Drew Anderson (poetically known as “Droopy, The Brokeballer”), one half of the #DynamicDuo that is responsible for producing the weekly Thursday open mic Spit Dat since 2002, describes the new monthly residency at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre as an event with “big stage quality” and a “living room vibe.” This poetry veteran and his co-producer […]
Archives for October 2019
Review: Pride and Prejudice at NextStop. This comedy has the playwright ensconced in the cast
Jane Austen’s resilient and comedic novel “Pride and Prejudice” has survived high school English classes, stuffy college seminars, the musical stage, several film adaptations, and even a parody in which the Bennett sisters dispatch zombies while remaining the fine young ladies they were written to be. Now thanks to prolific playwright and actor Kate Hamill, […]
Review: Disenchanted! Suitably madcap, Princess-worthy performances at Creative Cauldron
All the charm in Creative Cauldron’s Disenchanted! is homespun, from madcap performances to powerful voices and kitschy props. But the script lobs too much hate at the House of Mouse (while staying just this side of copyright) to buoy or sustain the funny. Which is unfortunate, cause it has enough dirty wit and wink wink moments to […]
Louis Altarescu and Alan Friedman, recipients of 2019 Gary Maker Audience Award.
Louis Altarescu and Alan Friedman, well known volunteer ushers and theater enthusiasts until Friedman’s untimely death last month, have been selected to receive the 2019 Gary Maker Audience Award, given to audience members who support theater enthusiastically and well. Altarescu will receive the Maker Award at a brief ceremony before Washington Stage Guild’s October 20 […]
Review: Paquita from The Mariinsky Ballet, rarely produced and newly conceived
The Mariinksy Ballet marks its annual appearance at the Kennedy Center this week with an unusual offering: a full-length three-act Paquita, a ballet that is rarely performed in its entirety. While it is worth seeing for that reason alone, this production fuses new and historic choreography in interesting ways. Most ballet audiences have seen the […]
School Girls: or, the African Mean Girls Play. Funny for African-Americans, but what is it saying to White audiences?
As the stage lights brightened on Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls or the African Mean Girls Play, I was immediately taken back to my primary and secondary school days in Lagos, Nigeria. The button up shirt and calf-length skirt school uniform sewn from fabric that seemed specifically chosen to be as unflattering as possible, the polished […]
Review: West by God, a love letter to rural life in West Virginia
Brandon McCoy admits that he has written a love letter to his home state of West Virginia. McCoy has created a work that is both personal and heartachingly relatable to anyone who has pulled up roots and moved away from home. And yet, his home of West Virginia, as he shows in West by God’s […]
Review: Fences at Ford’s Theatre
The staging of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Fences at Ford’s Theatre seemed made-to-order for a grand slam home run. The memorable backyard drama of father and son and husband and wife is probably the most accessible and popular of Wilson’s magnificent Century Cycle. And the casting of local big-leaguer Craig Wallace in […]
Review: The Winter’s Tale. The Wheel Theatre Company fittingly exits the scene with this play about new beginnings
With the holiday season quickly approaching, so do the stresses that accompany the tricky social etiquette around visiting and hosting loved ones. You might do your best planning and preparation – altering seating arrangements to keep divergent personalities away from each other, creating three different menus to appease everyone’s dietary preferences, diffusing every conversational time […]
Review: The Royale . Olney Theatre’s boxing drama wins in a knock out
If baseball represents the joy of sport — its season concluding with popped champagne corks and ticker tape parades for the winners and the promise of next year for the losers — then boxing represents its tragedy, the loser lying broken and bleeding on the canvas, the winner often in not much better shape, and […]
Review: Escaped Alone, Caryl Churchill jarringly dark, dystopic visions
For those unfamiliar with the work of British playwright Caryl Churchill, Signature Theatre’s production of Escaped Alone (2016) may come as a bit of a shock. Skillfully directed by well-loved local actress Holly Twyford, Escaped Alone opens on a picturesque, yet unfussy, backyard garden. Three gracefully aging English women (Catherine Flye, Helen Hedman and Brigid […]
Review: Merce Cunningham at 100. The choreographer’s pioneering spirit lives on
Eleven dancers in white unitards with horizontal black strips at the top extending to gloved hands. In a dawn of pastel light, they hold a marvelous stillness. Four musicians play a minimalist John Cage score with a fragile, simple, ever-so-slow piano line and occasional extended single-high-pitch violin notes over the cascading micro-percussive tumbles of a […]