What can a one-man performance bring to a story that’s so familiar to so many that we can almost mouth the dialog? Plenty, especially when that performer is one of the most gifted actors in the metro region and when he’s supported by a crackerjack design team and armed with a great script — that […]
The Night Before Christmas
Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson is known across the pond as a visceral force in contemporary theater, from the vanguard of the brash “in-yer-face” genre, and creator of challenging works about sex, violence and mental illness. In a digression from his usual penumbral stabs, the commercialism of the Christmas holiday gets a slight, mostly unfunny critical […]
Reals
Hollywood has made billions cashing in on our fantasies of having special powers like the comic book superheroes. Yet some people actually turn the dream into reality by dressing in costumes and doing good deeds or even fighting crime as street vigilantes. Gwydion Suilebhan tackles the psychology behind these real-life superheroes, or REALS, in an […]
Hum
“Do u no wot the hum is?” ask the cryptic ads for Hum, which had its world premiere on Monday night at the Atlas. Having seen the play, I now know what “the hum” is. But I’m still figuring out what Hum is – and that’s a point in the play’s favor.
How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
There’s no better place for a story about identity than the theater. No other art form depends so much on our suspension of disbelief, and our willingness to accept that any person – given enough skill, practice, and willpower – can become someone else.
H Street Playhouse owner denies City Paper story; but the venue may close in 2013
An apparent landlord-tenant dispute between Century and Associates, the owner of H Street Playhouse, and Adele Robey, the former owner who now leases the facility from Century and subleases it to two theater companies, has spilled onto the electronic pages of the Washington City Paper and has raised questions as to whether the companies can […]
Black Nativity
In a season of well-worn holiday traditions, nothing brings a more welcome blast of fresh good will than the image of Baby Jesus being lovingly serenaded by powerful gospel music and surrounded with luscious Afro-Caribbean trappings. Theater Alliance’s spirited production of Black Nativity takes the audience on a joyful, unique ride through the Christmas Story, […]
Black Nativity
As the doors were shut in her face again and again, the virgin Mary searched desperately for a warm place to bring her beloved child into the world. A blackbox theater is darker and quieter than most mangers – smells less like sheep, too – but fortunately the one at H Street Playhouse proves itself […]
Gretty Good Time
The “must see” feature is Ann Colby Stocking who is exquisite as Gretty, a tough as nails survivor of childhood polio who is ready to chuck it all rather than stay imprisoned in her nonfunctional body.
Black Nativity
Watching Black Nativity, the Granddaddy of gospel musicals, is like going back in time, way back to the inception of what the Christmas season is all about.
Five Flights
In Adam Bock’s Five Flights, dad so loved his dead wife, he built a huge, human-sized aviary as a Taj Mahal for her soul. Now, recently deceased, dad has left his heirs its crumbling structure.
The Bread of Winter
Under a sunless frozen sky, a middle-aged schizophrenic calls her dyspeptic mother from a pay phone a block from the mother’s home. In a bedroom in a comfortable home, father is dead, mother is absent and a blackhearted young man is planning to do unspeakable things to his little brother.
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