It’s a wonder that we Irish haven’t gone extinct from all our slow courting. Beyond President Kennedy, there are no Irish Casanovas, and there are certainly none in John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, where two Irish families address more traditional Irish concerns: (1) death (2) dead people (3) inheritance and (4) whiskey (there is an […]
Parade at Keegan Theatre (review)
“These people make me tense,” sings Leo Frank early in the dark musical Parade. “It’s like a foreign land.” If 1913 Atlanta feels alien to Frank, a transplanted New York Jew and the well-educated, bookish superintendent of a pencil factory, he feels alien to Atlantans, too. When a 13-year-old girl is found murdered in the […]
Mack, Beth at Keegan Theatre (review)
Yes, yes, I know; the family that slays together stays together. But why is it that of all the astonishing plays in Will Shakespeare’s oeuvre, it is this story of a homicidal Scottish King that gets reimagined the most frequently?
Keegan welcomes young audiences with Hamlette
Keegan Theatre’s new Theatre for Young Audiences program, PLAY-RAH-KA, opens its second production, Hamlette by Allison K Williams, directed by Ricky Drummond, this Saturday at 11 am for four performances through February 11th.
How Mad Men inspired Chris Stezin’s Mack, Beth, debuting at Keegan Theatre
Chris Stezin cut his teeth professionally as an actor doing Shakespeare for about six years all over the country, which instilled in him a deep reverence for the work. “I started performing Shakespeare in college and then worked a lot as a professional,” he says. “I think there’s no better training for an actor. I […]
Most memorable moments on DC area stages in 2016
As this year closes, perhaps you, like we, are thinking back over your own year spent watching the various riches spread before us by Washington area theatres. I asked our staff for their most vivid memories. We hope you will share your own as comments for us all to savor.
An Irish Carol, a lovely spin on its British cousin, at Keegan (review)
Like its English cousin, An Irish Carol is a dramatic look at life on a day when it should be most celebrated and filled with peace, hope, and love. Unlike its cousin, there are no actual ghosts, but plenty of past, present, and potentially future sorrows turn-up. As they are wont to do when the […]
Keegan’s Six Degrees Separates the Catcher from the Lie (review)
Six Degrees of Separation shares much in common with Catcher in the Rye, the novel at the play’s moral center. Both are full of terribly unlikable characters who can turn our loathing into self-reflection. Both turn a sad situation into something humorous, at least in their ability to elicit pathos. But most of all, they […]
Theresa Rebeck’s What We’re Up Against at Keegan (review)
The daily challenges faced by women in the workplace have increasingly become a cultural touchstone. In addition to traditional discussions of glass ceilings and equal pay, there is now an expanding awareness of the more subtle but equally problematic systemic inequalities women encounter in the office every day. Especially relevant? The phenomena Time recently called […]
My won’t-miss shows for this season
If you’re like me, you’ve already done your Christmas shopping, filled out your budget for the next fiscal year, and made arrangements for your final repose after The Event Which Awaits Us All occurs. Now it’s time for something much more difficult: planning your theater season.
The Lonesome West, a smashing success at Keegan Theatre (review)
Here’s how you know you’re in a Martin McDonagh comedy: Father Welsh (Chris Stezin), Leenane Village’s dipsomaniacal priest, wanders into the fractious home of the Connor brothers to announce “Tom Hallan killed himself” — and the audience bursts out in laughter.
Next to Normal at Keegan Theatre (review)
Seven years ago, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey explored the devastating cost of mental illness in their Tony-winning Broadway debut of Next to Normal. Now Keegan Theatre is bringing the gripping psychological saga of Diana and her struggling family to DC, pinning local audiences to their seats with wrenching emotion and dark humor.