Comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia has a rare sleepwalking disorder – one that almost killed him. As he tells it, one night—in the throes of a particularly vivid, bad-guy-chase-sequence dream—a sleepwalking Birbiglia launched himself through the double-paned, second-story window of a La Quinta hotel room. He awoke to find himself openly bleeding amidst a scattering […]
Review: Love Sick, Theater J’s seductive musical
In its best moments Love Sick—the opening show of Theater J’s 2019-20 season in its newly renovated space—is a brilliantly woven tapestry of competing forms. The music, written by Ofra Daniel and Lior Ben-Hur, blends mellifluent middle-eastern melodies with the plucky refrains of modern musical comedy. Daniel’s script, adapted from the Hebrew bible’s Song of […]
Review: Dear Evan Hansen, stunning performances led by Ben Levi Ross
Dear Evan Hansen is a heart-wrenching, ultimately transformative, gut-punch of a musical. The Kennedy Center’s production, directed by Michael Greif and featuring the national touring cast, including the utterly stunning Ben Levi Ross as Evan, is the most intimate, emotionally wrought performance of the show I have yet to see. Evan, a painfully shy, socially […]
Review: Legally Blonde, a delightfully funny, sweet summer musical
“Oh. My. God. Oh my god, you guys!” Keegan Theatre’s production of Legally Blonde is so over-the-top, fabulously fun – the perfect sweet treat on a sweltering DC summer evening. For those who are wondering – how do you take a beloved 20-year-old movie and translate it to the stage in a way that both […]
Review: Tiger Style! at Olney Theatre Center
Blame their parents. Albert and Jennifer Chen are failing at life. Sure, they both graduated top of their class from Harvard. And, yes, Jen went on to get a medical degree and PhD (both from Harvard) before starting her career as an oncologist. Albert took the “lazy Asian” way out, “only” becoming a software programmer. […]
Review: Prologue Theatre’s The Explorers Club
Playwright Nell Benjamin’s (Legally Blonde) The Explorers Club lambasts the last bastion of the manly man—an 1879 London gentleman’s club where explorers and scientists of great renown impart their wisdom during “brandy and cigar hour,” which is observed as an ancient rite. When Lucius Fretway, a meekly charming and oft-tongue tied botanist (Danny Cackley) proposes […]
Capital Fringe review: Codependent
I’m going to come right out and admit it: I’m no millennial sympathizer.Too many years of sleeping under my desk and being forced (by corporate dress code) to wear nylons through DC’s sweltering summers. #SelfCare? Come on, this is D.C. So the very idea of Codependent, a two-woman coming-of-age comedy written by two millennials and […]
Capital Fringe review: How’s That Workin’ Out for Ya? 2.0
In case you haven’t heard, the future is female—and fiercely funny. At least as told by the Pipeline Playwrights—a collective of sharp-tongued women playwrights from NoVa, each presenting one of five original comedies at this year’s Capital Fringe festival. If you come to the festival in search of new voices, and up-to-the-minute political theater, HTWOFY […]
Review: A furiously funny Love’s Labor’s Lost at Folger Theatre
Love’s Labor’s Lost is reputed to be one of Shakespeare’s toughest plays to stage (and it rarely is). The late 16th Century comedy has a simple enough plot – one guaranteed to tee up some adventures and misdeeds. The ink is still wet on the sworn oath between the King of Navarre (Joshua David Robinson) […]
Grand Hotel review. Brilliant sets, costumes and performances, lackluster book and music
Signature Theatre is known for reviving and revamping long forgotten musicals – and they don’t shy away from a challenge. Grand Hotel tells the story of a handful of strangers, drawn together as guests of the titular hotel at the center of Berlin during the city’s “Golden Era” of the mid- to late- 1920’s. During […]
Review: Confection, a sumptuous, sugary 17th century banquet and its cost
I’m a sucker for Shakespeare. And having lived on Capitol Hill for more than a decade and enjoyed many events at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the opportunity to participate in an “immersive theater experience,” held in the library’s opulent and rarely-accessed Paster and Sedgwick-Bond reading rooms that also included desserts was deliciously alluring. My appetite […]
Review: Cirkus Cirkör’s Limits. Swedish acrobatic troupe knows no limits.
We here in Washington, DC are no strangers to a “political circuses,” but it was hard to know what to expect from Swedish acrobatic troupe Cirkus Cirkör, whose past performances have been described as “contemporary circus activism.” The troupe’s newest piece Limits—part jaw-dropping acrobatics, part contemporary ballet, interspersed with feats of strength, live music, mind-bending […]
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