When tickets go on sale May 9 for Hamilton at the Hippodrome ( June 25 – July 21) expect the usual crush for tickets. (Remember how Hamilton‘s first visit to our area crashed the box office system at The Kennedy Center?) None of that for the Hippodrome. Ticketmaster has just unveiled a new service that […]
Archives for April 2019
The Washington area opera scene, our 2019-2020 season guide
Brush up – your opera. There will be no better time to turn off, dial down, and otherwise forego small devices and experience the “think big” of live opera than in the 2019-2020 opera season ahead. Feed you head – and your soul! Wolf Trap Get a jumpstart this summer by attending opera, some al […]
Review: The White Snake, Constellation Theatre Company
Constellation Theatre Company’s latest production may be called The White Snake, but it’s the Green Snake who steals the show. Momo Nakamura proves a delightful, hilarious presence as the spunky best friend and apprentice of sorts to the titular character (Eunice Bae, a calm and impressive figure in her own right) in this Chinese fable. […]
Review: Escape from Peligro Island, super fun regardless of which adventure you choose
Economy or first class? Glasses or inhaler? Go right or go left? Rather, stay or go at all? I say go—go fast to Escape from Peligro Island: YOU Create Your Own Adventure, a delightfully funny, fully satisfying choose your own adventure production now at Imagination Stage. [adsanity_rotating align=”aligncenter” time=”10″ group_id=”1455″ /] Callaway Brown (Dallas Tolentino) is […]
Review: Marooned! A Space Comedy that is out of this world
House lights remain at half when a red curtain parts just enough to show a curled hand, then another, then two more. Fingers emerge, tentatively explore, then walk, then intertwine in what will be one last touch between performers Sarah Olmsted Thomas and Alex Vernon before a tiny space ship, blasts off into outer space […]
All My Sons Review, Tracy Letts and Annette Bening bring star power to Arthur Miller’s tragedy
Nobody applauds when Annette Bening first appears on stage in All My Sons, the third Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 tragedy, the playwright’s first hit play. This is because of director Jack O’Brien’s staging, a deliberate choice to have her character Kate Keller start speaking while she is still partially hidden inside the Keller’s […]
Ink Review: Rupert Murdoch inside story, another ‘how we got where we are’ lesson
Ink recounts how Rupert Murdoch, newly arrived in London from Australia in 1969, bought the Sun, “a stuck-up broadsheet that…never once made a profit,” and in a year’s time made it a wildly popular populist tabloid, having turned “ugly into an art form,” as a character says in James Graham’s play. The character, Larry Lamb […]
Fresh from receiving a Pulitzer, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview will kick off Woolly Mammoth’s 40th season
Woolly Mammoth’s 40th year marks the inaugural first season selected by its second Artistic Director, Marìa Manuela Goyanes, and for this year’s slate she has selected shows with significant political implications, many involving race and gender. The six-show docket will start off with Jackie Sibblies Drury’s deconstructionist, fourth-wall-bending, 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning Fairview, which begins as […]
STOMP review: still a glorious, cacophonous slam bang of a show
The National’s stage has an air heavy with anticipation. Trash hangs across a large set that is part tin shack, part jungle gym. It’s as if Marie Kondo has Kondo-ed a junkyard. Everything a place. Everything a meaning. Everything a purpose. To make glorious, cacophonous, musical sound. Beats layered on beats, all from the unlikeliest […]
Studio Theatre announces a summer of solo shows to whet our appetites for its main season
Studio Theatre’s 2019-2020 season will include an appetizer and a main course. The appetizer is a 6-production summer season which the company calls its Showroom; it consists of two full-length plays and four short-run productions, at least two of which will feature you, if you have the will for it. The main course will be […]
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s 2019-20 season: starts spooky and ends in silliness
The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has decided to shoot for the moon in its 2019-2020 season. In addition to doing Measure for Measure, Hamlet and Much Ado About Noting, the company will be producing The Complete Works of Shakespeare, albeit Abridged. All this, and some classic Dracula and A Christmas Carol as well. The Chesapeake Shakespeare […]
Tootsie Review: Santino Fontana as Difficult Actor Turned Beloved Actress, Updated
Tootsie, the musical adaptation of the 1982 movie comedy about a difficult actor who becomes a beloved actress, begins bravely with an opening number in which bubbly ensemble members sing their enthusiasm for New York. This is brave because the number is overly bright and deliberately trite – less a parody than a spot-on reproduction […]