Consider this: If the Emperor Nero really did fiddle while Rome burned, he might have been playing one of his own compositions (albeit in a distinctly minor key). That’s a supposition one takes from Nero/Pseudo, the glam rock musical now enjoying its world premiere with WSC Avant Bard at downtown Washington’s Fort Fringe.
About Deryl Davis
Forgiveness and Forum’s production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
– These interviews were conducted before the attack on cast member Frank Britton on Monday night – Jesus, Judas Iscariot and Mother Teresa walk into a bar . . . Actually, a courtroom, in Purgatory, where Judas is on trial to determine his eternal fate. Will he suffer everlasting damnation, or is there another option […]
Freud’s Last Session
We’re suckers for a good match up: Frazier versus Ali, Lincoln versus Douglas, Celtics versus Lakers . . . C. S. Lewis versus Sigmund Freud? The latter would surprise many of us, who would never think to put the evangelical Christian Lewis in the same room with the fiercely atheistic father of psychoanalysis. (History did […]
The Vaclav Havel Project: Vanek Unleashed and Unveiling
Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s spirited, quirky The Vaclav Havel Project offers delightful commentary on the perennial question of the artist’s role in society. When that artist is former Czech president and Communist-era dissident Vaclav Havel – or a representation of him – the question takes on greater geo-political significance.
Tom Story on directing Moth
Veteran D.C. actor Tom Story describes Moth, a tale of high school bullying and its violent repercussions closing this weekend at Studio Theatre’s 2ndStage, as the kind of play he would have loved to have done when he was in his early twenties. Now somewhere in his “later thirties,” Story has turned to directing for […]
Cinderella: The Remix – busting the fairy tale at Imagination Stage
Hip-hop has gotten a bad rap, according to Psalmayene 24 (Psalm), the writer and director behind Cinderella: The Remix, the final installment of a three-part Hip-Hop Children’s Trilogy running through May 25 at Imagination Stage in Bethesda. It’s not the music that’s the problem, but the message sometimes is; too often, mainstream hip-hop celebrates a […]
Once on This Island
Once on this Island, the diverting Caribbean-themed musical running at Olney Theatre Center through May 4, is more than just a pastel-colored stroll through island culture to a calypso beat. Of Calypso there is plenty, and the strong cast delivers the musical’s 19 numbers, ranging from upbeat, Broadway-style ensemble pieces to solo ballads, with soul […]
Arguendo – Elevator Repair Service putting on the Supremes
Twelve Angry Men it is not. In that serious courtroom drama from the 1950s, twelve – yes, angry – sequestered jurors debate in real time the guilt or innocence of a man suspected of homocide. In Elevator Repair Service’s Arguendo, running at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company through April 27, five actors portray lawyers, court clerks, […]
La Muerte y La Doncella – Death and the Maiden – at World Stages
Is justice contextual? Does it mean one thing for a nation recovering from decades of brutalizing dictatorship and another for the individual who suffered that brutalization? And how does that individual, and that nation, both face the specter of the past and move on from it?