Michael Hollinger doesn’t want you to be misled by a thumbnail description of Ghost-Writer, his three-character play about an Edwardian-era writer, his wife, and his secretary, the latter of whom claims to continue to receive dictation from the great man following his death. “I would say that people are often surprised what a passionate experience […]
Archives for March 2019
Review: ‘A Bronx Tale’ Well Told at the National
“The saddest thing in life is wasted talent,” Lorenzo the bus driver tells his son, Calogero, in A Bronx Tale. There’s no wasted talent in the rock-solid touring production of the musical that swaggered into the National Theatre Tuesday night. A Bronx Tale has a tale of its own. It began as Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical […]
Psalmeyene 24 on directing Richard Wright’s Native Son and writing a play in response to James Baldwin’s criticism
Fans of Richard Wright’s iconic 1940 novel Native Son will want to head to Mosaic Theater Company in the upcoming weeks for the two plays, running in rep, which have emerged from the novel. Not only will Mosaic be presenting a streamlined 90-minute adaptation of Wright’s controversial story of Bigger Thomas, adapted by actor/playwright Nambi […]
Review: Dead Dog’s Bone: A Birthday Play
Nu Sass Productions’ Dead Dog’s Bone: A Birthday Play is about a girl and her dog and the messiness of growing up, but don’t think for a moment that means it is a story you’ve seen before. Equal parts tender and prickly, Dead Dog’s Bone uses humor and a touch of the weird to dig […]
Review: From Gumbo to Mumbo, Spoken Word poetry in action
Spring in Washington DC opens up with a ground-breaking world premiere play, From Gumbo to Mumbo presented by Keegan Theatre’s PLAY-RAH-KA Series. It’s a Live Narrative performed by two award-winning Spoken Word artists and educators: Drew Anderson and Dwayne Lawson-Brown who’ve dedicated their lives to the edification of young school students: enlivening their learning experience […]
Review: Resolving Hedda, whip-smart and hilarious
“We’re in a strange relationship with our fiction, you see,” Warren Ellis, the English comic-book writer, novelist, and screenwriter, once wrote. “Sometimes we fear it’s taking us over, sometimes we beg to be taken over by it… and sometimes we want to see what’s inside it.” In Jon Klein’s Resolving Hedda, currently being brought to […]
Review: La Paloma at the Wall, a new zarzuela from In Series
How could one not run to a show that, in this day, puts together a story that purposes to go to the heart of a topic that raises both volatile antipathy and gut wrenching emotions of compassion? In addition to setting the new work at our southern border “wall,” new Artistic Director of In Series […]
Review: Spills. Charms and thrills like a Tinder date should
With characters named “Dude,” “Gal,” and “Chick,” I was wary that Spills would be just another cliché story about millennials (What industry did we kill this time?). I was wrong. Who What Where Theater Collective did right by this millennial, telling a sexy, silly, and most of all daring story about modern sexuality that one-up’d […]
Review: Into the Woods. Enchantment and enlightenment await at Ford’s Theatre
Enchantment awaits those who enter Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim’s wildly inventive, darkly comic thicket of life lessons sprung from children’s fairy tales in a new revival at Ford’s Theatre. Sondheim and book writer James Lapine have packed the show to the gills with ideas about wish fulfillment and its consequences, the relationship between parents […]
Kiss Me Kate Review on Broadway
The most exciting moment in this fourth Broadway production of Cole Porter’s backstage musical riffing on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew comes at the top of Act II, when the cast at first languidly sings “Too Darn Hot” but then quickly throws themselves into Warren Carlyle’s warp-speed choreography – simultaneously old-fashioned and eye-catching, gymnastic, […]
Michael J. Bobbitt to leave Adventure Theatre MTC and the DC area
Michael Bobbitt, a director, choreographer and playwright who has served as Adventure Theatre MTC’s Artistic Director for nearly twelve years, will leave the company in July to become Artistic Director of the New Repertory Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts, Adventure MTC announced today. Since Bobbitt took the reins of the young person’s theater (then simply known […]
Next season, Theater J returns home with a robust roster of plays
Theater J, its old stage at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center completely refurbished, will offer a slate of six new(or new-ish) stories about older (or ancient) events for its 2019-2020 season. The company will lead off the 2019-2020 season with its sole musical, Ofra Daniel’s Love Sick, with music by Daniel and Lior Ben-Hur. […]