Washington DC

Review: ‘Bootleg Shakespeare: Richard III’ by Taffety Punk Theatre Company at the Folger Theatre

Taffety Punk’s Bootleg Shakespeare, a beloved DC tradition, is like attending a party with dozens of friends you never knew you had. The lines are long. The audience is enthusiastic. And the acting is...

Review: ‘The Producers’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

Funny Boy, a musical version of Hamlet, A Breaking Wind, She Schtups to Conquer–could anyone predict how much those fictional plays would wow audiences? The Little Theatre of Alexandria’s The...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Starcrossed’

Starcrossed is a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet with a new pair of starcrossed lovers: Mercutio and Tybalt. Worked seamlessly within the dialogue and story of the original work, these...

In ‘Aladdin,’ Iago Is The Perfect Sidekick: And No, He’s Not a Parrot Anymore

LA-based character actor Reggie De Leon brings comedic flair to the beloved Disney character Iago. ‘Aladdin’ is playing at the Kennedy Center through September 7th.

Review: ‘Disney’s Newsies’ by Encore Stage & Studio at Kenmore Middle School Theatre

Encore Stage & Studio’s “Theatre by Kids, for Kids!” is currently showing the Disney musical, Newsies. Based on the 1992 movie, and inspired by the real-life newsboy strike in 1899, the story takes...

Feature: Directing ‘Ann’ at Arena Stage

Ann Richards, the late governor of Texas, and the first woman in that state to be elected in her own right, would be howling with glee if she could see the pandemonium unleashed in government today....

Review: ‘Aladdin’ at The Kennedy Center

Ever since The Lion King took the Broadway world by storm back in 1997, Disney has been recreating its beloved animated films for the stage, with successful runs by The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the...

Dispatches from Mike Daisey’s ‘A People’s History,’ Chapters 1 to 18

Over 16 days in Washington, DC, in July 2019, Mike Daisey gave 18 different performances, each about an hour and 45 minutes long, of his epic look at America’s past, present, and future. He drew from...

Review: ‘The Mousetrap’ by Thunderous Productions

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is a serious whodunit in which strangers are thrown together at a remote place and cut off from the outside world, with a police inspector unlocking a murder mystery in...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Inferno the Musical’

“Heaven is so boring.” That’s the complaint of a modern-day version of Dante Alighieri in Inferno the Musical, a look at the vagaries of life and love and the inevitability of fate. Written and...

Review: ‘Tiger Style!’ at Olney Theatre Center

Buy your ticket today for a rich palette of cultural and political satire. Olney Theatre Center’s Tiger Style! is the best stage comedy I’ve seen in 2019. Directed by Natsu Onoda Power, a major theme...

Review: ‘Annie’ by Prince William Little Theatre

From toe-tapping numbers, to adorable orphans, there are few things as purely wonderful for the soul as a production of Annie, and Prince William Little Theatre delivers a production like no other....

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting Presents Three Plays in Rep

Where can you find one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies, most passionate “problem plays,” and most famous tragedies, performed with conviction and flair? At the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy...

In the Moment: ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ at 1st  Stage

With a return visit to The Happiest Place on Earth, new gemstones are uncovered, adding complexity and currency to its bittersweet tale about dreams that a heart makes. In its current incarnation as...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘SPEAK*Girls Presents’

The true critic of this year’s second annual SPEAK*Girls Presents is a thirteen-year-old young woman, who shared at the rousing end of this year’s production, “I’m hard to impress, and I loved it.”...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘If These Balls Could Talk’

There’s plenty of beef in Carolann Valentino’s one-woman musical, If These Balls Could Talk, about her life as a young actress from Texas working at a steakhouse in New York. This was not just any old...

Review: ‘Ann’ at Arena Stage

If you are a fan of Ann Richards, the straight-talking, liberal Governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995, or alternatively, if you were living on the opposite side of the globe and somehow missed coverage...

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Free for All

Hamlet is the most produced play in the world. It is said that Hamlet is being performed somewhere every single minute of every single day. Now, the Shakespeare Theatre Company is presenting a superb...

Review: ‘Seussical’ by McLean Community Players at Alden Theatre

Based on the fantastical imaginings of Dr. Seuss, Seussical is a light-hearted musical packed with color, magic, and mischief. McLean Community Players is running their production of this...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Home, Sweet, _____’

Home, Sweet, _____ takes audiences on a sentimental journey through music, sight gags, and pantomime. Without words, Home, Sweet, _____ tells the story of a clown, the frenetic Collette Campbell,...

50th Annual Ruby Griffith Award Goes to 2nd Star Productions

By Frankie Lewis The British Players’ ceremony for the 50th Anniversary of The Ruby Griffith Awards for Excellence in Community Theatre was held at the Bretton Woods Recreation Center in Germantown,...

Signature Theatre Announces ‘Assassins’ Cast and Creative Team

Signature Theatre has announced the full cast and creative team for Assassins with music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman and directed by Signature Theatre Artistic Director Eric...

Review: ‘Southern Hospitality’ at Aldersgate Church Community Theater

Aldersgate Church Community Theater presents Southern Hospitality, written by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten. Eddie Page directs this outlandish comedy about a band of people who are...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Acuña Acuna’

Whenever Erick Acuña is asked to play Peruvian music, he launches into a burst of rock. Why not, he wonders, since rock is his country’s favorite sound. But rock is not what his hosts expect. No...

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts Announces Cast and Creative Team for South Pacific

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts is excited to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning South Pacific with its new production in Fredericksburg, VA. The Rodgers and...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Little White Lies’

Four performers appear from unexpected places. Emerging from hallways, stairways and around corners with a rippling and tribal urgency, the movement of the dancers is steered by Y-shaped divining...

Review: ‘LadyM’ by The Welders

When the audience enters the performance space at Joe’s Movement Emporium, they are confronted by three women in period clothing (costumes designed by Julie Cray Leong, assisted by Kyla Carney). The...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘All for the Union’

15 actors. 20 scenes. The Civil War. A lot is at stake in All for the Union, written by the prize-winning playwright, librettist, and historian Meredith Bean McMath and directed by Jenna Powell, and...

Review: ‘The Explorers Club’ at Prologue Theatre

New companies, and especially hybrid troupes whose members have a variety of artistic origins and talents, are a vital part of DC’s theatrical ecosystem. The past few years have seen the launch of...

Review: ‘The Things They Carried’ at the Logan Festival of Solo Performance at 1st Stage

The Things They Carried is a personal people’s history. A sharply conjured chronicle. It is told at the most granular of levels by a platoon of characters. Performed solo by David Sitler, the...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Arcade’

Arcade is unlike anything you will experience at Fringe. Equal parts art installation, gaming experience, and nostalgia, Arcade perfectly encapsulates the feeling of walking into a 1980s arcade. The...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Iphigenia in Splott’

Set in a blighted corner of Wales, Iphigenia in Splott is a breathtaking one-woman show, imported from the UK and written by Gary Owen, a Welsh playwright and winner of the Meyer-Whitworth Award for...

Review: ‘The Mollusc’ by Quotidian Theatre Company at The Writer’s Center

If you’re in the mood for a drawing-room comedy exploring the social habits of the British upper class in the Edwardian era, Bethesda’s Quotidian Theatre Company should be on your list. Quotidian is...

Review: ‘The Winter’s Tale’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Summer and Shakespeare are two very different things that somehow seem to go perfectly together. Every summer, theater companies all over the country dust off their British accents and take The Bard...

Review: ‘Absolutely Dead’ at Bowie Community Theatre

Absolutely Dead, written by Michael Walker and directed at Bowie Community Theatre by Ken Kienas, is a charming and hilarious dark comedy centered around a murder mystery. I’m afraid to give away too...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Knights of Salisbury’

The Knighthood Players’ Production of The Knights of Salisbury, by Tim Caron, directed by Tim Caron and Ilyana Rose-Davila, with music direction by Jason Schoenfeld, is a nostalgic, though awkward and...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘American Diet’

Here’s a show description you don’t see often: “A dark yet whimsical exploration of food, fitness, body image, and metabolic endocrinology.” And I will say, that’s no lie. In American Diet’s 45 minute...

Review: ‘Be More Chill’ at Monumental Theatre Company

If you can’t get to the Broadway sensation Be More Chill, which closes August 11, there is no need to despair. Monumental Theatre Company is presenting the DMV’s first professional version of this...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘EyeSOAR’

EyeSOAR is primarily a dance performance which incorporates video, audio interviews, music, and the spoken word to tell the story of the Shirlington neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. This...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Beyond These Walls’

Beyond These Walls is a provocative contribution to the Capital Fringe, and well worth seeing. It was originally devised in 2018 under the direction of Matt Bassett, Artistic Director of the Hub...

Review: ‘Joy Rebel’ at the Logan Festival of Solo Performance at 1st Stage

Joy Rebel, written and performed by Khanisha Foster, is a moving, deep dive into fluid identity and the fraught experiences of a mixed-race human being. Joy Rebel is a revealing autobiographical...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘This Place of Ours’

When done well, dance has a unique ability to tell a compelling narrative through themes that audience members can then adapt to their own perspectives and stories. Moving Body Dance Company has...

Review: ‘American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables’ by The Hub Theatre

Playwright Sam Hamashima is described in his program bio as working in the “collision between his queer identity and his Japanese-American identity.” In American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables,...

2019 Capital Fringe Review ‘What Wasn’t’

By Rebecca Kurtz Perhaps it is a matter of personal preference that at Fringe I am often more taken by the comedies than by the dramas. The intensely self-involved process of making and performing a...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Nothing Broken’

Nothing Broken is an autobiographical one-woman show written and performed by Amanda Haddock, directed by Cathy Reinking. It tells the story of Hope, who is grappling with the end of her ten year...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: The Little Senator That Could

The Little Senator That Could held its world premiere at Capital Fringe on July 12, 2019, and it is nearly perfect for Washington, DC. Billed as a comedy, playwright Kirsten Grady’s show is actually a...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Six Months of Winter’

By Helen Ganley Conjuring up images of day and night, one imagines the sun cascading into a pink and purple horizon while the moon excitedly and stoically takes its place in the sky. The picture, in...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Good & Kissed’

Ladies, grab your closest friends, make a post-show dinner reservation, and head to Capital Fringe’s Good & Kissed for a night out that will make you laugh, cry, and spur your own stories of loss and...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Flirting Like an American’

George Washington University researcher Sufian Zhemukhov is a popular guy around Washington. He has several awards for his storytelling and some of the stories he relies on in Flirting Like an...

Review: ‘Hand to God’ by Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Featuring everything from simulated puppet sex, tawdry seductions and a mangled ear, the Tony-nominated Hand to God, by Robert Askins, is a play that dares to be different. Director William Dean Leary...