Washington DC

15 Questions in 15 Minutes with Jenna Rubaii, now starring as Mary Magdalene on the ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ 50th anniversary tour

Presently appearing as Mary Magdalene in the 50th anniversary national touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar (a superlative that originated in Andy Warhol’s Factory), Jenna Rubaii, who has...

5 reasons Christopher Boone liked ‘Curious Incident’ at Round House better than on Broadway

My name is Christopher Boone and I am 15 and I am brave and I can do anything. I know that because I traveled by train by myself from Swindon to London and I solved the mystery of a neighbor lady’s...

In uproarious ‘Airness’ at 1st Stage, the rock ‘n’ roll is unreal

In the competitive national and international air guitar scene, contestants vie for championships and prizes by pretending to play (or “shred”) imaginary guitars to 60-second tracks from classic rock...

NSO Pops and ‘Harry Potter’ combine for a unique movie night at the Kennedy Center

Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon. With the entire franchise’s worth surpassing $25 billion, you’d be hard-pressed to meet anyone who hasn’t felt the impact of J.K. Rowling’s influential series....

‘White Pearl’ and the Toxicity of Whiteness

“I love white,” began the commercial. “White is clean. White is pure. White is beautiful.” I stared at my laptop disgusted by the blatant discrimination in the ad as I watched a light-skinned Asian...

Avant Bard Theatre Announces ‘Scripts in Play: Season 30’

Launching its 30th-anniversary season, Avant Bard Theatre announces Scripts In Play: Season 30—featuring a special presentation of Happenstance Theater’s BrouHaHa December 6 to 8, 2019, and six free...

In ’19: The Musical,’ women sing and dance their way to suffrage

On the day I was to see 19: The Musical—which is about how the amendment granting women the right to vote came to pass in 1920—our Constitution Denier in Chief made a perfectly timed gaffe. There he...

A well-conceived ‘Curious Incident’ at Round House Theatre

“Curious” is the operative word in the title of Simon Stephens’ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, now playing at the Round House Theatre. The protagonist, teenager Christopher Boone...

Rising opera star Soloman Howard brings rich vocals to the Kennedy Center

Soloman Howard, the 2019 Marian Anderson Award winner, brought his unique flair to the Kennedy Center in his first-ever solo concert at the venue. As a graduate of the Washington National Opera’s...

‘Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!’ is delightfully clever family fun at the Kennedy Center

What is your “heart dog?” How do you know it, find it—and deal with the disappointment of maybe not being able to have it? Or even . . . losing it? Heavy questions for the school-age (and even...

BSO’s latest Lera Auerbach commission worthy of attention

A frustration of many classical and contemporary music critics is that we hear a new work that seems to have great promise for being added to the canon, and then poof! It disappears, never to be...

UrbanArias delivers fun, deeply human evening of music and voices taking on the modern condition

How prescient of the innovative UrbanArias. To be ahead of a major Washington Post Sunday Business section about a modern-day retail apocalypse: the dying of America’s suburban retail malls. Yes, you...

Aquila Theatre’s ‘The Odyssey’ tackles modern warfare and its impact

Aquila Theatre’s adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson and directed by Desiree Sanchez, provides a sobering picture of the impact of warfare on the psyche. It’s...

Monumental Theatre Company Announces 2020 Season

Following its sold-out run of Be More Chill in 2019, the Helen Hayes Award-winning Monumental Theatre Company will be producing three musicals for the upcoming 2020 season: Head Over Heels, The Drowsy...

Venus Theatre’s ‘The Powers that Be’: fighting the double bind

Venus Theatre’s staff don’t open the house until immediately before The Powers that Be begins, presenting audience members, as they take their seats, with the evening’s most arresting image,...

Sutton Foster Glows at The Barns at Wolf Trap

The audience for Sutton Foster at The Barns at Wolf Trap was packed on opening night and clearly delighted to have a chance to hear Foster in such a warm and intimate venue. A phenomenal actress,...

The (in)discreet charm of Daniel Kitson’s ‘Keep’ at Studio Theatre

Stand-up comedian and monologist extraordinaire Daniel Kitson enjoys a devout following in the UK and in Australia. He first made his reputation at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he won a...

‘Brides and Mothers’ and ‘Cox and Box’ at The Forgotten Opera Company: Two dazzling flashes of operetta

A double feature, running just two performances at The Forgotten Opera Company, a subset of The Victorian Lyric Opera Company in Rockville? Sure, why not? The world debut of Brides and Mothers, Music...

Giving back to Tia Shearer Bassett

We were saddened to learn this week that Tia Shearer Bassett, a valued member of the DC theater community and a bright shining light of a human, has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Tia and...

1st Stage launches free Youth Engagement Subscription (YES) pass for Fairfax County high school students

Now in its 12th season, the professional 1st Stage Theatre located in Tysons, Virginia, serves as a cultural hub for the community. Beyond producing award-winning theatrical productions, 1st Stage...

John Leguizamo takes audiences to school in ‘Latin History for Morons’ at the National Theatre

John Leguizamo is a famously Latino, American, Tony and Emmy Award-winning comedian, known for numerous roles that defy pigeonholing on the character-genre spectrum. Yet despite the vast range of...

BSO performs US premiere of Lera Auerbach’s ‘Eve’s Lament – O Flowers, That Never Will Grow’ this week in Baltimore and Bethesda

Now that this summer’s drama surrounding the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s financial woes has quieted, at least for now, we can focus on the significant contributions our home state orchestra and its...

Reflections on a terrifying role: Susan Rome talks about ‘becoming’ Louise Nevelson in Edward Albee’s ‘Occupant’ at Theater J

When Susan Rome bats her eyelashes—as she often does in Edward Albee’s Occupant, now at Theater J—she becomes Louise Nevelson, the iconic sculptor whose life and work were inseparable. The lashes,...

Priyanka Shetty’s one-woman ‘The Elephant in the Room’ comes to The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage

Called by critics “incisive,” “timely,” and “brave,” Priyanka Shetty’s one-woman show The Elephant in the Room performs Saturday, November 23, 2019, at 6 pm on the Millennium Stage at The Kennedy...

The bad romance at the heart of Studio Theatre’s ‘White Pearl’

Anchuli Felicia King’s White Pearl is a hilarious, fast-paced satire set in the Singapore office of a cosmetics startup called Clearday that sells skin-whitening cream to Asian women. As the play...

‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ at Adventure Theatre is charming holiday fare

We all want to feel loved, right? And there are times we feel forgotten. Unseen. Disposable. The classic children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit is a sentimental reminder that a child’s love can turn...

Washington Stage Guild delivers skillful production of Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’

Like many of Charles Dickens’s sprawling novels, Hard Times chronicles the lives and times of multiple characters dwelling in England’s mid-19th-century industrial chaos. But unlike the elaborate...

Virginia Opera’s ‘Il Postino’: no “scary modern music” here

Virginia Opera’s artistic director Adam Turner, in his program note for contemporary composer Daniel Catán’s Il Postino, hastens to assure audiences that the company is working to dispel myths about...

15 Questions in 15 Minutes with Actor and Comic Remy Germinario

New York-based actor and comedian Remy Germinario is gearing up for his fourth appearance with drag sensation Paige Turner (host and co-creator/producer of NYC’s live drag reality show So You Think...

Mark Morris Dance Group boldly re-imagines ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in ‘Pepperland’ at the Kennedy Center

Mark Morris dances are emphatically watchable, easily digestible, eccentric, and smartly witty. He so proficiently pairs music and dance, costume and set – with a cadre of collaborators – that it’s...

Virginia Opera opens “From Screen to Stage” series with ‘Il Postino’ at George Mason University

The sensuality and passion of Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician, Pablo Neruda has become the bones for a contemporary opera, Il Postino by Daniel Catán. Il Postino (The...

Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ entertains from start to finish

Once again, Olney Theatre Center (OTC) has put on a tap-happy show. This time it’s Singin’ in the Rain, where the audience hums the familiar tunes as they ratta-ta-tap back to their cars. That was the...

Disney’s ‘Newsies’ at Arena Stage is the good news DC needs right now

From the moment you enter Arena Stage’s Fichandler Stage, an intimate theater-in-the-round where everyone has a seat close to the action, you’ll be transported to turn-of-the-19th-century New York,...

‘Aladdin’ lights up the skies over Baltimore

On stage, Aladdin starts out as the perfect musical for nine-year-olds. But by the time its two swooning lovers have hopped aboard a flying carpet for a trip to the moon, all moms and dads in the...

Cantus’s ‘Alone Together’ at the Kennedy Center puts form over function

Attending Cantus’s Alone Together at the Kennedy Center made me realize that meaningful interaction relies as much upon solitude and mystery as it does connection and revelation. The vocal octet’s...

Creative Cauldron’s Learning Theater shines a fresh light on ‘The Jungle Book’

Creative Cauldron’s Learning Theater presents its own adaptation of the popular tale, The Jungle Book. Based on Rudyard Kipling’s book of the same name, the show centers around the man-cub, Mowgli,...

The Welders’ Annalisa Dias on ‘HEARTSPACE’ and responding to impending and present climate disasters

The Welders, a self-described artists’ collective, burst upon the DMV theatrical landscape in the summer of 2013 with a mission to establish an evolving, alternative platform for play development and...

Expect the unexpected in Washington Improv Theater’s ‘Life and Death with WIT: Hellcat and iMusical’

Improvisational theater is comprised of different aspects of live performance genres, like stand-up comedy or fully scripted plays. But what defines improv, is how the actors use comments from the...

Artistry, rivalry, madness, and genius in Folger Theatre’s ‘Amadeus’

What a great lively yarn about a musical disruptor as a stand-in for the volcanic eruptions of out-and-out revolution in the air throughout Europe and America. Amadeus at Folger Theatre is a triumph....

A teen of many talents: Ethan Van Slyke of Arena Stage’s ‘Newsies’

Think back to when you were in high school. You went to classes all day and came home and did homework, right? And maybe you took piano lessons once a week or played a sport. Seventeen-year-old Ethan...

21 best bets for holiday entertainment in and around DC!

The winter holidays are a great time to see a live performance, so here is our list of best bets in holiday entertainment in and around DC. Whether you are looking for a show to enjoy with your kids,...

Fun, frenetic ‘RENT’ at The National still satisfies

The 20th Anniversary Tour of RENT touched down at the National Theatre this week, much to the delight of area RENTheads. This modern take on Puccini’s La Boheme, with music, lyrics and book by the...

We Happy Few brings ‘Lovers’ Vows’ into the twenty-first century

Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows, first produced in 1798, is every bit as amusing as the unfortunately named Schitt’s Creek, The Good Place, or any other contemporary comedy. Inchbald, an actress and...

In Edward Albee’s first-rate ‘Occupant’ at Theater J, a gutsy woman sculptor creates herself

“True if interesting” is Louise Nevelson’s byword in Occupant, Edward Albee’s witty and wise bioplay about the famous sculptor. She was quite the character. For Nevelson, in the hagiography according...

Vocal ensemble Cantus explores human connection in the Digital Age with ‘Alone Together’ at the Kennedy Center

“I realized the thing I missed most in my process was people,” American composer Libby Larsen told me recently. She was speaking about her commissioned work YOU, which the vocal ensemble Cantus will...

Studio Theatre’s ‘White Pearl’ tackles globalization and intra-Asian racism with acerbic wit

If you attend Studio Theatre’s current production of the brilliantly acerbic White Pearl and feel in the first ten minutes that you’re not sure you know what’s happening, don’t worry. Playwright...

American Shakespeare Center mines the humor in Shaw’s ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’

The plays of George Bernard Shaw are, to be honest, an acquired taste. Erudite in the extreme, filled with Shaw’s unique sense of his own intellectual superiority—which is expressed with paper-thin...

Signature’s ‘A Chorus Line’ proves musicals can evolve in the right creative hands

“A Chorus Line is still one of those musicals you will sing about to your grandchildren,” wrote theater and dance critic Clive Barnes in his 1975 New York Times review for A Chorus Line. Barnes had an...

‘Last Summer at Bluefish Cove’ is a heart-wrenching glimpse into lesbian lives

Life has never been easy for women who love other women. Last Summer at Bluefish Cove—written by Jane Chambers and widely regarded as the first production to portray lesbians in a positive light—takes...

‘Agnes of God’ at Factory 449 glories in a trinity of divine performances

Following on Factory 449’s electrifying production two years ago of Lela & Co.—which earned Helen Hayes Awards for both its director (Rick Hammerly) and star (Felicia Curry)—the company now presents...