Any company approaching Much Ado About Nothing faces a number of difficult hurdles. It features one of the most passive, flat, one-note villains in any Shakespearean play. It threads slapstick farcical plot lines into an otherwise very serious story about betrayal, wrongdoing, and dishonor. And it features two characters, Beatrice and Benedick, who are so […]
About RK Pendergrass
A Christmas Carol: The Musical, pure gold at Toby’s (review)
“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol: The Musical is to the Dickensian tale what Spamalot was to Arthurian legend. Perhaps it is smidge or two less slapstick, but it is still a fun, self-aware, frequently delightfully hammy musical romp through […]
A Christmas Carol Memory at Creative Cauldron (review)
Creative Cauldron’s A Christmas Carol Memory is a world premiere adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic story A Christmas Carol. Conceived and directed by Creative Cauldron’s artistic director Laura Connors Hull, and written by Jennifer Clements, the reason for the re-imagining was to tinker with tradition and explore the power of memories.
Michelle Obama to LGBTQ True Colors in White House Awards presentation: “You belong here.”
On November 15, the ceremony for the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards was held at the White House for the eighth and final time. The program was a watershed project of the Obama administration, meant to recognize outstanding extracurricular programs that enrich and transform the lives of young people. Each of the 12 annual […]
Chambers of the Heart, a Word Dance collaboration on love (review)
After this past election week of turmoil, anger, backlash, and fear, Word Dance Theatre’s Chambers of the Heart offered a much needed escape into an immersive reality full of breath and love.
Andy Brownstein returns to the stage in Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound
Helen Hayes Award-winning actor Andy Brownstein has been absent from the DC stages since his 2012 performance as Michael in the pitch-black comedy God of Carnage at Signature Theatre. However, this week he makes his return in 1st Stage’s production of Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound, a fragile, tender comedy dealing with divorce, pain, family tension and […]
Reactions from Gander as Come From Away cast perform their 9/11 story
On Saturday, October 29th, the cast of the soon-to-hit-Broadway musical, Come From Away, graced the stage of the Steele Community Center in Gander, Newfoundland. Nearly half the population of Gander – 5,000 people – watched Canadian playwrights Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s story of their tiny Canadian town’s role in hosting 38 grounded planes, carrying 6,700 passengers, following the […]