As reported here yesterday, Monday morning, Woolly Mammoth Theater announced the cancellation of their upcoming festival of work from Russia. The withdrawal of Moscow municipal funds crucial to the collaboration accompanies rising political pressure on artists here in Russia’s capital. Recent reactionary attention signals the newest new wave of challenges to theaters with a long history […]
About Robert Duffley
Report from Moscow: Russian tensions ice Woolly’s Festival of New Radical Theatre
– DCTS writer Robert Duffley is currently studying at the Moscow Art Theater in conjunction with the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. – The Russians are not coming. Monday morning, Woolly Mammoth Theatre announced the cancellation of their upcoming festival of work from some of Moscow’s most innovative artists. The latest line […]
Arena Stage featured in An Ideal Theater
Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, has compiled a family Bible for the modern American theater. In the letters, speeches, and reflections collected in An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions for a New American Art, American drama’s founding spirits share their visions for 50 theaters from Los Angeles to the Lower East Side. This book […]
Gilgamesh
The mythmakers at Constellation Theatre Company, who previously produced The Ramayana, The Green Bird, and Metamorphoses, have now gone after the world’s oldest story. Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian tale of a king’s quest to defeat death, teaches that death is eternal; the production relishes in the fact that legends are, too. The epic resurrects looking […]
Coriolanus
Performed with Wallenstein as part of STC’s Hero/Traitor Repertory, Shakespeare’s less-performed Roman tragedy roars to life at the STC. Director David Muse sheaths the tragedy’s notoriously complex text in a muscle-bound character study, and Patrick Page gives a ferocious portrayal of the general-turned-invader as a fanatically uncompromising military man whose only flaw is a refusal […]
Monty Python’s Spamalot
Monty Python’s Spamalot now at The National Theatre for its brief and final visit to DC, is a musical romp through a favorite film that shouldn’t be missed. A delight we’re lucky to have back in town after its visit to The Warner last spring, this production puts a new spin on a classic in more […]
James and the Giant Peach
Like Dahl’s famous peach, this larger-than-life production teems with fun. A bit of genre anxiety robs the story of some of the stage magic it deserves, but there’s still plenty to savor in Imagination Stage’s reinvention of a well-loved classic.
Capitol Steps . the latest on Francis I
Pennsylvania Avenue meets Broadway in Capitol Steps‘ farcical revue of contemporary politics. Comprising an ensemble of multi-talented former Hill staffers, Capitol Steps offers a musical send-up of political buffoonery on both sides of the aisle in their twice-weekly DC shows. The troupe’s retooled classic pop hits and show tunes take the governing class to task […]
Dante’s Inferno
Hell hath no water break for Bill Largess, whose one-man Dante’s Inferno sears through Dante’s underworld in 90 minutes. Exercising a mnemonic that would impress Homer, Largess escorts audiences through literature’s most hallowed vision of hell. He hits the highlights, and a delightfully gruesome sound design complements his reverent recitation.
The Conference of the Birds
“Nothing in the world is as amazing as something that is neither clear nor unclear,” marvels a member of director Aaron Posner’s dervish ensemble in The Conference of the Birds, now playing at the Folger Theatre. The production puts this claim to the test, leading audiences on a whirling, shape-shifting journey through the 12th century […]
Holly Down in Heaven
Holly is a precocious 15-year-old. She knows the fine points of quantum physics, and she’s in her school’s gifted and talented program. She is also pregnant, and a recent convert to born-again Christianity.
[missed connections]
The end of days strikes close to home in Impossible Theater Company’s new devised piece, [missed connections] at The Fridge, a snug but supercool gallery space near Eastern Market. The play follows four DC residents’ lives over three months after they learn that the end is nigh. The science behind this particular apocalypse is intentionally […]