I don’t often think about blasphemy. Neither do most of you, I’d hazard to guess. But if you see the production of Molière’s Tartuffe now playing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, you will be forced to think about it. And we should, given that people are being murdered in its name globally, along with the […]
About Jenn Larsen
Grief of a First Lady. World premiere of The Widow Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre
From the first moment that Mary Bacon steps onstage, you know this will be a bravura performance. That the stage is the haunted and venerable Ford’s Theatre, and that she is playing Mary Todd Lincoln in the world premiere production of The Widow Lincoln, makes for an even more potent beginning.
Jessica Frances Dukes: Booty Candy, The Good Wife and now King Hedley II
When King Hedley II opens at Arena Stage on February 6, Jessica Frances Dukes will appear in the role of Tonya. It’s a special moment in time for the native Washingtonian: her six-year-old self first sat in the audience of that hallowed regional theater. “It’s almost like graduation year for me,” she says as we […]
hookups
hookups is about as naked as it can get at Fringe. A quintet of engaging actors make use of an air mattress and the barest essentials to create a series of vignettes covering every imaginable hookup through history and literature, all with a wry wink and a twist. It’s both cute and crass, like that […]
A Piece of Pi
There is no pie in A Piece of Pi. I feel it’s necessary to point this out, because after all, there are clowns. So one might expect some pie-throwing with a show title like that. Or some mathematical musings on the nature of pi. But, there are neither.
Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Fantastical Capital Balloon Ride
True experimental theater breaks down the divide of expectations between performer and audience. Extroverts usually love this. Introverts, not so much. No surprise then that the long-form improvisation Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Fantastical Capital Balloon Ride positively delighted me. It’s like a sociological seminar on human nature, challenging you (ever so subtly) to actually be interested […]
Crave
Every heartbreaker eventually gets their heart broken. Cosmic justice, karma, the wheel of fortune – whatever you call it, the seesaw of relationships will always go from up to down and back again. But there’s a journey there, from paradise to hell and all the shades of grey in between. As Editors put it, “even […]
Sanyasi
Can you ever truly detach from the world? From emotions, like heartache, greed, love? From the mundane, the pettiness of every day existence? Is this truly liberation, or is renunciation of the world a different kind of bondage?
Tactile Dinner Cart
For a crash course on what to expect from Fringe, you can’t do better than banished? productions’ mad avant-garde experience, Tactile Dinner Car. It’s a crazy sociological experiment playing by its own rules, smack dab in the middle of the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent.
The Malachite Palace
Though there’s definitely an element of raunchy radicalism about Fringe, it’s important to remember that there are performances suitable for all. If you have a small child in your life, a sweet outing for you and them would be Wit’s End Puppets presentation of The Malachite Palace. Combining both shadow puppetry and marionettes, this adaptation of […]
King Lear
The haunting themes of King Lear touch on nature’s cruelty, Fate’s arbitrary hand, and man’s inevitable decline – and their truth strikes everyone differently depending on where one is in life. Somehow, I’ve seen Lears now at every decade change, and each time the play changes for me.
The Rave Scenes
Imagine a group of friends (and some hangers-on) sitting around one night talking about the club scene they used to frequent. No matter the particular scene, if you were a crazy clubkid, you’ve had the post-scene breakdown, the nostalgia and the arguments about what it really meant. AWoL Productions’ The Rave Scenes is exactly like one […]