Tuesday, June 9, 2015
A hit Broadway comedy, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, rounds out Theater J’s 2014–2015 season in a production smartly directed by Eleanor Holdridge. Written in a mainstream mode by…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:46PMSunday, June 7, 2015
Update on 6/6/15: A near-capacity crowd gathered in the 9:30 Club Friday night, June 5, 2015—not standing in wait for a band to come on but seated in folding chairs for an evening of story…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:34AMWednesday, June 3, 2015
Round House Theatre just opened a stunningly good production of NSFW directed by Meredith McDonough. The script by British playwright Lucy Kirkwood is a marvel in itself, because it is a sc…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:50AMMonday, June 1, 2015
Updated 6/1/5: Before seeing Faction of Fools’ Commedia dell’arte interpretation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in full production (I’d previously seen it in a workshop)…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:55PMYou might think a suicide pact among losers who meet on line would not be a terribly good premise for a warmhearted comedy—much less a noir one à la Martin McDonaugh. You might assume the…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:48AMSunday, May 31, 2015
The gaunt and haunted figure of Franz Kafka obsessed the renowned Polish poet, novelist, and dramatist Tadeusz Różewicz (1921-2014). His two-act play The Trap—part expressionistic, par…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:03AMFriday, May 29, 2015
Storytelling is at the core of theatre, but it also stands alone as a unique form of entertainment. Not quite monologue, not quite stand-up comedy, what storytellers do best is blend their p…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:44AMThe morning after Jumpers for Goalposts opened at Studio Theatre, I sat down to talk with its very talented playwright, Tom Wells. He had been in town watching the last few weeks of rehearsa…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:07AMWednesday, May 27, 2015
If there were a Richter Scale for risk-taking in theater, Forum Theatre’s production ofThe Shipment would register right up at the top. In brazenly challenging assumptions about how we p…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:00AMMonday, May 25, 2015
For decades theatergoers have warmed to plays set in rooming houses. Playwrights have been fond of the form too, because it permits an otherwise random mix of boarders to become an engrossin…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:48PMSunday, May 24, 2015
When you go to one-night-only theater, you never know what you’ll get. There’s no word of mouth, no buzz, no yelping from critics. It’s like speed blind-dating And if the one-night-sta…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:51PMThursday, May 21, 2015
It’s kind of a tossup these days whether Matthew R. Wilson is more newsworthy because he’s leaving as artistic director of Faction of Fools, the Commedia dell’arte company he founded, …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:53PMBefore I spoke with Psalmayne 24 about his direction of The Shipment—which plays through June 13, 2015, at Forum Theatre—I read the play by Young Jean Lee. John: I found the script power…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:49PMMonday, May 18, 2015
By the end of Act One, I was stunned and shaken. By the end of Act Two, I was speechless, not wanting to move. And I had seen this show before. The movie too. I already knew that it has a da…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:19PMThere have been some great plays set in locker rooms that lay bare the anxieties underlying men’s lives. After all, the sports locker room is the archetypical site of respite from the male…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:10AMTuesday, May 12, 2015
Tanya Barfield’s play The Call seeks to give dramatic expression to the stark chasm between first world problems and third world problems. In so doing it tackles a topic with vast global c…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:24AMSunday, May 10, 2015
A bright 18-year-old named Dontrell has had a dream. He saw a man with the face of his father who is captive on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. In the dark hold of the vessel he saw that…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:36PMSaturday, May 9, 2015
“Every ghost story is kind of like a history lesson,” says the young woman identified as A History Major in The Great Lieutenant Sprinkle Didn’t Save Me, an intriguing new play by…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:07PMSunday, May 3, 2015
The Broadway and West End audiences that made Frederick Lonsdale’s On Approval a hit in the 1920s could not possibly have guessed how this light comedy would play in 2015. Bet they would b…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:48AMLOVE GODFREY/LOVE GEORGE, by John Stoltenberg has a FREE staged reading TODAY, Sunday, May 3, 2015, at 2:00 pm at the MLK Library John: Readers of DCMetroTheaterArts know you as a writer abo…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:42AMMonday, April 27, 2015
A play by contributing writer John Stoltenberg will have a staged reading Sunday, May 3, 2015, at 2:00 pm at the MLK Library. John sat down with himself to pick his brain about it. John: Rea…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:39PMAs we are ushered into the tiny dimly lit theater, constructed as a claustrophobic black box with only two rows of chairs on all sides, we enter a nightmare more harrowing and disquieting th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:44AMFriday, April 24, 2015
The Revolutionists, an ambitious and promising new play by Lauren Gunderson, is getting a spiffy first full production courtesy of The Catholic University Department of Drama prior to its pr…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:39PMTuesday, April 21, 2015
The fourth-floor black box at Studio Theatre has housed some extraordinary original storytelling. Recent productions of Terminus and Moth leap to mind. The space, called Stage 4, seems like …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:36AMSunday, April 19, 2015
A steampunk staging of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus without any spoken or signed language? Just movement and mime and lighting and scenic effects? Sounds crazy, right? Well, depend…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:31PMWednesday, April 15, 2015
Last night, on the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, I was in a DC theater venue of a very different sort: a tiny white-box art-gallery space d…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:06AMTuesday, April 14, 2015
Very Still & Hard to See is neither quiet nor a challenge to perceive. Its aural and optical pleasures are bountiful. For this production of Steve Yockey’s cycle of supernatural short …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:36PMSunday, April 12, 2015
When I arrived to see Drunkle Vanya last night, the first thing I did was order a vodka. I don’t typically drink before I review, but in this circumstance it seemed part of my job, since t…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:56PMSaturday, April 11, 2015
Watching the annual student spring dance concert last night at Howard University, I was taken aback from the get-go. What I saw was so impressive in conception and execution, so powerful in …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:21PMFriday, April 10, 2015
There is no humor in one’s own unhappiness. To be lonely and disappointed in life is not to be amused. To feel empty and over the hill is not to be tickled. Yet when we laugh at the woes a…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:36PMTuesday, April 7, 2015
Robert Michael Oliver and John Stoltenberg saw and wrote about the same opening night performance of Lights Rise on Grace at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, but they seem not to have seen th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:56AM 
