You know things are going to start getting weird when the woolly mammoth and the dinosaur show up at the front door.
Archives for January 2018
45 Plays for 45 Presidents at NextStop Theatre (review)
I have the answer to the question you all are dying to ask about NextStop’s new play — “how did it treat Millard Fillmore?” — but before we get to that let’s put this thing into perspective. This is an ensemble cast performing an ensemble-written play, and it is best understood not as a history […]
Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (review)
Stillpointe Theatre, a Baltimore-based company known for its sharp takes on the American musical, has just entered the field of opera and became one of the first out of the gate this year to celebrate Bernstein’s hundredth anniversary year with the composer’s Trouble in Tahiti. Seems like the project served as a reunion of some […]
Review: John Lithgow: Stories by Heart
John Lithgow, a Tony winner for his very first Broadway show in 1973, has decided to devote his 24th to the reading of two old short stories, Ring Lardner’s “Haircut” and “Uncle Fred Flits By” by P.G.Wodehouse. But John Lithgow: Stories By Heart differs from your basic library storytelling hour for several reasons, and not […]
The Humans national tour at The Kennedy Center (review)
“Home is the place where, when you go there,” Robert Frost wrote, “they have to let you in.” And so it is for the hapless Blake family, strivers and dreamers like all of us, who are celebrating Thanksgiving not in the family home in Scranton, Pa. but in the New York Chinatown apartment of younger […]
On Your Feet! The Emilio & Gloria Estefan Broadway Musical (review)
“Do you have long knees?” The question came to me from the gentleman of a certain age who had the seat in front of mine at On Your Feet! The Emilio & Gloria Estefan Broadway Musical, which opened Wednesday night at The Kennedy Center’s Opera House.
Toby’s Dinner Theatre meets Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein musical
“We have been doing a classical musical in the January/February slot, but it gets dark at 5, it’s winter and cold, and that audience sometimes doesn’t like going out,” director Mark Minnick of Toby’s Dinner Theatre said. “We thought, ‘let’s try a show that’s a little more edgy.’”
Women’s Voices Theater Festival: 2 months to see 24 plays by women
In the fall of 2015, the inaugural Women’s Voices Theater Festival, showcased 62 female-penned world premiere plays. The festival was a rousing success, garnering interest in the playwrights and inspiring other women to write for the theater. According to the festival, 13 productions by 17 playwrights went on to enjoy subsequent performances.
Guilt at Scena Theatre (review)
If your theatre tastes favor new and challenging works, Scena Theatre’s world premiere of Guilt is worthy of your consideration with its interesting mélange of light comedy, dark tragedy, and challenging satire. Australian playwright John Shard takes the audience on a powerful journey that uses the story of a 17th century philandering French priest as a […]
Sovereignty actors on the Cherokee Nation story at Arena Stage
Sovereignty by Mary Kathryn Nagle at Arena Stage brings the rarely-heard Native American voice to the DC stage. Tribal sovereignty is defined as “the concept of the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States.” Yet, tribal courts have no jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians on Native […]
Disco Pigs Review: Enda Walsh’s impulsive, inseparable teenagers 20 years later
Enda Walsh, best known in the U.S. for the Broadway musical Once, first gained fame as the playwright of a furious burst of a play he wrote in five days about two intense and inseparable teenagers who share a birthday and a private language. Disco Pigs was set in Cork, Ireland, and first staged there. It […]
Mosaic’s Queens Girl in Africa first in Women’s Voices Theater Festival (review)
Jaqueline Marie Butler may seem like an unassuming teenage girl, just doing her best to find her way in her new, confusing home country of Nigeria. But don’t underestimate her — as Jaqueline says herself, there’s a “blowtorch burning in her belly,” and you don’t want to be in her path when those rising emotions […]