Any creative way that local companies find to bring us original theater feels like a lifeline these days, and We Happy Few’s genteel caper, Loveday Brooke in ‘The Mystery of the Drawn Daggers’, is no exception. Performed in the style of an old-fashioned radio play, the 45-minute mystery puts us in the hands of Loveday […]
Archives for November 2020
Review: Independent Claus from Best Medicine. Not one of its best
You’re never quite sure which Claus is independent in Jackob G. Hofmann’s meandering, pointless 70-minute video comedy until the very end, and by that point it doesn’t matter. In Best Medicine Rep’s An Independent Claus, Kris Kringle (Terence Heffernan) is a Bad Santa – a crude, womanizing misogynist whose constant traveling companion is a half-consummated […]
With GALA’s cancellations, all DC-area theatres are now closed to in-person performances
Shakespeare Theatre Company announced yesterday that it will cancel its limited in-person production of Blindness in light of an increase in the number of DC coronavirus cases. The increase had caused DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to announce further restrictions on her revised Phase Two ReOpen DC plan which goes into effect November 25. “The health […]
Review: Howard University featured in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me on HBO
About 15 minutes into the HBO film adaptation of “Between The World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates best-selling 2015 book framed as a letter to his son about what it means to be Black in America, Susan Kelechi Watson, who portrays Beth Pearson in “This Is Us,” walks across the campus of Howard University, describing […]
Can theatres survive the pandemic? For Brave Spirits, the answer is no.
The economic havoc caused by the coronavirus has claimed another local victim – Brave Spirits Theatre. The nine-year-old company was in the midst of an ambitious project to produce Shakespeare’s histories from Richard II to Richard III when Covid-19 began to shut down theaters – and most other enterprises – in and near DC. The […]
Review: Bill Irwin On Beckett In Screen, a performance Beckett would have applauded
“Existentialism; that word puts us to sleep,” master clown Bill Irwin was saying on my computer screen, “even though true questions of existence…keep us awake at night.” The word “Existentialism” did not put me to sleep; I was riveted whenever, in this 75-minute solo piece, Irwin offered his own words – his insights, his explanations […]
Warning: Scammer posing as British director targets women in online scheme
The DC Theatre Community has been undergoing much transformation throughout the pandemic, beginning with the removal of powerful white men in positions of power. (The Washington Post even referred to it as a “Crisis”). Artists have been coming forward with stories of unsafe practices, mistreatment, predation, and abuse. Then within the community’s whisper network, we […]
Review: The Marriage Proposal, a Chekhovian comic soufflé
Brothers and sisters, think back to the day you asked your Heart of Hearts to join you in eternal matrimony, if there was such a day. Did you do it in the traditional way, at a restaurant, kneeling aside the starched linens, with musicians playing sweetly in the background? Perhaps, in a comfortable relationship of […]
Ari Roth resigns from Mosaic Theater of DC
An embittered Ari Roth today announced that he has resigned as Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company, the company he founded six years ago after parting with Theater J. Board of Directors Bill Tompkins announced that the Board unanimously accepted his resignation. Roth revealed that unidentified staff had leveled charges of “white supremacist culture and […]
Review: Trans rock star Lisa Stephen Friday debuts her personal story in Trans Am
At its heart, Trans Am is an autobiographical ode in the style of a rock opera, that draws inspiration from the folk-rock like stereotype of the singer-storyteller. Lisa Stephen Friday, in her one-woman autobiographical show receiving its world premiere at Keegan Theatre, brings us on a hybrid journey of traditional coming out stories and traditional […]
Review: A fresh version of From Gumbo to Mumbo playing now
The tangy DC streets or a soulful bowl of NOLA. From Gumbo to Mumbo celebrates each from its first notes—for what writers and performers Drew Anderson and Dwayne Lawson-Brown do is something just shy of sing. This show is about their roots and life routes. Which, predictably, also include a lot of pain. From being […]
Review: El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger) from GALA Hispanic Theatre
February 8, 2020 I sat in GALA’s historic entertainment “palace” to review Nilo Cruz’ Exquisita Agonia. It was the last time (pre-Covid) I enjoyed live theater. Nine months later, Managing Director Rebecca Read Medrano has done what no other theater in Washington has been able to do – mount a season and reopen an indoor […]