Whenever a Shakespeare play is “modernized,” “updated,” or otherwise altered to appeal to a contemporary audience, it’s important to be skeptical, for we would hate to witness a poor reinvention of the wheel. The catch with Taffety Punk Theatre Company’s new production at the Capital Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) is that Shakespeare’s “The Rape of […]
About Ross Preston
Making Love Legal
Making Love Legal is funny, ambitious in its plot twists, and concludes the way comedies are supposed to Hint: there’s a ceremony in the final scene focused on two people in love.
In This Economy
“The applicant must have a bachelor’s degree and at least 2 years of relevant experience.” These are the words that the audience first encounters during In This Economy. Throughout the play, quick flashes of language that function as makeshift scene titles are displayed on a projector towards the back of the stage. Except when they […]
Tent of Dreams: An Occuplay
It was fitting enough that the opening performance of the Occupy DC focused play Tent of Dreams: An Occuplay was being staged at the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent.
Who’s Your Baghdaddy or How I Started the Iraq War
As a Fringe reviewer, it is always nice to read something in a program that acknowledges the challenges of creating the play in question. In the words of Charlie Fink, producer of Who’s Your Baghdaddy? Or How I Started The Iraq War, talking about the original screenplay written by JT Allen:
The Many Women of Troy
What do the women do while the men are at war? It is this question, asked in the midst of an all-out musical and visual spectacle, that drives director Tracey Elaine Chessum’s production of The Many Women of Troy. And I mean ‘spectacle’ in every sense of the word. After watching the first fifteen minutes, […]
Hamlet Reframed
Many people have attempted adaptations of Hamlet. And so has Mel Gibson. Anytime it happens, there is always the problem of how to faithfully depict Shakespeare’s masterpiece without going too far. Why break it if you can’t fix it?
David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross
David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is a top notch play. Saturday’s performance at the Warehouse was a quality one, but it did not exceed expectations. Call me jaded, but this production of Glengarry Glen Ross needed something more than what was there.
70 Million Tons
Have you ever met a human manifestation of the ozone layer before? I hadn’t either, but upon viewing Terry McKinstry’s 70 Million Tons, my answer to that question will never be the same. And it’s for the better. We spend plenty of time personifying the planet (Earth Day, Mother Earth, etc.), but to give a […]