Dating. Dating in DC. A play about dating in DC. “This must be dystopian,” I thought as I entered Caos on F to take in the latest world premiere by Nu Sass Productions. To my delight, what the piece turned out be was nothing I had expected. 50 Ways to Date Your Aubrey is an energetic […]
Archives for July 9, 2018
Perfecting the Kiss. A Capital Fringe Peek
Perfecting the Kiss came into the world almost on a dare. Sometime around the turn of the millennium, I was at a brunch for theater folk and someone (I can’t recall who) pondered aloud, “why has no one written a Noises Off! for Off-Off-Broadway?” Why, indeed…? Around that time, my dear friend and collaborator, Paula […]
Dangerous When Wet: Booze, Sex, and My Mother. A Capital Fringe Peek
My interior critic sounds like Jackie Hoffman as Mamacita and for years she grimly told me I’d never be a writer or performer. My exterior champion Mama Jean—part Auntie Mame, part Mama Rose—relentlessly chanted, “you should be a writer, that’s what you should be doing!” When I put down the bottle I finally silenced Mamacita […]
Review: America’s Wives at Capital Fringe
Farah Lawal Harris’ America’s Wives is an extended metaphor, really. Its central two characters are both married to a distant, narcissistic, unfair man named America.
Review: The City Of… at Capital Fringe
Playwright Matthew Capodicasa has tapped into a truly terrifying idea in The City Of… The premise: What would happen if an entire town just gradually started forgetting everything about each other, themselves, and even about how to be human?
Tragical Comical Fools Game explained. A CapFringe peek
Have you ever watched “The Good Place” on Netflix? The Tragical Comical Fool’s Game is kind of like that, but with Shakespearean characters. Last year, five graduate students (studying Shakespeare at the aptly named Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon) were tasked with creating an hour long play “inspired by Shakespeare.” The final product was The Tragical […]
Review: The Vandal, Capital Fringe Festival
As long as there have been buses, there have been men trying to talk to women at bus stops. Or at least I assume that’s the case. But sometimes the man is just a boy, and the boy is just trying to convince the woman to buy him a six-pack of Bud.
Review: The House on the Hill at Contemporary American Theater Festival
There are stories we must approach carefully, as we might, unarmed, approach a wolf in a leg trap. Amy E. Witting’s wolf of a story, The House on the Hill, is such a tale. It is a story of the hate that dare not speak its name. It is a story of sin, and the […]
Review: Thirst at Contemporary American Theater Festival
I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, Albert Einstein once said, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and rocks. It is after the war now. The great cities are gone, and the networks which kept us alive and healthy are in disarray. Once we dreamed of […]