The part of King Richard in Richard III is a plum for any actor lucky enough to be cast in the role. Part stand-up comic, part perennial outsider, and part moustache-twirling villain, Richard is equally delectable and murderous. Get a good Richard in any production, and you’re set: get someone who only sees the evil in […]
Archives for February 2017
Michael Kahn stepping down from Shakespeare Theatre Company in 2019
Michael Kahn, the Artistic Director, director and teacher whose work has dominated the theatrical landscape in Washington for thirty years and has had a national impact, will retire as Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in July of 2019, the company announced Monday night.
King Charles III at Shakespeare Theatre Company (review)
It is a bold writer who writes a history of the future. It is a bold writer who bathes his play in high Shakespearean language, replete with iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets. For doing both, can we say that Mike Bartlett is a man of brass?
Free original Valentine e-cards from DC Theatre Scene
We took suggested lines spoken or sung on our area stages in 2016 or upcoming in 2017 and paired them with images to create this year’s Love Lines for Valentines. Along with them comes our wish that your life will be filled with happiness. We hope you enjoy these Valentines. Sharing them is quick and easy. To start, just choose any […]
Watch on the Rhine at Arena Stage (review)
The problems that vexed Lillian Hellman’s “sound the alarm” play Watch on the Rhine at its debut in 1941 still apply to the handsome production at Arena Stage today. Worse yet, it’s likely that the play’s awkward structure, overwritten talkiness and reserved, bloodless drama have aged not like a velvety single malt Scotch, but rather like an […]
Rehearsing Dead Man Walking: digging deeper in Week 2
I am being given an intimate look inside the rehearsal rooms of Washington National Opera’s Dead Man Walking under the direction of WNO’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. This report marks the end of Week 2 of rehearsals. Starting Monday, we are barely two weeks away from its opening night, February 25th.
Hip hop takes a fairy tale for a sci-fi spin in The Freshest Snow Whyte at Imagination Stage (review)
The Snow Whyte of the future is a lot doper than the one of the past. She’s also a lot more gender friendly and fiercer. The girl is no longer just a pretty face, thanks to The Freshest Snow Whyte at Imagination Stage, which puts a sci-fi spin on an old fairytale and infuses it […]
Bryer puts her hooks in Constellation’s Peter and the Starcatcher
When director Kathryn Chase Bryer saw Peter and the Starcatcher on Broadway five years ago, she was blown away by how it created stage images in such a minimalistic way. Now her version, in which she is able to extend the Broadway version in an intimate venue, opens at Constellation Theatre this weekend.
Exciting. Electric. Enchanting. Ella Enchanted at Adventure Theatre MTC (review)
Being obedient and doing as one is told are usually good traits instilled in the earliest ages and rewarded with parental approval and societal regard. When obedience is compelled without choice or reason, however, that can become an unbearable curse, as seen in the delightfully creative Ella Enchanted showing at Adventure Theatre MTC.
Chronicling Washington National Opera’s Dead Man Walking: Rehearsals begin
A rare inside look at the making of an opera. Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello invited Susan Galbraith to sit in on rehearsals of Dead Man Walking. This is her first report.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Kennedy Center (review)
Big News at the Kennedy Center. Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater rocked the place last night.. And no one rushed to exit the Opera House auditorium (as they often do at the KC) until the last bow was taken.
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd at Olney Theatre Center (review)
Witty and perverse, scary and heart-warming, lofty, and yet wholly accessible. Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is one of my favorite musicals. Period.