While planning theatre in the time of Covid requires faith and flexibility on everyone’s part, we thought it valuable to show you the shows our companies hope to present. Some are virtual. Some will be in theatres once that becomes possible. This is a listing of performances. Not included are readings, panels and discussions. We’ll keep […]
Review: My Father’s Dragon, Synetic’s puppet-filled holiday gift
And so you are a cat (Sharisse Taylor) on Wild Island, which is all full of banyan trees and red vines, and one day you see an egg as big as a Galapagos turtle. Because you are a cat, you sniff at it and poke at it until finally it cracks and out steps a […]
Synetic’s 50’s biker musical Much Ado About Nothing
Remember Eisenstaedt’s iconic victory photo, “The Kiss”? Taken in 1945, a sailor in white cap kisses a girl in white, a nurse, as she bends over backwards like a hairpin. You see the image in a flash as staged by two actors in the midst of Synetic’s frenetic opening scene. It’s a brilliant bit because […]
Synetic’s Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog)
Arlington’s Synetic Theater, showered with superlatives for its moody goth fantasias and wordless “Silent Shakespeare” series, is tentatively emerging from its comfort zone in concluding its 2013/14 season with a new trick: A chatty adaptation of Victorian humorist Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog). The result is […]
Arena Stage’s first Summit, headed by Peter Marks, sparks online debate
About a month ago, Washington Post critic Peter Marks announced “The Summit,” a special series of three panel discussions. Arena Stage’s artistic director, Molly Smith, had offered Marks the opportunity to create and moderate the series as he saw fit, so on Monday night he began by bringing a quintet of local artistic directors to […]
The Picture of Dorian Gray
You have to hand it to Synetic’s Artistic Director Paata Tsikurishvili. It took courage to turn his back on the basic ‘wordless’ formula that has won the company many accolades with its invented physical theatre style and to set out boldly to discover a new sound, a new style of movement, and, most importantly, a […]
The results are in: Audiences choose their favorite shows and performers
In a month-long balloting for the 2013 Audience Choice Awards, where a total of 1,270 votes were recorded in 2 rounds of voting, Washington-area audiences spoke clearly about their choices. In the Musical categories, Cabaret at Keegan Theatre finished 6.5% ahead of MetroStage’s production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris […]
The Three Musketeers
Bold prison breaks, hearty sword fights, and tales of treachery and rescue are the hallmarks of French novelist Alexandre Dumas’ beloved classic, The Three Musketeers, and Synetic Theater has taken that and run with it in their newest adaptation, directed by Paata Tsikurishvili.
A Trip to the Moon
When we (and our grandparents’ grandparents) were children we dreamed of going to the Moon, shot perhaps from an enormous precise gun and flying a quarter million miles in a speeding bullet to a place where we could leap tall mountains in a single bound (we weighed only a sixth as much on the Moon […]
Home of the Soldier
The always hyperkinetic Synetic Theater company is in action again at its home base in Crystal City. This time, instead of funneling classic theater works through their uniquely visual, dance-centric system, they’ve chosen to unveil an original work entitled Home of the Soldier.
Synetic’s 2012-2013 season, to the moon and back
Arlington’s movement-based Synetic Theater, firmly rooted in their South Bell Street digs, will be conjuring up playing surfaces on the Moon, on Prospero’s wind-tossed island, in the forests of Athens, the palaces and drinking halls of Europe, and on the streets of modern-day America in next year’s 5-play season, the company announced yesterday.
Romeo and Juliet
At the opening of the third production in Synetic Theater Company’s Silent Shakespeare Theater Festival ‘Speak No More’ I thought to myself, how can they top the muscular, driving ambition of their Macbeth? Or the sinuous, mind-blowing staged metaphor of the central spine of Othello (Never has jealousy been made so seductive or so evil.) […]