As I watched the performance of The IN Series’ most recent offering, I thought about starting my review with a warning: “Don’t go to see L’Enfance du Christ unless you want to be transformed.” And that made me think, “Well, why do we go to see theater – some of us repeatedly – if we […]
Review: Stormy Weather. IN Series reimagines Tempest by way of Billie Holiday
She devils. Film-noir temptresses. Crazy women in attics à la “Jane Eyre.” In art of all sorts, women who speak up, sashay to a different drummer or who just challenge male authority often get branded by such less-than-flattering terms. And they often suffer violent or at least unpleasant ends. That’s what happens to Sycorax, the […]
Review: Butterfly takes wing. Timothy Nelson has rescued Puccini’s most famous opera
Every age gets to reassess the value of a work of art relative to its present times, and not just aesthetically but politically. Never more so than today. Sometimes in our society’s self-congratulating political correctness this comes on with a vengeance; a work gets excoriated, bashed in, and thrown on the artistic ash heap. But […]
Review: The Tale of Serse. Handel’s rarely seen opera gets a stunning production from In Series
Timothy Nelson has ended his first season as Artistic Director of In Series with a stunning and musically gorgeous production of The Tale of Serse. Like George Frideric Handel, the composer of the opera, Nelson is a synthetic artist who likes to tweak and merge disparate material to create radical new experiences for the operatic […]
In Series announces its innovative 2019-2020 season in which subscribers choose the last show
The In Series, a Washington pocket opera company known for its innovative approach to the classics, will totally rework some of our best-known stories in 2019-2020, deconstructing, decontextualizing, and recreating them to resonate with the great dramas we are experiencing in the real world today. The first to get the In Series treatment will be […]
Review: La Paloma at the Wall, a new zarzuela from In Series
How could one not run to a show that, in this day, puts together a story that purposes to go to the heart of a topic that raises both volatile antipathy and gut wrenching emotions of compassion? In addition to setting the new work at our southern border “wall,” new Artistic Director of In Series […]
From U Street to the Cotton Club review. In Street jives and jams at Source
There’s one spot in DC where the glories of U Street’s “Black Broadway” are alive and well as The In Series performs From U Street to the Cotton Club at Source Theatre. Set in the attic of a fictional club singer named Grandma “Sassy” Lena, the evening is a tour (though by no means a straightforward history) […]
Review: Operetta Wonderland from In Series
Boundless talent, enthusiasm and creativity bring out The Magic of Victor Herbert Operetta Wonderland in the In Series production playing at the D.C. Scottish Rite Temple venue. Who knew that such interesting vignettes could be staged from music created over 100 years ago? The performing artists and musical stage designers have brought this treasure trove […]
Review: Mozart’s Figaro in Four Quartets from In Series
Mozart’s delightful Marriage of Figaro has been a perennial favorite, not only produced frequently by opera companies, but its material has been poured over, parsed, and mastered as part of any classical music training program and vocal studio. Hence, it’s understandable that The In Series might want a shot at mining this rich composer’s trove […]
Review: Viva V.E.R.D.I – an otherworldly convergence of Verdi and Shakespeare
Giuseppe Verdi revered Shakespeare and wrote a Macbeth, an Otello, and a Falstaff. He longed to write a King Lear as well and even worked with two librettists toward that goal.
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