With puppetry, projection, lighting, and video timed perfectly to a live, original, nerdcore rap score, .d0t:: a RotoPlastic Ballet runs like clockwork, even as it tells the stories of machines destroying the perfect System.
Nilaja Sun’s Pike St. at Woolly Mammoth (review)
Nilaja Sun’s latest solo-performance, Pike St., calls back to her upbringing in the Lower East Side to invoke a rich cast of characters, but is held back by a design choice and brief duration. Sun embodies a diverse cast, from a senile Holocaust survivor to a Yemeni shopkeeper. The play focuses on a Puerto Rican and black […]
Coolatully from Solas Nua (review)
Coolatully hits every single trope of a modern Irish story with an impeccable, though taciturn exactitude. Solas Nua is “the only organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to contemporary Irish work,” but here “contemporary” falls short of the “new light” they take their name from.
God of Carnage at Compass Rose (review)
There are many different types of laughter in a theater: Chuckles from slapstick, a knowledgeable laugh at word play… God of Carnage reaches into the audience, grabs hard, and drags out every last ounce of pained, awkward laughter as the cast wrecks each other in a living room demolition derby.
Baby Screams Miracle at Woolly Mammoth Theatre (review)
Baby Screams Miracle is a wild storm of religion, sexuality, and family that leaves the audience unsure if the rest of the world is still standing. From the first moment that Cody Nickell as Gabe takes the stage pantsless, the play is intimate, emotionally and physically, with very few barriers.
Falling for As You Like It at Folger (review)
Full of song, love, and laughter, As You Like It will sweep you off your feet. If you don’t love it at first sight, wait.
Lumina Studio’s adapted LEAR (review)
Lumina Studio Theatre packs LEAR with high-concept projections and mute scenes, but does best when they give their actors room to play. Director/Assistant Director David Minton’s adaptation begins with a wordless scene wherein Lear (John O’Connor) trades a duck mask with a mysterious figure with a shopping cart to get a crown. This figure returns wearing […]
The Tarot Reading experiment – a vision for the future?
Something strange happened last Halloween: The Tarot Reading took its first steps. With both inaugural performances sold out, the brainchild of Alan Katz and Quill Nebeker could have a long future ahead.
Straight White Men at Studio Theatre (review)
In Straight White Men, playwright Young Jean Lee finds remarkable insight and startling sympathy with our society’s least oppressed identity. Far from a brutal if well-deserved takedown, Lee digs deep into how her subjects think, feel, and suffer even as they try to do right by everyone else.
Fritz Lang’s silent movie Metropolis gets new Tom Teasley percussive score (review)
In Constellation Theatre Company’s screeningof Metropolis, Tom Teasley’s live music breathes new life into the 89-year-old classic. Every production in Constellation’s 10th season will feature live music, but this production takes that idea and runs with it. A Constellation collaborator since The Arabian Nights in their first season, Tom Teasley provides a live and partially […]
Stephen Spotswood’s Girl in the Red Corner (review)
The Welders’ latest show, Girl in the Red Corner by Stephen Spotswood, falls short of some expectations, but makes up for it in its many human moments delivered by its talented cast.
The Year of Magical Thinking at Arena Stage (review)
Switching between mediums can be as difficult as telling someone about a dream. If the new version cannot deliver on everything the original does (next to impossible), it better bring some valuable contributions to the story rooted in the new medium’s strengths.