One last standing ovation for these performers whose work quite simply blew us away this year. Ian Merill Peakes, Amadeus, Folger Theatre In Amadeus, Ian Merill Peakes brought Peter Shaffer’s Salieri to brilliant, anguished life. He was a childishly sweet-scarfing confidant explaining to future generations the way his young court-rival genius, Mozart, curdled Salieri’s heart and activated […]
Review: The Havel Project: A tribute to Czechoslovakia’s dissident playwright and president
To mark and honor the thirtieth anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, the Alliance for New Music-Theatre is presenting two one-act plays to honor the revolution’s leader, the dissident playwright/author, political prisoner and eventual president Václav Havel; one he wrote, the other he inspired. No venue in DC could be more appropriate for these plays than […]
Václav Havel tribute celebrating The Velvet Revolution gets ready to open at Dupont Underground. Up close with The Havel Project
Václav Havel was a renowned politician who went from political prisoner to serving as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the country’s dissolution three years later, who then became the first president of the Czech Republic, serving from 1993 to 2003. But in addition to making history as a pioneer in government, Havel […]
Review: Black Pearl Sings!
Like my mama used to say, just because somebody asks for something doesn’t mean you have to give it. In the case of the Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s exemplary Black Pearl Sings!, it’s a song–a song from Africa that was sung long before slavery times and held like a sacred trust then handed down to […]
Roz White on Black Pearl Sings! and the songs of the Gullah people
When she was a little girl, up until about the time she was 10 years old, Roz White visited her great grandmother in South Carolina every summer and saw first-hand the craftsmanship of the Gullah people and the beauty of the land. Those memories are one of the first things that attracted her to Frank […]
Protest, Havel’s 1978 satire, shockingly familiar (review)
“Can this nation be the same one that until recently behaved so magnificently?” wrote Václav Havel, in 1978, in Czechoslovakia. That unnaturally relevant line is spoken by a character in his play Protest, currently being performed by the Alliance for New Music-Theatre. That is only one of many, many lines that will prove shockingly familiar […]
Havel’s underground play, Protest, set to open in Dupont Underground
Audiences for Václav Havel’s Protest will be seeing it underground less than a mile from the White House in a performance space virtually unknown to theatregoers until this week. They will leave the bustle of Dupont Circle, and descend into the formerly abandoned trolley station that is Dupont Underground, entrance at 1500 19th Street NW, […]
Page-to-Stage readings that made Rosalind Lacy’s don’t-miss list
On Labor Day weekend, Kennedy Center plaza level entry was pandemonium, noisy with skate boarders, who zigzagged and snaked in and out of a recessed pit and across a cordoned-off area. The skateboarders’ passion connected us to the 14th Annual Page-to-Stage Festival, a rich offering of short free trailers, script readings and open rehearsals of […]
My don’t-miss shows: experimental, opera and theatre for young audiences
The Smithsonian invited DC Theatre Scene to present the next season to their audience, and as part of that presentation, DCTS Senior Writer Tim Treanor talked about shows he particularly anticipated. Today, we reproduce (more or less) what Tim had to say about experimental plays, operas, and theatre for young audiences.
Kafka’s drawings animate Metamorphosis. Last performances before Prague
In 1989, New York reviewers had a field day after the opening of Steven Berkoff’s theatrical version of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, with noted New York Times critic Frank Rich leading the negative charge with his bombastic review of the production.
2015 Helen Hayes Awards: the after party caught on camera
Everyone’s looking good and having a great time at the 2015 Helen Hayes Awards after party at the Howard Theatre. Photo essay by Ryan Maxwell Photography Recognize anyone? Help us with photo captions. Just right click the image, copy it and paste into an email with the caption. Then email us here. Recognize anyone? Help […]
Kafka’s bug gets music-theatre treatment in Metamorphosis
Nearly every generation and geographical region interprets the plight of the outsider in its own way. The end result is a literary canon of outliers and misfits, counting in their ranks Holden Caulfield, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, Ralph Ellison’s unnamed narrator, and–perhaps most notably–Gregor Samsa, the traveling salesman who woke one morning in his family home […]
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