At Shakespeare Theatre’s 2020 mock court Thursday night, the veteran Shakespearian actor Ed Gero described the special challenges facing a theater artist who takes on one of the Bard’s works. Almost every one of Shakespeare’s plays have been done hundreds of times and many have been done thousands of times. So, he pointed out, the […]
Archives for February 2020
The Unsinkable Molly Brown Review: Titanic Survivor as Singing Elizabeth Warren
Molly Brown, a socialite, social activist and survivor of the Titanic disaster in real life — turned into a Tony-winning Tammy Grimes on stage and Debbie Reynolds at her pluckiest on screen — has been meticulously transformed once again, into…Elizabeth Warren. That’s clear from the very first scene of this new Off-Broadway version of The […]
Shakespeare Theatre mock trial gives a speedy – and witty – hearing to The Trial of Peter Pan
Peter Pan, having swept the Darling children up into the sky with fairy dust, brought them to Neverland, a venue full of pirates and mermaids. There, along with the lost boys, they did battle with the worst of them. The children returned that very night with memories of fantastic adventures and resolved to live lives […]
Opera review: Beethovan’s Leonore from Opera Lafayette
Opera Lafayette has taken on a prodigiously ambitious task in tackling the “reawakening” of Ludwig van Beethoven’s single operatic masterpiece (Fidelio) by giving us the composer’s earlier and little-known work Leonore (1805) as a modern premiere. Everything about it pointed to a singularly important Washington event at Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, and serious opera lovers […]
West Side Story on Broadway: Ivo van Hove’s thrilling, homoerotic, incoherent Broadway music video
What’s most remarkable about Ivo van Hove’s shake-up of West Side Story is, for all the Belgian director’s ruinous choices – chief among them, an overabundance of distracting video projections – he doesn’t completely ruin what’s most thrilling about this 63-year-old musical updating of Romeo and Juliet. Leonard Bernstein’s music remains a miracle of melody […]
Review: Timon of Athens. Simon Godwin’s vivification rescues one of Shakespeare’s minor plays
Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Simon Godwin’s choice of directorial debut wasn’t a stretch. Godwin’s newly minted tenure at STC begins with a vivid and zesty restaging of his recently produced Timon of Athens, a cluttered morality play in original form which he’s cleverly smoothed over and corseted up into a fetchingly absurdist cri de […]
Review: Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers, a perfect marriage of script and production
There’s a saying among actors: “There’s no such thing as a perfect show.” Anyone lucky enough to see Theater J’s production of The Wanderers will have to politely disagree: top to bottom, this is as fine and perfect a piece of theater I’ve seen in many a year. The script by Anna Ziegler (whose play […]
Taffety Punks’ suicide.chat.room. For choreographer Paulina Guerrero, movement is the message.
Paulina Guerrero is the choreographer for the tenth year anniversary of suicide.chat.room, opening this week at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Guerrero joins us to talk about the differences of building this remounted production from a script versus from scratch, and how her movements affect the overall story. This expands on our talk with Taffety Punk […]
Review: Ordinary Days, Adam Gwon’s charming chamber musical
Adam Gwon’s chamber musical Ordinary Days is ostensibly the story of four young adults searching for love and their “life stories” in New York City. Yet the real love story at the heart of the show is the mythical Manhattan of stage and film, a romantic and nurturing setting where characters find themselves and relationships, […]
Review: Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die opens Off-Broadway
We’re all in pain – because of loneliness or loss, betrayal or illness – and playwright Young Jean Lee wants to offer us some comfort. This might not be immediately apparent, given the title of her unusual show, and its format: Performer Janelle McDermoth sings a half-dozen tuneful, hard-charging rock songs interspersed with anecdotes of […]
How Monumental Theatre honors Head Over Heels’ celebration of acceptance with a young, inclusive cast
Head Over Heels made a splash on Broadway in 2016, notably starring the first transgender actor playing an out nonbinary character in a Broadway musical — Peppermint as Phythio. Now, the DMV is about to experience a whole new “Beat,” as Monumental Theatre Company produces the first regional production of this musical, which is based on […]
Review: Kill Move Paradise asks Why are we so afraid of young black men?
When a show lists a Trauma Counselor in the credits and has a “healing space” outside of the theater proper, you know you are in for an intense experience. Kill Move Paradise will make you feel like you’ve been holding your breath for 75 minutes. That edge of your seat, breath-caught feeling is fitting, but […]
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