Appropriate, Woolly Mammoth’s new dark-as-pitch comedy, delivers a theatrical gut-punch of roiling family drama and erupting emotion set against the backdrop of a crumbling southern mansion. DC-born playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and a surprising cast explore the struggles of the dysfunctional Lafayette family as they wage war over their deceased father’s estate and uncover buried secrets […]
Reveals from the set of Woolly’s Detroit
In Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit, Woolly Mammoth faced overlapping challenges to bring the show together. The play calls for a set in which two houses face each other across a shared back yard: One household well-maintained, but perched precariously on the brink of ruin, and another that has already begun a descent into decay.
Detroit
The street names in Lisa D’Amour’s play Detroit sound sunny and full of promise, but the reality is dark and scary for the inhabitants of this first-ring Motor City suburb. The once house-proud and active ‘burb is divided between the Haves, the Have Nots and the Never Hads—everyone clinging to their houses as if to […]
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 […]
Let’s play Fantasy Producer – plays we’d like to see in a new season
It’s August, so many people are gearing up to play fantasy football. For me, this is the time of the year when I like to play Fantasy Producer. While the 2012-13 theatre season has come to an end and the 2013-14 season is just starting, I’m already looking ahead to 2014-2015 possibilities.
America All Better at Woolly extended
Woolly Mammoth announced that its fifth collaboration with Chicago’s Second City, America All Better!, is a box office hit, earning it a two week extension.
America All Better! at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
With its previous efforts, the famed Chicago-based improv engine Second City showed a knack for tickling the hard-to-reach funny bone of many a Washingtonian.
Woolly Mammoth now owns its D Street theatre
Two theatre companies recently became owners of their own performing spaces. This weekend, we attended the celebration of the purchase of Church Street Theatre by its resident company Keegan Theatre (more on that soon.) The second piece of good news arrived on Friday, June 22nd, when Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company announced that it had purchased […]
Stupid Fucking Bird
One hundred and fifteen years ago, the Moscow Art Theatre produced a play by an obscure playwright – really, a physician who wrote plays – which changed the history of theater. The play was called The Seagull, the playwright was Anton Chekhov, and the Constantin Stanislavski-directed production successfully challenged virtually every convention in the contemporary […]
American Utopias
Mike Daisey is a rare kind of artist, one who can forsake all theatrical bells and whistles and still captivate an audience via sheer charisma and wry wit. In the Woolly Mammoth premiere of his incisive new monologue American Utopias, Daisey uses his preacher’s magnetism and fierce creativity to examine the surprising, if fuzzy, links […]
Mike Daisey on his latest Woolly show, American Utopias
Mike Daisey’s colorful reputation precedes him. He has spent many years becoming one of America’s most unusual, outspoken, and admired solo performers (he would say, more accurately, a ‘monologist’), performing several new shows every year as he attempts, often in very funny ways, to make sense of the charms, foibles, and hypocrisies of the human […]
Woolly Mammoth’s 34th season ‘America’s Tell-Tale Heart’
Writing comedy is hard, but Monday night, Woolly Mammoth pulled off a smart, funny show to present its 34th season with company member Emily Townley (Tryst, Bright New Boise, House of Gold) turning in a performance that would make Billy Crystal envious.