Washington DC

Audience-pleasing revival of ‘Guys and Dolls’ by Kensington Arts Theatre

You promise me this. You promise me that. You promise me anything under the sun… belts out a swell Elizabeth Hester as Miss Adelaide, the cherry on top of a high-energy revival of Frank Loesser’s...

What’s Beneath the ‘Sea’ at Scena Theatre?

“It feels unknown. This is nowhere somehow,” says a character in this intriguingly cryptic poetic play by the acclaimed Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse. Indeed, where are we? And what is going on?...

Stage managers work long hours for rich rewards

Being a stage manager of a theater production brings challenging, yet too often unheralded responsibilities that begin long before an audience steps into a theater to take a seat. As the production...

Exploding the canon: Inside the IN Series opera company’s “radical” practice

Now into his second year leading IN Series, the itinerant company based at the Source Theater, artistic director Timothy Nelson has not been shy about challenging opera’s status quo. “I believe that...

Variations on villainy in the Folger Theatre’s ‘Amadeus’

Villainy takes many forms. And Ian Merrill Peakes – now plotting revenge against a gifted rival in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Amadeus – has played more than a few. His most recent...

‘Blue Camp,’ an affecting play about men surviving enlistment in the Vietnam War

Dispatch from the front. “Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction in the Armed Forces of the United States.” For those in the audience of the Boomer generation, Rainbow Theatre’s Blue Camp...

1st Stage to host musical group All 4 Bass on November 16th

Another unique cabaret evening is arriving at 1st Stage in Tysons. It is a musical performance by the quartet All 4 Bass. The event is entitled Play it LOW…Play it COOL. The All 4 Bass group is a...

Shakespeare Theatre Company renames the Lansburgh Theatre

At its annual Gala, Shakespeare Theatre Company announced to a surprised audience that the Lansburgh Theatre at 450 7th St. NW would be rechristened as the Michael R. Klein Theatre. In addition to the...

Signature Theatre’s “A Chorus Line” is a singular sensation

In the theater world, a performer who is a true triple threat – one with the ability to perform at the highest levels as an actor, singer, and dancer all at the same time – is rare. Luckily, Signature...

A powerhouse ‘Protest’ and a vague ‘Vaněk Unleashed’ from Alliance for New Music-Theatre

In honor of the Czech dissident, political prisoner, and playwright Václav Havel, Alliance for New Music-Theatre has served up a two-course theatrical repast in DC’s most outré new arts venue, Dupont...

“All I had to do was listen”: Playwright Norman Yeung rethinks his ‘Theory’

By Norman Yeung That Theory has gained urgency and relevance since I wrote the first draft in 2009 is uncanny and alarming. Over ten years of innumerable workshops, readings, and productions, the...

Jeremy O. Harris’ ‘Slave Play’ is a raw and ribald examination of race

An antebellum plantation is a hotbed of erotica in the raw, ribald and at times ridiculously funny examination of race in Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play. Three interracial couples run wild, in body and...

‘Flyin’ West’ Soars to the Clarice UMD’s School of Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies

By Kyle Starling The School of Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies (TDPS) and The Clarice at the University of Maryland, College Park will be premiering their main stage production of Flyin’ West by...

‘The Willard Suitcases’ unpacks the re-imagined voices of psychiatric patients at American Shakespeare Center

First, dear reader, a confession—for which I fully expect to be pilloried, drawn and quartered, then maybe burned at the stake: I’m not a huge fan of musicals these days. Yeah, I know, there was a...

Cleopatra rules the stage in American Shakespeare Center’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’

Of all of Shakespeare’s history plays, Antony and Cleopatra is the most complicated and thankless to stage. You’ve got shifting alliances, battles won then lost, and then you’ve got the bizarre...

American Shakespeare Center delivers a fresh take on ‘Julius Caesar’

You know you’re in for a new take on Julius Caesar when the famous Soothsayer (“Beware the Ides of March!”) doesn’t enter upstage right or left, as usual, to make his warning. In Ethan McSweeny’s...

Call for proposals for the 2020-2021 theater season at the Arts Barn

Arts on the Green, the City of Gaithersburg’s home for the performing and visual arts which includes the Kentland’s Mansion and Arts Barn, is now soliciting production proposals for the theater season...

‘Sweat’ at Silver Spring Stage: a precise portrayal of workers caught in a rip tide

I’ve never been to Reading, PA, the location of Lynn Nottage’s searing 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sweat, now playing at Silver Spring Stage, but my life has been bracketed by living in or near...

Local Playwright Audrey Cefaly’s ‘Alabaster’ to receive record breaking ten-city rolling world premiere

National New Play Network, the country’s alliance of nonprofit theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces its 91st Rolling World...

Rainbow Theatre Project’s ‘Blue Camp’ shows its lavender heart

This world premiere comic drama about gays in the military takes us back to July and August of 1964 when LBJ was ordering American ground troops into Vietnam in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident...

A seamless ‘Magic Flute’ at Washington National Opera

The opening night performance of Washington National Opera’s production of Wolfgang A. Mozart’s The Magic Flute was perfectly pleasing, even if the show as written is just too long. Tradition holds...

‘E2’ – Whipping up a royal froth of glitz and tragedy at Rep Stage

At Rep Stage in Howard County, Bob Bartlett’s new play E2 certainly proves it can make a head-turning entrance. This bold and sensuous take on the oft-told tale of King Edward II unfolds against a...

Signature Theatre to present ‘Mamma Mia!’ at DC’s Anthem

Signature Theatre announced today that it will produce Mamma Mia! this summer at The Wharf, Washington, DC’s newest concert venue. Mamma Mia! will run for two weeks from June 25 to July 5, 2020. With...

‘The American Soldier’ to illuminate the impact of military service at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

Next week, The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage will present a performance keyed to Veteran’s Day–The American Soldier, conceived, written and performed by Douglas Taurel. The November 13 performance...

From these ‘Rags,’ riches at George Mason University

Congratulations DC-area theatergoers! A new version of a major musical is being performed at George Mason University this weekend. It has legs and there are still tickets available. Rags is the...

Wolf Pack’s ‘Rocky Horror Show’ seduces Brentwood

If you are into corsets, fishnets, glitter, high heels, bold makeup, sexual innuendo and cussing as art, Wolf Pack Theatre Company’s (WPTC) rendition of Richard O’Brien’s cult classic Rocky Horror...

‘Port Authority,’ Conor McPherson’s tale of lust and loss, returns to Quotidian

Storytelling is a gift. And Conor McPherson—the Irish playwright, screenwriter and long-time ‘bad boy’ of the British stage–is one of the most gifted tale-tellers ever known. His Port Authority, now...

A tragic ‘Otello’ at Washington National Opera

The crowd cheered. We were on the Kennedy Center jitney to the Foggy Bottom Metro stop. I had just read aloud a text from my husband that said Howie Kendrick had hit a two-run homer to put the Nats up...

On tour in DC with ‘What to Send Up When It Goes Down’ by Aleshea Harris

Editor’s note: Woolly Mammoth Theatre, in conjunction with its staging of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, has brought to DC a show produced by the Harlem-based Movement Theatre Company that is...

Spektral Quartet lets audiences explore the space ‘in-between’

There was a time when I needed the cash, so I substitute taught high school. Turns out I had a knack for helping resistant young minds to focus. The key to getting my students where they needed to go...

Mosaic’s brazenly brainy ‘Theory’ is both a treatise and a treat (Magic Time!)

Academia has inspired several thematically penetrating plays featuring female protagonists—the two teachers falsely accused of being lesbian lovers, for instance, in Lillian Hellman’s 1934 The...

Local stars to shine in Mo Willems world premiere at Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announces the full cast and creative team for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (The Musical!), a Kennedy Center-commissioned world premiere from...

Mosaic’s ‘Theory:’ an embodiment of ‘wokeness’ besieged

Canadian playwright Norman Yeung’s Theory, in its American premiere at Mosaic Theater, seeks to be, in the words of Mosaic’s press release, “a hot button play for our digital moment.” Yeung packs a...

‘Stirring the Waters Across America’ at The REACH is a powerful musical exploration of resistance to racism

Electrifying. Awakening. These are words to describe the heart-rending workshop presentation of Stirring the Waters Across America performed at Studio K at The REACH. To call it anything less would be...

Hometown hero Dave Chappelle honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American humor

On Sunday night Dave Chappelle experienced the most epic of homecomings as the DC native received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The...

‘Little Red’s Most Unusual Day’ entertains at Kentlands Arts Barn

Offenbach and Rossini are not names that roll easily off most children’s tongues. Luckily for parents who are looking for a fun way to introduce their children to classical music, the work of these...

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Simon Godwin on conscience in ‘Everybody’ and himself

On the day after opening night of Everybody, the first show in Simon Godwin’s much-heralded first season as artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, I visited him in his office to ask him...

A colorful ‘Seussical’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Imagine how excited I was. For the first time in my life, the baseball World Series was being played in Washington DC. On top of that, it is rookie left fielder Juan Soto’s 21st birthday. But, best of...

Michael Burgos’s ‘Tiramisù’ is one hilarious trip

Tiramisù—the caffeinated confection from Italy—translates as “pick me up” or “cheer me up,” which makes it the perfect name for the hilarious new solo show Michael Burgos brought to DC Arts Center...

Murder most melodic in Reston’s ‘Gentleman’s Guide’

Getting killed multiple times in a single production can be great fun (my personal best is three). In Reston Community Players’ (RCP) A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Patrick Graham – playing...

Solas Nua’s ‘The Smuggler’ by Ronán Noone is Moving to Round House Theatre November 1-13

Following a completely sold-out run at Allegory/Eaton DC, Solas Nua’s immersive cocktail theatre production will move to the dramatically renovated bar at award-winning Round House Theatre in...

‘Afflicted: Daughters Of Salem’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse is a haunting story of witch hunt origins

The peer pressure of in-groups, man. Is there anything more toxic? Turns out, there is. This is the central theme of Afflicted: Daughters Of Salem, which is set before the infamous Salem Witch Trials...

What’s magnificent and what’s muddled in ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ at Arena Stage (Magic Time!)

Right to Be Forgotten is a play written from the outside in. By that I mean, its intention is to illustrate a legal issue: the tension in U.S. law between privacy and freedom of speech, a tension...

‘Matilda’ at Other Voices Theatre Company is a delightful take on a new favorite

Based on the 1988 children’s novel by Roald Dahl, Other Voices Theatre Company brings to life the endearing story of Matilda Wormwood, a precocious young girl who is misunderstood and abused by her...

Experience an unforgettable adventure with Rorschach Theatre’s “She Kills Monsters”

Through uncommon uses of environment and intimate passionate performances, Rorschach Theatre seeks to lure its audiences beyond the limits of ordinary theatrical experience. They go above and beyond...

Colonial Players’ magnificent ‘White Rose’ is a prophetic must-see

What do you do when your country has taken a wrong turn? With a corrupt government, racist policies, oppression of the marginalized, suppression of the truth and attacks on the media being commonplace...

Thoughtful ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ at Arena Stage

How do you put a human face on a difficult, complex subject the natural habitat of which may more likely be a law review article than a stage? Such is playwright Sharyn Rothstein’s task in Right to be...

‘Protest/Vaněk Unleashed’ heads underground in upcoming Alliance for New Music-Theatre production

In partnership with the Embassy of the Czech Republic’s Mutual Inspirations Festival, and in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, the Alliance for New...

A theater buff auditions the GalaPro app (updated)

How does that new GalaPro app work? How well does it work? And what’s it like to watch a show with it? This inquiring theatergoer wanted to know. Many Deaf and hard of hearing people are already...

Strathmore: Growing a vibrant arts community that welcomes everyone

As DC-area demographics have evolved over the recent decades, so have the missions of some of the area’s nimble performing arts venues so that they are welcoming to those they serve and reach out to....