Thursday, December 20, 2018
“Laws are like sausages,” goes the adage. “It’s better not to see them being made.” As it happens, I have a good mental picture of how sausages are made, because fo…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:21PMMonday, December 17, 2018
Theater and theology have been boon companions for eons. Ever since religion was invented, humans have wanted divinities with drama. Way back in polytheistic antiquity, playgoers imagined go…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:53PMThursday, December 6, 2018
Cirque du Soleil’s Crystal is staged on a slick sheet of ice where acrobats and skaters combine to create an amazing entertainment. A spectacular array of chills and charms to thrill a…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:19PMWednesday, December 5, 2018
There are only ever seven characters onstage in this majestic production—three of them former slaves—but it is as if multitudes of Africans lost crossing the ocean or sold in chains are …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:25PMTuesday, December 4, 2018
The character Lianne Harvey plays in J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, Sheila Birling, really fascinated me. Sheila stands out as no ordinary ingenue. During the course of the play…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:46PMI can’t recall seeing another play by someone who came to playwrighting from standup, but I’ll not soon forget how I laughed my feckin head off at Sonya Kelly’s How to Keep…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:37AMSaturday, December 1, 2018
Fans of zany humor might remember when AnyStage Theater popped up in the Capital Fringe Festival with its ridiculous (and mostly fact-free) takes on Margaret Thatcher and Amelia Earhart. The…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:38AMFriday, November 30, 2018
The controversial scene that ends this “true story of a little Jewish play” has been foretold at length throughout the show and mentioned in much publicity, so it’s no spoi…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:02PMThursday, November 29, 2018
“To let one’s hair down” is to open up, be freer than usual, be willing to share. The idiom is apt for what transpires in Barber Shop Chronicles, an extraordinary explorati…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:46AMTuesday, November 27, 2018
J. B. Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls—a drawing-room drama set in England in 1912 and written there in 1944—has landed in DC with uncanny currency. Now at Sidney Harmon Hall…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:59AMMonday, November 26, 2018
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 …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:22AMWednesday, November 21, 2018
If you’re in a mood for some boisterous joy this holiday weekend—some soul-rousing solos and heartbreaking harmonies in the tenor/bass range—nab a ticket to The Choir of Man. The t…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:33PMTuesday, November 20, 2018
Cry It Out—an exhilaratingly funny and touching comedy about new parenthood—is a joyous reminder that when a playwright of Molly Smith Metzler’s skill and compassion writes “…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:05AMWednesday, November 7, 2018
Long before the recent shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Derek Goldman had planned to direct a production of Our Class with student actors at Georgetown University. It is…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:55AMWednesday, October 31, 2018
“Do you still believe there can be a country for all?” When that blunt question comes up in The Agitators—Mat Smart’s deeply affecting play about the friendship between S…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:33AMMonday, October 29, 2018
Long Way Down, adapted from the renowned young adult novel in verse by Jason Reynolds, is told in the voice of a 15-year-old named Will and performed by the prodigiously talented Justin Wea…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:56PMSaturday, October 27, 2018
If you’ve ever been in an acting class, a group-encounter session, a sensitivity training, or kindergarten, you’ll feel right at home in The Fever. Even if you’re by natu…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:51AMFriday, October 26, 2018
The vexing concept of consent in sex gets a seductively smart parsing in Anna Zeigler’s Actually. Now playing in an electrically well-acted Theater J production directed by Johanna Gre…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:09PMThursday, October 25, 2018
There is so much to be blown away by in The Fall, the powerful and thrilling performance piece devised and performed by seven South African students. Their majestic musicality, their propuls…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:40PMWednesday, October 24, 2018
I’ve been wary of this play since it was first produced in 1997. I remember hearing that it was about a pedophile and his niece and that its treatment of the uncle was sympathetic. So …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:32PMMonday, October 22, 2018
A few years ago, the teenage son of a single mom shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic, and now the nice suburban home they lived in is a blight. The house not only brings the neighborhood dow…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:00PMWhen three-hours-plus in the theater elapse faster than many a 90-minute performance, it’s a good bet you’ve been in the thrall of a master storyteller. And that’s what hap…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:25AMSunday, October 21, 2018
When Michael Kevin Darnall plays a character who is the focus of a long scene and we can watch every nuance and shading of his emotional expression without interruption, he can be transfixin…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:36AMTuesday, October 16, 2018
Just before intermission in Constellation Theatre Company’s sparkling and stirring production of Aida, there comes a wonderful “Wakanda Forever” moment. The fearless Nubia…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:33PMSaturday, October 13, 2018
Countless migrant children have been separated from home and family in war-torn parts of the world, and there is no way all their stories will be told. But Naomi Iizuka’s Anon(ymous)…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:26PMSunday, September 30, 2018
Brave Soul Collective is a hidden gem of theatrical truthtelling about black men who are LGBTQ. Periodically the collective surfaces with a one-night-only showcase of work by local writing a…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:10PMMonday, September 24, 2018
I know from my feminist antipornography activism that there is plenty of misogynist hate literature around. (The hard-core stuff is brutal, sadistic propaganda marketed to men arousing them …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:47PMWednesday, September 19, 2018
Theater Alliance’s The Events, now playing at Anacostia Playhouse, is one of several plays this season that deal with a mass shooting. (There’s also Pinky Swear’s Blight, …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:32AMTuesday, September 18, 2018
To paraphrase the famous Passover Seder line, “Why is this domestic drama different from all other domestic dramas?” Or, to put the impudent question another way, “What mak…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:59PMTuesday, September 11, 2018
Count on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins to leave you whiplashed and shell-shocked. He hits nerve after nerve then goes for the jugular. Whatever he writes, see it. Woolly’s previous productio…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:48AMThursday, September 6, 2018
Kennedy Center’s annual Page to Stage Festival is always chock full of tempting offerings, and the challenge of deciding what to see is daunting. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buf…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:06PM 
