The RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) has breezed into town (for a few days only) with its fresh, strikingly handsome, and wonderfully creative production of Hamlet. Simon Godwin, the play’s young British director, explores this oft-produced work with care and insight. He employs a mostly black cast and infuses the design with colors and sounds that […]
Archives for May 2018
Take 5! with Helen Hayes Award nominated choreographers
A choreographer paints with bodies in space and in so doing, brings high wattage to a theatrical work. Take Five! with Helen Hayes Award nominated choreographers Dell Howlett, Denis Jones, Dody DiSanto, Happenstance Theater, Jonathan Ezra Rubin, Karma Camp, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Luis Salgado, Marcos Santana, Mark Minnick, Noah Schaefer, Parker Esse, Rachel Dolan, […]
Review: True West by Rep Stage goes for the comedy
Sam Shepard’s obituary in the New York Times describes his plays as hallucinatory, though his Pulitzer Prize finalist, True West, is relatively close to naturalistic. Critics often count it as part of Shepard’s tragic Family Trio, even though it has plenty of opportunities for comedy. Rep Stage leans into the comedic and the bizarre, giving the […]
Review: Orwells’ 1984 by Scena Theatre
Time has long moved past the actual date of George Orwells’ classic novel, 1984, yet the future it envisioned when written in 1948 seems more prescient than ever.
Review: Derek Jeter Makes the Play from Best Medicine
It is 2011, and we are in a tattered 4th-floor walkup in Maspeth, Queens. The lights bathe a gigantic poster of Derek Jeter, a Hall-of-Fame quality shortstop who played for the New York Yankees at the time (and is now systematically dismantling the Miami Marlins as its CEO). Jeter, perhaps mid-swing, favors us with a […]
Take Five! with Helen Hayes nominated Directors
Directors call everyone together. They first create a safe place for everyone to explore the text and what they can bring to it. They are the shamans, shape-shifting their own presences – sometimes strongly guiding, other times receding into the background and letting the collaborative transformations take place. Take 5! with Helen Hayes nominated directors: […]
Review: Alice in Wonderland at Chesapeake Shakespeare Theatre
Alice in Wonderland is so well known that it’s easy to forget the original two books—Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass—were written in 1865 in Queen Victoria’s England. This version reminds us of that, merging the best of both books so that we get to tangle with all of their classic, wild […]
Review: Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at Studio Theatre
There are few topics more horrifying and less funny than one’s parents’ sexuality. But Qui Nguyen, one of the hottest American playwrights of the moment, has embraced the embarrassment of parental porking to make Vietgone, a story of homes and loves lost and found in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. This DC premiere of […]
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