In the first Broadway revival of Sam Shepard’s 1980 play, Ethan Hawke portrays Lee, a drifter, a drinker, and a thief who disrupts the life of his younger brother, Paul Dano’s Austin, an Ivy League educated writer and family man, in the kitchen of their mother’s home, where Austin is house-sitting and working on a […]
Archives for January 2019
Review: The Screwtape Letters. a handsome harangue
The Screwtape Letters, in a touring revival at the Lansburgh Theatre, is a polished, imaginative rendering of a tedious, self-righteous play. The acting and production values in this two-hander are excellent, but the script is a smug harangue. The play is adapted by Max McLean and Jeffrey Fiske from C.S. Lewis’s much-beloved epistolary novel, a […]
Lin-Manual Miranda in Puerto Rico. The Hamilton cast pulls off a surprise
María Celeste Arrarás interviewed Lin-Manuel Miranda in El Dorado, Puerto Rico for “Al Rojo Vivo” the day after the closing night of Hamilton in Puerto Rico, in which Miranda reprised his lead role during a three-week run to raise funds for hurricane relief. The following transcript is a rush translation to English from a conversation […]
American Ballet Theatre’s Harlequinade; a comedic ballet in grand style
American Ballet Theatre’s production of Harlequinade, at the Kennedy Center through Sunday, transforms old-fashioned commedia dell’arte stock characters and situations into something elegant and beguiling. That’s largely due to the sound judgement of the ballet company’s artist in residence, Alexei Ratmansky and his careful and charming reconstruction of this Marius Petipa ballet. Les Millions d’Arlequin, […]
Review: Fun Home, well worth the trip to Baltimore Center Stage
A nonlinear remembrance of family and self, Fun Home was lauded as a groundbreaking piece when it opened on Broadway in 2015, winning the Tony for Best Musical that year. Based on Alison Bechdel’s extraordinary graphic novel of the same name, this autobiographical musical follows Bechdel in triplicate through the years: her ten year old self, […]
Playing Putin. Actor Christopher Geary’s insight into the most dangerous man in the world
Want to know what the most powerful man in the world is really like? Why not ask the man who plays him on stage? We may judge and condemn others with abandon, but there is one character with whom we all have empathy: ourselves. Thus the actor’s job is to be, while on stage, his […]
Three Sistahs review at MetroStage
Sunday night’s opening at MetroStage was a fanfare affair. Not only did the press come out in full force (not always easy to get in the crowded local theater market,) being in the audience felt like a reunion of sorts, with some of Washington’s big performing talents gathered who have graced MetroStage over the years. […]
Review: The Mystery of Love & Sex at Iron Crow
Assuming love and sex are an intertwined riddle to be solved and you want an answer to the mystery —you’re not going to get it here. If you want to walk away deep in thought, contemplating the unavoidable complexities of male/female friendships and sexuality, you’re probably not going to do that either. While The Mystery of […]
Review: Rent, Fox’s TV version, turns Larson’s grit into Disney squeaky clean
La Vie Boheme is not mort. On the contrary, it is shiny and perky as all get out. That could be a problem for those who consider Rent, the late Jonathan Larson’s groundbreaking 1996 rock musical, a gritty yet ultimately hopeful tribute to young people struggling to survive in the bohemian squatter scene of New […]
Rent remembered: The young stars who created the roles, and Allen Ginsberg’s reaction to Rent’s bohemia
In the month before Rent opened Off-Broadway in January, 1996, Idina Menzel was singing “The Wind Beneath My Wings” at a bar mitzvah at Leonard’s of Great Neck for the thousandth time; Daphne Rubin-Vega was working as a sculptor’s assistant, scrubbing her boss’s floor and feeling like Cinderella; Adam Pascal, having just broken up “Mute,” […]
Review: Heidi Schreck’s Grand Concourse marks the promising debut of Prologue Theatre
A line delivered by Frog, a homeless man, encapsulates the dilemma of Heidi Shreck’s play, Grand Concourse. Speaking in a soup kitchen filled with raw vegetables for chopping, he tells the security guard Oscar eating lunch with him that vegetables have feelings too. Frog offers a choice: to either become a predator or starve: “At […]
RENT Live this Sunday on Fox
The Fox Network will broadcast a live production of Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent this Sunday, January 27, from 8 to 11 PM EST (8 to 11 on tape delay for those in the Pacific Time Zone), the Network announced. You may have seen previous Fox live musical broadcasts such as Grease, The Wiz, Peter Pan […]