What I didn’t get to see was what drew me to these shows. I’m talking about Eight and Romeo and Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending, both presented at Capital Fringes past. Ella Hickson, the British writer of Eight, gave us eight characters of which we, the audience, could pick four; those four would give us […]
Get Used To It! from Rainbow Theatre Project (review)
Before Orlando, this show meant something different. Before that tragedy, a mere two weeks ago – just two days after Rainbow Theatre Project opened Get Used To It! – it would have been easy to think of this 20-song revue as a quaint history lesson, a peek back at the political fights and personal communities […]
Peter Pan at Toby’s Dinner Theatre (review)
You already know what kind of time you’ll have at Toby Dinner Theatre’s Peter Pan. If the show’s of-its-era difficulties portraying Native Americans would bother you, this production will do nothing to address that. Otherwise, if you are a fan of the classic tale of the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, you’ll not be disappointed.
The Nether at Woolly Mammoth (review)
The desires and dilemmas The Nether explores are as dark as they come, so the question for the potential audience member is: are you afraid of the dark? Or do you find it contemplative?
Scena’s Antigone Now at Atlas before European tour (review)
The title of this play is also its purpose – to show us what the ancient Greek tragedy of Antigone would look like in modern times, and locate its deeper meaning across the centuries.
Crimes of the Heart at NextStop (review)
What’s changed in the thirty-five years since Beth Henley wrote Crimes of the Heart that makes it feel outdated? It’s hard to pinpoint any obvious factors, since the story is a very personal, observational one about three sisters, with its politics subtle and non-dogmatic. Yet one cannot help but leave the theatre feeling that – […]
Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) at Round House Theatre (review)
The most fun you can have at a three-hour epic about slavery. A huge, sprawling play (with six more parts still coming!) that boils down to a few simple conversations. A story that illuminates the African-American experience by way of Greek tragedy. Verse on the plantation, prose on the battlefield, and blues guitar in between. […]
Critics are up again in St. Nicholas at Washington Stage Guild (review)
A fascinating conversation about the fascinating story of an all-too-ordinary man, Conor McPherson’s St. Nicholas, at Washington Stage Guild, is theatre for people who like to laugh at, and think about, things they never expected. As a replacement for the originally-scheduled third installment of George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah (postponed until the company’s 30th […]
The Gospel of Lovingkindness at Mosaic Theater (review)
The most outstanding thing about Marcus Gardley’s The Gospel of Lovingkindness is that it wrestles full-body with the most troubling issues of our times yet still is a joy and a treat to participate in. So long as it keeps its train rolling full steam ahead – which it manages to do for the majority […]
One in the Chamber at Mead Theatre Lab (review)
Perhaps the best kind of political play is the one that has no message at all. With One in the Chamber, Marja-Lewis Ryan is not at all interested in making points, picking sides, or influencing your views; she simply wants to observe a corner of the world as it is, and let you take away […]
Twelve Angry Men, American Century Theater’s closing show
What a way for a theatre company to say farewell. Returning, twenty years later, to the play that first brought them into the world, American Century Theater sets the example for bowing out with grace and passion with Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men.
District of Cara at Capital Fringe
Everyone’s got a story to tell, but some are more engaging for their wild and woolly details, and others more for the way they are told; Cara Foran’s story falls into the second category. A guided tour through the history of her romances, both with boyfriends and with DC itself, District of Cara has the […]