why. Written by acclaimed writer and producer Sarah Treem, whose credits include the hit TV shows The Affair and House of Cards, the play deals with everything from evolution and academia to feminism and family. If […]
DC chefs join performer lineup at Intersections Festival 2017
For eight years, the Intersections Festival has been bringing some of DC’s best performance artists to the H Street venue, Atlas Performing Arts Center, and this year’s nine jam-packed days will be no exception. Performances include vocal, choral, opera, visual arts, video, film, writing, sculpture, photography and spoken word. This celebration of the wide diversity of artists in […]
Natsu Onoda Power on directing White Snake for Baltimore Center Stage
“…puppetry, projections, dance and live music, will capture the imagination of the audience.” That was Michael Ross, Managing Director of Baltimore Center Stage, talking with DCTS about Mary Zimmerman’s The White Snake which will open the company’s newly renovated Head Theatre.
Center Stage – take a look at them now. New name and new performing spaces
Since its founding in 1963, Center Stage has grown into an important cultural resource, touching the lives of thousands of people in the Baltimore area each year. The popular theater has recently undergone a major $28 million renovation, being revealed in its grand opening on March 3rd, and a name change: from here on the company and its […]
Kid Victory Review: Kander musical on aftermath of a kidnapping
There is one song by John Kander in Kid Victory that recalls the composer’s collaboration with Fred Ebb in both Cabaret and Chicago – “What’s the Point?” a jaunty, satiric tap-dance. It’s one of the few such moments in Kander and Pierce’s somber, often harrowing musical, now Off-Broadway, about the aftermath of a kidnapping. Go […]
The fatal attraction of H20 at Rep Stage (review)
The devil need not be a red-skinned gent with a forked tail. He could be Jake Abadjian (Robbie Gay), a gorgeous and charismatic Hollywood star of the blockbuster Dawnwalker movies, playing an action hero who never speaks.
Synetic’s wordless Taming of the Shrew, take 2 (review)
A viscerally entertaining romp about a grieving woman tortured until she falls in love with her captor, Synetic’s wordless-Shakespeare adaptation of Taming of the Shrew is a quality showcase for the company’s famed high-energy theatrics. First produced in 2012, it returns to the stage with most of the original principal cast, a few updates to the […]
Great Expectations at Everyman Theatre (review)
Imagine a small boy in the bleak world of 19th-century England. His parents are dead; he is in the custody of his older sister, a harridan who is prone to gusts of even more extreme anger and her husband, a blacksmith. Hard days and poverty envelop their waking hours like the cold English fog, and […]