How to Catch A Star adaptor, director, and tech wizard Jared Mezzocchi leads this debut that serves up truly jaw-dropping visuals for a full hour of exploratory theater, guaranteed to amaze the eyes for any patrons, even its most youngest.
Review: Apocalypse Soon, buffet is great, political satire’s hard
Washington DC has quite a rich tradition in political satire, from local legends The Capitol Steps to one-off play commissions at local theaters like Signature to niche private functions only advertised by whispers. City in a Swamp Productions aims to be the next topical phenomenon with pastiche political musical revues and their most recent foray […]
Review: Blueberries for Sal, a new kids musical at Adventure Theatre
After napping on a long drive to Glen Echo Park on a rainy day, it was time to wake up the Shark. The Shark is my 20 month old daughter who, like her namesake, seems to need constant movement in order to survive. I was apprehensive about waking her up too much, because our destination […]
Review: Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate), new romantic comedy at GALA
Walking into Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) I knew, as you may, that there was a best-selling Spanish language movie of its time, and an equally popular novel/cookbook by Laura Esquivel. I hadn’t read or seen either, and didn’t even know what the title meant. But what I found at GALA Hispanic Theater […]
Review: Akerley’s new Interstellar Ghost Hour a space time puzzler
Iris is an astronaut. She travels through space. Iris is also a chrononaut. She travels through time. And that’s where her troubles begin as the protagonist of The Interstellar Ghost Hour, Kathleen Akerley’s latest fall annual auteur production, often seen as the opening volley of the season, especially for shows made for and by local artists.
Review: The Pirates of Penzance at Olney Theatre Center
Theater programming usually doesn’t get any more conservative than Gilbert & Sullivan, late 19th century purveyors of light opera and bad puns. But Chicago’s avant-garde company The Hypocrites’ Theatre’s returning smash production of The Pirates of Penzance shows a new spin on an old G & S to be one of the more exciting musicals of […]
Review: 50 Ways… at Capital Fringe
50 Ways…, a new Fringe show from the mind of Mahayana Landowne, promises to fit 50 scenes into just 70 minutes of runtime. How can she do that? When you see it, the answer will become hilariously and heartbreakingly obvious: it only takes a moment for something to end.
Review: Coronado at Capital Fringe
Coronado is a play in disguise. If you read the blurbs or see the black and white promo photo of a couple of White dudes at a bar table with cigarettes hanging from their mouths, you might think you know what this play is going to be. You might think it’s a Mamet/Labute knockoff bar […]
Review: Vengeance in my Heart at Capital Fringe
Titus Andronicus is well-known as several things: as Shakespeare’s first true tragedy, as a foreshadow of the brutal Jacobean revenge dramas that would dominate the first quarter of the 17th century, and (perhaps most famously) as Shakespeare’s most visceral and bloody work. Yet Vengeance in my Heart presented by Wowdacious Theatre at Capital Fringe delivers […]
Review: To the Clouds earns claps from The Shark and her daddy critic
Theater critics, at least good ones, should be grizzled theatergoing veterans and yet be centered and sensitive enough to relive the experience of the newcomer every time they see a show. To be a brutally honest with myself, I was only one of those at a Saturday matinee performance of To the Clouds from Arts […]
Review: Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at Studio Theatre
There are few topics more horrifying and less funny than one’s parents’ sexuality. But Qui Nguyen, one of the hottest American playwrights of the moment, has embraced the embarrassment of parental porking to make Vietgone, a story of homes and loves lost and found in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. This DC premiere of […]
Before they reach The Wall. Experience the desert crossing in convincing virtual reality. Carne y Arena (review)
If you’re looking for the cutting edge of DC theater, look for the groups who are interrogating the boundaries of what it means to even be a theater. From Forum’s actor-less The State to TBD’s immersive wonderlands to The Tarot Reading’s ‘theater without lies’* to the variety of groups making plays in bars, houses, hotel rooms, […]