Washington DC

Review: ‘Macbeth’ by Britches and Hose Theatre Company

By Katie Crabb Something wicked this way comes in Britches and Hose Theatre Company’s gender-blind version of Macbeth, which breathes new life into one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. The classic...

Review: ‘L’homme Cirque: The One-Man Circus’ at Strathmore

Glory days of diminutive touring tent circuses visiting small towns return with David Dimitri and his L’homme Cirque: The One-Man Circus, currently at Strathmore. In a cozy tent set up on the...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Oversees Unanimous Jury Decision About Ancient Greek Crime

On June 24, 2019, the Shakespeare Theatre Company presented its summer Mock Trial at Sidney Harman Hall (610 F Street NW). Guests were invited to hear the appellate case Murder in Mycenae: Did Electra...

Review: ‘Blackbeard’ at Signature Theatre

I have no idea who the “real” Blackbeard might have been. But I raise a cup (and maybe a cutlass) to Signature Theatre’s epic, cheeky vision of the dude and his derring-do. Envisioned by Signature...

Dangereuse: Brecht and the History Behind ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) left Berlin in February 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire, an attack on the home of the German Parliament. President Paul von Hindenberg had named Hitler Chancellor on...

4615 Theatre Company Announces 2019/20 Season

4615 Theatre is proud to announce a sprawling, form-breaking new season of theatre, designed to thrill and challenge artists and audiences alike. The rapidly emerging company has garnered a reputation...

Review: Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Douglas’ at the Kennedy Center

You know that Hannah Gadsby’s new show, Douglas is different from anything you’ve seen before, even before you enter the theatre, when the ushers inform you that your cell phone must be placed inside...

Review: ‘The Cat in the Hat’ at Adventure Theatre

To transmogrify Seuss, What a difficult task! Just how do they do it? And well might you ask! This master of mayhem Who leaps from the page, How could he be possibly Put on the stage? In drawings and...

Magic Time!: The Mind-Blowing Stagecraft in ‘Twisted Melodies’ at Mosaic Theater

Twisted Melodies is a spectacular finish to Mosaic’s fourth season. Written by and starring Kelvin Roston, Jr., the show sweeps us into Donny Hathaway’s world of magnificent music-making and mental...

Review:  The Second City’s ‘America; It’s Complicated!’ at the Kennedy Center

There’s not much to laugh at in politics today. Nor is it easy to make fun of diversity, gender, Putin, or Pepsi. But that doesn’t prevent the team of talented comedians at Second City – now in their...

A New Home For Soulful Symphony at Merriweather Post Pavilion

Top-rated Columbia amphitheater Merriweather Post Pavilion has forged a new partnership with Maryland’s Soulful Symphony, a visionary orchestra that celebrates, elevates, and reimagines American music...

Review: ‘Twisted Melodies’ at Mosaic Theater Company

A foreboding, wide-open hotel window overlooking the Manhattan night skyline beckons you to enter the tender interior space of ’70s soul singer, composer and recording artist, Donny Hathaway. Twisted...

Review: ‘Baldwin’s N*gger’ (DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival)

With the recent release of I Am Not Your Negro and If Beale Street Could Talk, the eminent writer James Baldwin received significant cinematic attention. This has been followed in DC by two...

Playwright Sam Hamashima and Director Kathryn Chase Bryer Discuss Hub Theatre’s ‘American Spies’

Once again Fairfax’s Hub Theatre will be introducing a new playwright, and a new play that highlights America’s common humanity, to a wider DMV audience. This time the playwright is Sam Hamashima and...

‘A People’s History’ at Capital Fringe Will Rock Your Worldview

I remember being so bored by my high school American history class that I got a D in it. This was not normal. My report cards always had A’s and B’s. So the kindly elderly woman who taught the course,...

Review: Happenstance Theatre Goes Greek with ‘Pantheon’

They’re at it again. The Happenstance Gang: troublemakers, every stinking one of ‘em. And this time, they’re going Greek. Mythologically speaking, that is. Nix on the keggers and beer pong, their...

Review: ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ at Studio Theatre

When Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe planned to tackle the subject of depression, they decided to avoid more familiar approaches: plays about self-destructive superstars who are too far removed...

Arena Stage To Host 11-Hour Marathon Reading of the Mueller Report, Volume II, July 11, 2019

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, in association with activist and actress Jjana Valentiner, will hold a public, nonpartisan 11-hour marathon reading of Special Counsel Robert...

Dressed To Plunder, and Maybe Kill: Costuming Signature’s ‘Blackbeard’

When the actor playing Blackbeard first appears on stage at the Signature Theatre in the new musical bearing his name, smoke literally curls out of his matted black hair. It’s a terrifying look and...

‘Musica Viva Kentlands’ Puts Classical Music Outdoors in Gaithersburg, Maryland

Traveling through the south of France one glorious September, regardless of where my companion and I found ourselves, it seemed that at one point in the afternoon, there would be a classical music...

Mud and Blood: Guest Posts from The Welders Document Process in Upcoming Shows

Over the next few months, DC Theater Arts will invite guest writers from two Welders projects-in-process to share their creative process with our readers. The Welders, DC’s only dedicated playwrights’...

Review: ‘Ripcord’ at Keegan Theatre

The cute little old ladies are up to something at the sunny nursing home. They share the same room and enough wit to fight over the turf like two college roommates. If only we all could grow old with...

Review: ‘Byhalia, Mississippi’ at The Kennedy Center

The pivotal character in this profoundly moving comedy is Laurel, a young woman who has relocated from Jackson to Byhalia, Mississippi, to make a life with the young man she plans to love for the rest...

Review: ‘HERstory: Love Forever, Hip Hop’ at The Kennedy Center

I have to marvel at all the ways the national culture temple named for our 35th president reaches out to an audience that looks like America. There’s no such uniform audience, of course—no performing...

‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ by the Rude Mechanicals at the Greenbelt Arts Center

Tennessee Williams famously wrote fragile female leads: Laura, delicate and easily shattered; Blanche, already defeated before she is forced to rely upon the kindness of strangers. Not so with Maggie...

Capital Fringe Basics: How To Buy Tickets and More

Tickets are on sale now for the 2019 Capital Fringe Festival bringing over 500 individual performances, 89 productions, and five Capital Fringe curated shows across 13 stages in Southwest DC. Do not...

DC Theater Arts and DC Theatre Scene Announce Joint Coverage of 2019 Capital Fringe Festival

DC Theater Arts and DC Theatre Scene are pleased to announce that they are joining forces to cover the 2019 Capital Fringe Festival. Each online publication will review half of the 89 shows in the...

Due to Urgent Financial Issues and Need to Change Business Model, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to Lock Out Musicians on June 17

The Board of Directors of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra approved a lockout of the organization’s musicians, Local 40-543, if an agreement between the musicians and management was not reached by the...

Review: ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ by Scena Theatre

I love Brecht. My heart and soul were ready for Scena Theatre’s production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (written during World War II but not produced in America until the late 1950s) – a play...

Review: ‘Falsettos’ National Tour at the Kennedy Center

The motley crew of neurotic and quasi-neurotic characters in Falsettos, now playing at the Kennedy Center, offers an eye-opening look at all-too-human dilemmas. The rituals of everyday life under...

Magic Time!: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at Round House Theatre

How do I love this play? Let me count the ways. My colleague David Siegel’s review heaps accolades on the Round House Theatre production of Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, now playing at the...

Watching the Tonys with DC Theater Arts

DC Theater Arts hosted a rousing Tony Awards watch party at DC sports bar Penn Social last Sunday. An enthusiastic crowd of Broadway fans competed for ticket prizes and answered trivia questions posed...

Jets and Sharks: Is the BSO Missing an Opportunity?

Much of my career has been spent as a health sciences writer. This training helps keep in check my music critic’s right brained instinct to find metaphors in a story. It’s a good restraint to have,...

Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at Round House Theatre

Battle lines drawn. Cogent argument made. Can everyone be right at the same time? Does it matter in a world full of choices? Invigorating and decidedly bracing, the Round House production of A Doll’s...

Washington Performing Arts and Council Member David Grosso Present Politics & Art: District Vox, June 13

Now in its fifth year, Politics & Art: District Vox is an annual “Made in D.C.” performing arts showcase presented by Councilmember David Grosso and Washington Performing Arts’ Mars Arts D.C....

Review: ‘Disney’s Beauty and the Beast’ at Creative Cauldron

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a popular show right now with several venues running it around the same time. Creative Cauldron makes a grand entrance with their version of Disney’s Beauty and the...

Review: ‘The Oldest Boy’ at Spooky Action Theater

Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy is a graceful meditation on motherhood: its joys, its sorrows, and its unforeseeable costs. Director Kathryn Chase Bryer offers a visually lovely and emotionally moving...

Review: ‘Forest Treás’ by Pointless Theatre Company

Pointless Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Forest Treás (pronounced ‘Triage’). Written by Navid Azeez, the play is based around the 2002 Beltway Sniper attacks and the effects the 22-day...

Magic Time!: ‘The Oldest Boy’ at Spooky Action Theater

Sara Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy tells a gut-wrenching story serenely, almost gently. At the heart of it is the bond between mother and child, a tie that Ruhl knew intimately when she wrote the play,...

Chamber Dance Project Brings ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ From Page to Stage

‘‘Do I dare/Disturb the universe?” asked T.S. Eliot’s protagonist in the confessional modernist masterwork “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Through a world-premier devised performance,...

Review: ‘Gwen & Ida: The Object is of No Importance’ by Nu Sass Productions and Uncle Funsy at Caos On F

With the world premiere of DC playwright David Kessler’s fictional memory play, Gwen & Ida: The Object is of No Importance, Nu Sass & Uncle Funsy present an enlightening window into the lives and...

Review: ‘Old Time Music Hall’ by The British Players

It’s June, a time for anniversaries, celebrations and commemorations. Where can you simultaneously look back with fond nostalgia at British pluck and cheek, and party for Pride month? How about at The...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at Workhouse Arts Center

The Workhouse Arts Center rocks an audacious combination of classic rock, classic longing, and sci-fi horror show in a hyperkinetic presentation of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of...

Review: ‘A Fox on the Fairway’ by The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The Quail Valley Country Club is the setting for Ken Ludwig’s A Fox on the Fairway, and the annual golf tournament against their rivals, Crouching Squirrel Country Club, is at hand. Quail Valley’s...

Review: ‘Princess Ida’ by The Victorian Lyric Opera Company

Princess Ida, now being presented by The Victorian Lyric Opera Company (VLOC), is something of an odd duck in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory. It has three acts, the dialogue is in blank verse, and...

Review: ‘How the Other Half Loves’ at Montgomery Playhouse

Farces are hard to do well or differently, but they nearly always impart an important lesson: always tell the truth. How the Other Half Loves is an innovative farce, replete with secret affairs,...

Review: ‘Hello, Dolly!’ at The Kennedy Center

A matchmaker, dance instructor, legal counsel, and mandolin teacher (among other occupations), Dolly Gallagher Levi is a woman of countless talents and side-hustles in bustling, turn-of-the-century...

A Lively NSO Dazzles, Hinting of Still More Good Things to Come

Now that National Symphony Orchestra music director Gianandrea Noseda has nearly completed two full seasons – and has signed on to stay through 2025 – a clearer picture of the possibilities we can...

A ‘Life-Affirming’ Journey: Playwright Samuel A. Simon and Actor Chuk Obasi Discuss ‘The Actual Dance’

“It is what I am supposed to do in my life,” The Actual Dance playwright Samuel A. Simon told me in a phone interview. He was speaking about the play he developed and has performed that began when he...

Review: ‘The Tale of Serse’ by The In Series

The In Series is a place for thought, debate, history, and innovation. With the noble goal to invigorate contemporary theatre, to create innovations in “opera and song,” to “reimagine these forms,...