Jon Jon Johnson is getting ready for the closing performance of Tarot Reading III on October 22, created by The Tarot Reading and based on the ancient Tarot cards. It’s a unique experience for audience and performer alike, so we asked the actor and DCTS interviewer to change seats and talk about himself in the role […]
Archives for October 2017
Torch Song Review: Michael Urie in Harvey Fierstein’s Groundbreaking Gay Play
“It’s crazy”, says Michael Urie as Arnold, that “after all these years I’m still trying to justify my life.” Arnold means his life as a gay man, and though he is talking specifically to his mother (Mercedes Ruehl), the comment lands with force in Torch Song, the Off-Broadway revival of the 1982 Broadway play that […]
Creating the intimate Antony and Cleopatra at Folger Theatre
Prior to my review of the Folger’s production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, I spoke with director Robert Richmond and set designer Tony Cisek about the dramatic transformation of the theatre space, and with Cleopatra herself, Shirine Babb, about what this intimate relationship with the audience means for her performance.
Emilie—La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight (review)
Emilie is like a perfectly icy glass of champagne laced with bitters. Avant Bard’s scintillating production of Lauren Gunderson’s play about Enlightenment-era scientific genius and mistress of Voltaire (usually, the order is reversed so her affiliation with a famous man comes first) La Marquise du Chatelet—the Emilie of the title—sparkles with wit, intelligence and passion […]
Mariinsky Ballet’s La Bayadère: stunning and thrilling (review)
Love is tragic and sumptuous in the Mariinsky Ballet’s La Bayadère. At the Kennedy Center this week, under director Valery Gergiev and acting ballet director Yuri Fateev, the production – its sets (by Mikhail Shishliannikov) vast, its costumes (by Yevgeny Ponomarev) sensual and splendid – has a remarkable grandeur. The very size of the company […]
Hal Linden in The Price (review)
There’s something noble in sticking with your family no matter what, but there’s also something noble in finally cutting ties with a toxic parent. The Price grinds that contradiction against itself, making its characters crumble before your teary eyes.
Wilderness explores Utah teen therapy program (review)
This past weekend, En Garde Arts brought a new multimedia documentary theatre piece to the Kennedy Center. True to the best of its genre, Wilderness strikes right at the core with devastating and moving true stories.
Antony and Cleopatra’s romance is the central focus at Folger (review)
Folger Theatre is transformed dramatically for their production of Antony and Cleopatra, and that dramatic transformation also applies to the play itself. Thus is one of Shakespeare’s denser, layered and difficult late plays largely reborn, stripped of most of the oratory, with the title characters’ self-destructive passion placed front and center. The love affair sizzles, […]
New opera: Shining Brow, Frank Lloyd Wright in love (review)
One doesn’t go to Urban Arias expecting masterpieces. The whole adventure is about sharing in Founder and Artistic Director Robert Wood’s risk-taking in mounting new or almost new operatic works. The shows selected are always smart and (blessedly) short. The production values are always good, as they are here in Shining Brow. There are high-caliber […]
An Act of God at Signature (review)
You know how it is with celebrities: you don’t hear from them for awhile, you assume they’re dead. Until they put out a bestseller that refutes/justifies/excuses everything they’ve ever done.
The Siege Review: Bethlehem Standoff from the Palestinian Point of View
The Siege, a play dramatizing the 2002 siege by armed Palestinians of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, is in several ways the exact opposite of Oslo, the last drama about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to run in New York. Oslo, which won the 2017 Tony for Best Play, was American playwright J.T. Rogers’ attempt […]
The Effect at Studio Theatre (review)
The Effect is a beautiful rumination on what love is—a combination of naturally occurring chemicals with which the brain floods the body. Or something altogether different. Something controllable. And, therefore, perhaps, less toxicating.
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