Playwright Ken Urban’s absorbing new play starts strong and keeps you hooked during most of its snappy real-time runtime before slogging down in a closing exhalation and then abruptly coming up short at the writer’s attempt at a statement coda.
Archives for May 2018
Review: psychological thriller The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs
You have heard this story before, but each time it comes at you in a different way, offering new anxieties and insights in equal measure. In Bluebeard, the beautiful young wife is given the keys to Bluebeard’s magnificent castle but is warned not to enter a particular underground chamber. Of course, she can think of […]
Review: 10 Million from Cuba
I do not know. I do not remember. These are the words of a man looking back on his life: a young man haunted by shame and the pain of losing a part of himself as he lost his family. They become part of a collective amnesia and the impulse, as we thread back though […]
Review: Flood City
“More matter and less art,” Queen Gertrude enjoined Polonius during one of his interminable dissertations. After watching Gabrielle Reisman’s Flood City, I feel ya, Your Majesty! Seldom have I seen so fine a cast, in service to a play by so gifted a writer, be put to more pointless a use. Flood City is, in […]
Review: Chekhov gets commedia-style Cherry Orchard from Faction of Fools
Faction Fools’ usual comic shtick works wondrously well in The Cherry Orchard. The award winning Fools bring artistry, cultural awareness and salient knowledge with funny bone commedia comedy arts to everything they touch. With Hamlet, Our Town and so many other classics under their belts, why not tackle the passionate throes of frustration, disappointment and human […]
Review: Waitress, a sweet slice of musical heaven
“Butter. Sugar. Flour.” These three words are sprinkled like incantations throughout the 2016 musical Waitress, a tasty, buttermilk tart and bright woman-powered show that features Sara Bareilles’ sublime alt-country, contemporary pop music and lyrics and a multi-layered book by Jessie Nelson based on Adrienne Shelly’s 2006 indie film of the same name.
Watch important moments at Helen Hayes Awards with new DCTS video
Emily Priborkin’s video coverage of this year’s Helen Hayes Awards takes you to some of the celebration’s most moving moments including Felicia Curry’s moving acceptance for Lela & Co., the actresses from Fun Home on the importance of their award, GALA Theatre’s history-setting award for In the Heights, and the moment which Michael Kahn, in […]
Review: The Book of Joseph, telling letters
“We’ll wait and see.” Normally, words of prudence and patience. In the context of Karen Hartman’s intense epistolary play, The Book of Joseph, the words are a chilling death sentence.
Review: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Let’s begin with Fernando Hechavarría, who plays Petra in the Teatro El Público production of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which opened last night, the first of a mere two performances at The Kennedy Center. To call this performance a “tour de force” is to choose, with “force,” a word that seems too timid […]
Review: Saint Joan, a funky, spunky, stripped-down Shaw
Brevity is not the soul of Saint Joan’s wit. Even at three and a half hours’ running time, however, the George Bernard Shaw classic never flags in Bedlam’s funky, spunky, stripped down version at the Folger Theatre. There are, however, some costs to the company’s insistently low-cost approach.
Review: Olney’s Invisible Hand packs a mighty punch
An American banker abducted by jihadists in Pakistan must earn his $10 million ransom by making a killing on the market. And as he introduces concepts of high finance to his kidnappers – some concepts that tanked the US economy a decade ago – the term ‘making a killing’ becomes both figurative and literal in […]
Waitress star Desi Oakley talks about playing Jenna and her favorite pie
Broadway actress and singer-songwriter Desi Oakley is over 200 performances in on the national tour of the fan-favorite musical Waitress, now at The National Theatre. She plays the lead role of Jenna, a small-town diner waitress who transfers her dreams of escaping her loveless, abusive marriage into the creation of wonderfully creative pies in the touring […]
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