There’s a notion these days in theatrical circles that the hallmark of a great play is that it can only be a play; that the story being told wouldn’t work in any other medium. As I was watching Rorschach Theatre’s production of Reina Hardy’s Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven, I was struck by […]
Archives for April 2019
Review: Black Pearl Sings!
Like my mama used to say, just because somebody asks for something doesn’t mean you have to give it. In the case of the Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s exemplary Black Pearl Sings!, it’s a song–a song from Africa that was sung long before slavery times and held like a sacred trust then handed down to […]
Review of Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus with Nathan Lane
Gary is a mess, deliberately so. Written by the downtown provocateur Taylor Mac making his Broadway debut, it stars three of the best comic stage actors in America as three minor characters from Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy who have survived the coup and the carnage of that play, and are now faced with cleaning it all […]
Hillary and Clinton Review: Timing’s off for Hnath’s latest with Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow
Hillary and Clinton is exactly the play we do not need right now, a well-acted but irrelevant middlebrow entertainment starring Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow as the presidential candidate and the former president during the campaign for the first Democratic primary of the 2008 election. All production photos at NewYorkTheater.me Hillary is in New Hampshire; […]
Hadestown, Broadway review. Hot! Hot! Hot!
On Broadway, as Off, Hadestown is a hell of a musical. But it’s changed. When it opened Off-Broadway three years ago, Anais Mitchell’s concept album had been turned into an inventively staged, soulful sung-through musical, with a uniformly terrific eight-member cast reenacting the Greek myth of Orpheus, who descends into the underworld to try to […]
Review: A Comedy of Tenors, a grand slam-bang farce with a little Traviata on the side
A farce, a farce! My kingdom for a farce! Fortunately, you won’t have to pay such a high price for this one- though, it’s worth it. Ken Ludwig, acclaimed author of Lend Me A Tenor, revisits the over-the-top world of opera and artists in this splendid A Comedy of Tenors, which features some of the […]
There’s a lot more than the return of Hamilton to the Kennedy Center 2019-20 season
There will be plenty of the familiar in the Kennedy Center’s 17-production mainstage season — classics like Cats, Bye Bye Birdie, Jesus Christ Superstar as well as musicals for which Washington has a special affection, such as Come From Away and Next to Normal — but also some new work, including plays from Palestine, Cuba […]
Review: Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son
Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son, Psalmayene 24’s creatively imagined encounter of two great American writers, Richard Wright and James Baldwin in a Parisian café in 1953, thrusts the renowned African American writers back into modern sensibilities. Under Raymond O. Caldwell’s direction, it’s an explosive meeting that will rock your world. […]
‘Burn This’ Review: Adam Driver and Keri Russell rant and dance in Lanford Wilson’s 1987 play
Can a Star Wars villain and a Soviet spy find love, sex and happiness together on Broadway? That’s the question we’re primed to ask in the first Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1987 play Burn This, thanks to the steamy poster of the show’s stars Adam Driver and Keri Russell. There is little question that […]
Review: The Value of Moscow from Dark Horse Theatre Company
“Sisters, Sisters, There were never such devoted sisters,” warbled Rosemary Clooney and Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas. (Yes, Clooney was the stand-in singing voice for Vera-Ellen for that number in the 1954 film.) But what if siblings are not so devoted to each other? What if their lives have taken too many wrong turns, individually, […]
Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, glorious and inspiring musical at Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Toby’s Dinner Theatre has been transformed into a cathedral for its towering production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, including some of the most powerful and moving choral work you are likely to hear outside of a house of worship. And that’s saying something, given the Washington, D.C. area’s reputation for excellence in choral groups […]
2019 Pulitzer winner Jackie Sibblies Drury joins the growing list of women playwrights honored by the prestigious committee
The Pulitzer Committee announced yesterday that the recipient for this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama is Brooklyn-based playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury for Fairview, which debuted at Off-Broadway Soho Rep, June, 2018. The Pulitzer citation calls Fairview: “A hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors’ community to […]