It would be an odd experience, watching Heather Raffo’s Noura on a double bill with Danai Gurira’s fine Familiar. I almost did that, bookending the weekend with the two shows about immigrant experiences in America. Both shows are about families who have escaped homelands which have been ripped to shreds — in Familiar, Zimbabwe; and […]
Archives for February 2018
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (review)
Adventure Theatre MTC’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a laugh-out-loud journey through the worst calamities of childhood, and appealing to kids and adults alike.
dog & pony dc puts on Peepshow (review)
Traditionally, a peepshow is a one-way affair—someone performs and someone (or someones) else observe, usually without being seen themselves. But I knew walking into dog & pony dc’s contribution to the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival, given the company’s emphasis on audience integration, that this would be no passive viewing experience. And indeed, Peepshow is […]
Danai Gurira’s comedy Familiar at Woolly Mammoth Theatre (review)
Familiar, by Tony Award winning playwright Danai Gurira, is an intimate comedy-drama set in the home of a first-generation Zimbabwean family living in Minnesota. The family has gathered over the weekend to celebrate and prepare for the winter wedding of their eldest daughter, Tendi (Sharina Martin) to Chris, her white fiancé, (Drew Kopas). Audiences engage with the […]
Iyona Blake in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (review)
Heartache, pain, regrets, joys, and a fair share of personal demons might fell a weaker person. But not even time in prison could stop the musical force of nature known to fans as Lady Day. If singing was her life, she lived most radiantly in her heyday and even in her twilight years while taking […]
No Word in Guyanese For Me from Rainbow Theatre Project (review)
Much like the photo album that plays a pivotal role in numerous scenes of the play, No Word in Guyanese For Me leaves the audience with poignant images: a pair of Guyanese feet gratefully slipping out of American shoes; timid hands cradling a small doll with natural hair; a sleek scarf snaking sensuously around a leg. […]
All She Must Possess. Matisse, Gertrude Stein and the Cone sisters at Rep Stage (review)
Of all the reasons to love Baltimore, perhaps the most sumptuous are the Cone sisters—iron-willed Dr. Claribel and the softer, more social Miss Etta—and specifically, the stunning collection of modern art and other acquisitions they bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Set Designer Paige Hathaway wins Live Design Rising Star Award
Congratulations to DC based set designer, Paige Hathaway, the go-to designer for many DC area theatre companies, who will be the recipient of Live Design’s 2018 Rising Star Award to be presented at the USITT Conference & Stage Expo in Fort Lauderdale, FL, March 14-17, 2018.
Julia Cho’s Aubergine, a Korean-American family’s drama (review)
In Julia Cho’s Aubergine, a Korean-American chef deals with his dying father. Cho uses food as the cornerstone for a sensitive though meandering meditation on the difficulties of family, communication, and coming to terms with one’s life in this entry in the Women’s Voices Theater Festival.
Cabaret Rising at the Dupont Underground (review)
Deep in the bowels of the earth, unnoticed by most yet just beneath the feet of people visiting Dupont Circle, and less than a mile from the White House, lurks the Dupont Underground. Once a defunct series of streetcar tunnels and entrances, the enormous space is finding new life as a unique arts and multidisciplinary […]
Schenkkan’s Great Society: President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s tumultuous term (review)
If the shade of Lyndon Johnson permitted himself a small smile last night, who could blame him? The irony of having the Washington opening of the second of Robert Schenkkan’s two-play cycle about our 36th President — who presided over the enactment of Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare, Medicaid, the end to the Poll Tax, […]
“It’s a MUUUSICAL!” Something Rotten! at National Theatre (review)
You can’t judge a show by its title, and never was that more the case than with Something Rotten!, the musical farce now appearing at the National Theatre, which provides a rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud night of entertainment that will make even non-musical fans rejoice.