Aaron Posner is everywhere this season. With productions of Stupid Fucking Bird popping up in theatres all across America, and a few Helen Hayes and Barrymore Awards in both writing and directing categories, there’s a pun or two to be made about the playwright being a feather in the cap of the Washington theatre community.
About Jennifer Clements
As You Like It, Synetic-style (review)
Forget the pastoral images of Arden, or the shepherds and royalty you might expect from this play. Synetic’s dance-theatre rendition of As You Like It has all the dark twists and haunted images we’ve come to expect from the underground theatre, and a few turns we might not have foreseen.
Wish List at The Hub (review)
The Hub’s black box theatre offers an intimate experience, magnified in Wish List’s vanishing of a fourth wall. The three performers – Rose McConnell, Katie Jeffries, and Sasha Olinick – open the holiday show casually, so that it is hard to pinpoint exactly where it begins. McConnell walks onstage as the audience is still coming […]
Pericles cast talk about keeping it fresh on the road
The cast of Pericles, now onstage at the Folger Theatre, will have lived through countless famines, shipwrecks, and tournaments by the time they complete the play’s three-venue run. Beginning at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in early 2015, the production in DC closes December 20th, then moves to The Guthrie in Minneapolis for six weeks. When […]
Winners and Losers, a sure win at Woolly Mammoth (review)
What determines whether something is a winner or a loser? Names and places like the Washington Monument, Bernie Sanders, and indigenous people from other nations are subject to discussion (and dismissal) as two Canadian actors have it out over what has succeeded and what failed.
Maytag Virgin at Quotidian Theatre
Welcome to the neighborhood, here’s a pie. So begins our entry into the Alabama neighborhood of Maytag Virgin, or, more specifically, the shared grounds between two houses (one intricately decorated, one in disrepair). Quotidian Theatre Company produced this work for the Women Playwrights’ Festival, with playwright Aubrey Cefaly serving double-duty as director.
Dark imaginings in Alice in Wonderland from Synetic Theater
One of the gifts of Carroll’s Wonderland is that its world of illogical situations and creatures both provides the structure of a narrative while allowing plenty of space to imagine and interpret the absurdity in whatever way one may choose.
At Folger, texts&beheadings/ElizabethR (review)
texts&beheadings/ElizabethR, created and directed by Karin Coonrod, draws on the letters, prayers, and speeches of the queen who reigned in Shakespeare’s time. A fitting choice for the Folger Theatre, whose library of resources provided much of the source material for the play. The production was developed with Compagnia de’ Colombari, an international collective dedicated to […]
The Oregon Trail at Flying V (review)
Children of the ‘90s, climb on board. The Oregon Trail, modeled after the primitive computer game of the same name, is Flying V’s contribution to the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Written by Bekah Brunstetter and directed by Amber Jackson, this world premiere uses the parameters of our cherished childhood game to balance two coming-of-age tales.
code name: Cynthia, a new spy musical from Pallas Theatre Collective (review)
Our city has a long history of conflating people with their chosen profession. Of course, being Washington, there are large subsets of our residents who can’t disclose what they do for a living without getting into some pretty hot water. code name: Cynthia, the latest show from Pallas Theatre Collective, steeps us in that hot […]
Keegan Theatre reopens with powerful Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (review)
“There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.” This one line offers up the theme of Tennessee William’s renowned Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in ten simple words. But, as evidenced in the Keegan Theatre’s sparkling production, there is nothing simple about the relationships on this Mississippi estate.
New Madwoman of Chaillot from WSC Avant Bard (review)
Framed in a certain way, The Madwoman of Chaillot nearly reads like a news headline. Whether the media outlet is CNN or The Onion depends entirely on what you focus on – because this French satire by Jean Giraudoux blurs the lines between sanity and insanity, real and absurd.