Synetic Theater opens its season with a remount of its 2013 hit The Tempest, complete with its stunning watery world creation, amphibian-like cast, pounding AMC decibel electronic score, and a splash zone which has at least the first few rows of people roaring for more dousing abuse in a truly immersive theatrical experience. Yes, water […]
Archives for September 2019
Review: Taffety Punk Riot Grrrls perform Othello
How do you like your Shakespeare? Intimate. Intelligent. Intrepid. And, I’d also add fully integrated through emotional truth and delivery of the musical richness of Shakespeare’s language. Taffety Punk has made just about all of that happen with the return of its all female “band,” Riot Grrrls, starring in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, […]
The Smuggler moves to Round House in November. Tickets on sale today.
Solas Nua’s twisty tale, The Smuggler, quickly sold out its run in the Allegory Bar at Eaton DC. Rex Daugherty is still mixing drinks there as Tim Finnegan, the bartender with a shady past through October 6, but if you want to see it, but don’t already have tickets, you’re out of luck. Tickets to […]
Broadway Review: The Height of the Storm. Tricky plotting, or just a trick?
The same playwright who gave us The Father with a demented Frank Langella and The Mother with a depressed and possibly deranged Isabelle Huppert now offers us…dead Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins? Or maybe just one of them is dead? Or maybe neither? “You think people are dead, but it’s not always the case,” Andre (Pryce) says […]
Review: Funnyman Mike Birbiglia tells it like it is in The New One at National Theatre
Comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia has a rare sleepwalking disorder – one that almost killed him. As he tells it, one night—in the throes of a particularly vivid, bad-guy-chase-sequence dream—a sleepwalking Birbiglia launched himself through the double-paned, second-story window of a La Quinta hotel room. He awoke to find himself openly bleeding amidst a scattering […]
Robert Hooks and the pioneering DC Black Repertory Company
— This season, audiences have the chance to see plays about the African-American experience, written both by a new generation of writers and distinguished playwrights from the 20th century, on numerous stages. Invariably, the audiences are often predominantly white. One man had a grander vision, and for a time here in Washington, DC that vision […]
Review: The Bodyguard at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. Toby’s top talent and Whitney Houston’s songs aren’t enough
The legacy and superstardom of Whitney Houston endures, judging from the bobbing heads and impromptu singalongs at Toby’s Dinner Theatre’s production of The Bodyguard. Based on the 1992 film starring Houston and Kevin Costner and a perennial guilty pleasure of many a romance movie buff, The Bodyguard has been made into a rather plodding jukebox […]
Review: The Finger. U.S. debut of Kosovo play at Venus Theatre
How do we navigate our private and shared griefs? How do we buoy others up as we cope, and how do we drag them down? These are central questions in Kosovar playwright Doruntina Basha’s play The Finger, produced in English for the first time by Venus Theatre in the playwright’s self-translation. We bear witness to […]
Review: Trying at 1st Stage
Literate, compelling, and uplifting, Trying is a fine two-person play brought to life with simple style and a gentle grace by 1st Stage. Director Alex Levy has an impeccable cast to work with, abetted by excellent contributions from his design collaborators. Trying is the story of the late Francis Biddle, an old-school, patrician son of […]
Review: Elephant and Piggie’s “We are in a Play!” Shark-approved “gooood show”
I’ll admit, I was a bit terrified to attend Elephant and Piggie’s “We are in a Play!” Mostly because my toddler, lovingly called the Shark, had lived up to her animal Patronus and didn’t take a nap. For a 2pm show. I was prepared for a bloodbath, for wailing and gnashing of teeth reserved for […]
Theatre Week: Ticket sales have been through the roof, and there are still more deals left before Sept 29
After an exciting Kickoff Party, and weeks of active buying from bargain hunters, we checked in with Amy Austin, President and CEO of theatreWashington for an update heading into the last week Theatre Week’s last few days: “Buyers from over 40 states … over 6,000 tickets so far, an increase of 156% over last year’s […]
Review: School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play at Round House
“Jubilant!” Strange word to describe a play about skin tones, a mean girl with a foul mouth, and the lasting affects of colonialism. Yet, no other word works when it comes to School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, which takes a page from that other Mean Girls, as maybe you guessed, to navigate the […]
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