Every day, I navigate to DC Theatre Scene’s guide, the New York Times and the Washington Post websites and read up on all the creative and upbeat ways people are feeding their theater jones. I am not one of them. By and large, I am a dismal failure at watching theater on a screen—be it […]
Folger Theatre shifts its next season into 2021
Folger Theatre, operating out of house due to the ongoing multi-year $69 million dollar renovation of Shakespeare Library is scheduling its “On the Road” season in collaboration with local companies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was to have been Folger Theatre’s first “On the Road” show, performed on an Elizabethan-styled outdoor stage within the majestic Great […]
Brush up your Shakespeare. It’s (almost) his birthday. Invites from 3 companies to celebrate
So Bill Shakespeare would have been 456 on Thursday, April 23, and under normal circumstances, I know, you would have been enjoying a fat goose and a few tankards of mead with a dozen or so of your besties. But: coronavirus. So now what? Do not despair. Three nearby Bard-centric theatre companies have your covered. […]
Review: Folger Theatre takes leave of Capitol Hill with an hilarious sendup of the 70s, Merry Wives of Windsor
“The plot is certainly thin,” said one grouchy-looking woman as she left Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s new staging of the Bard’s Merry Wives of Windsor. But the friend she was talking to was still laughing, which is kind of the point. Wives, like many of Shakespeare’s comedies, exists mainly to twist characters in plotting knots, and […]
2020 Visions. Theatre leaders tell us what lies ahead.
We asked area theatre companies to tell us what they were most looking forward to in 2020. Their answers surprised us! Contributors: 4615 Theatre Company . American Ensemble Theater . American Shakespeare Theatre Company . Arena Stage . Avant Bard Theatre . Brave Spirits Theatre . Capital Fringe . CulturalDC . Folger Theatre . Happenstance […]
Our 22 most memorable performances of 2019
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 […]
Richard Clifford: on directing Shaffer’s ‘revenge comedy’ Amadeus and Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare films
“I think that anybody coming in will go, ‘Oh wow: look at those people; look at that time in life; look at that relevancy to now. That man is being so horrible to that other person; why?’ In that way, yes: it reaches everybody.” I had asked Richard Clifford, whose production of Amadeus opened at […]
Review: Amadeus soars at Folger Theatre
There were, at various points, half a dozen versions of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus floating around. The playwright was trying to square the circle and make his metaphorical work about the tragic view of sublimity from the world of mediocrity better fit the record of musicological history. He never did. He never could. He didn’t need […]
Review: 1 Henry IV at Folger Theatre. Gero is a marvelous Falstaff, but it’s the King’s play
Henry IV, Part 1 is the best of the Shakespearean histories, because it is a redemption story — not of Prince Hal (Avery Whitted), who rose from his Eastcheap debauchery to become England’s greatest king, but of his father, the feral Henry IV (Peter Crook), who, in learning to forgive his son, saved his own […]
Rosa Joshi on directing 1 Henry IV featuring one of the best bromances in all of Shakespeare
Noted Seattle-based director Rosa Joshi makes her D.C. directorial debut with Folger Theatre’s opening production of its 2019-20 season, which will find Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV on stage Sept. 3 through Oct. 13. Joshi has a long history of directing the Bard, working at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and her own upstart […]
Director Vivienne Benesch on Folger’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, a brisk waltz tempo chat
“What’s wonderful about this play is: it really should appeal to any lover out there.” Vivienne Benesch was speaking with me as her production of Love’s Labor’s Lost was nearing its first performance at Folger Theatre. “I was saying to the cast the other day: I said, ‘I absolutely hope that this is the perfect […]
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) […]
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