Make no mistake about it, I had this guy pegged in the first two minutes: a bumbling, bald-headed bungler trying to string together a show based on his own hoarding. Worse, an amateur!  My companion was noticeably shifting in his seat, beginning to snort, and looking for an egress. Writer and performer Daniel Kitson seemed […]

In White Pearl, playwright Anchuli Felicia King quickly throws the audience into a keenly contemporary conflict: a viral social media PR crisis, with a company accused of racism. [adsanity_rotating align=”aligncenter” time=”10″ group_id=”1455″ /] Inspired by an actual 2016 controversy that played out in Thailand, the blistering satire White Pearl (making its U.S. premiere at Studio Theatre) […]

The titular doubt in John Patrick Shanley’s classic play, now being given a rigorous yet nuanced treatment at Studio Theatre, is not about whether the intense, charismatic Father Brendan Flynn (the intense, charismatic Christian Conn) is guilty of the ghastly crime which Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Sarah Marshall) accuses him of committing. It is not even […]

Well, it’s mid-July, so we’re deep in the thick of it and there’s no turning back now… it’s officially wedding season. It was fitting, then, that I was returning to DC from a lovely weekend out of town at a friend’s wedding and heading directly into Studio Theatre’s production of Drew Droege’s one-man show, Bright […]

“Give me one reason to stay here,” crooned Tracy Chapman in 1995, “and I’ll turn right back around.” A few years earlier, a 7-year-old named Duncan MacMillan embraced the spirit of this lyric as, in an attempt to pull his mother back from the brink of oblivion, he began keeping a list of the beautiful […]

Admittedly, the synopsis for the dystopian kitchen-sink drama The Children at Studio Theatre didn’t tremendously excite me initially, notwithstanding the interest in acclaimed British playwright Lucy Kirkwood. But Studio has earned the benefit of my doubt and I thought there must be something to it—it’s probably going to shine or sizzle in the writing and […]

If every copy of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie spontaneously combusted, and from each pile of ashes emerged phoenix-like a copy of Hilary Bettis’s Queen of Basel in its place, I could be persuaded that this is an overall net gain for literature, apart from the tears of a few theatrical purists and chauvinism apologists (not […]

A couple of weeks ago, the satire site McSweeney’s published an article entitled, “How Can I Help to Promote Diversity Without Relinquishing Any of My Power?” This title alone could serve as an incredibly succinct synopsis of Joshua Harmon’s Admissions, now playing at Studio Theatre, where Harmon’s previous play Bad Jews holds the distinction of […]

Playwright and Alexandria-native Sarah Burgess is known for her sharp-tongued, rapid-fire dialogue and expositions into the underbelly of American institutions.  Burgess’ first play, Dry Powder—focusing on the backstabbing world of avaricious Wall Street bankers—debuted at the renowned Public Theatre in 2016 and gained great critical success. Burgess’ newest play, Kings, delves into the unscrupulous world […]