All stories by John Stoltenberg on BroadwayStars

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Magic Time! DC Black Theatre Festival: ’7 Layers Captive’ by John Stoltenberg

The DC Black Theatre Festival this year offered some 45 self-produced shows, most one time only. Organized annually by the DC Drama Department, a nonprofit educational theater company, the f…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:10AM
Monday, June 23, 2014

DC Black Theatre Festival: ‘Somethin’ Like Eatonville’ by John Stoltenberg

Organized annually by the DC Drama Department, a nonprofit educational theater company, the festival features performances in four categories: drama, deaf artists, family, and inspirational.…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:22PM
Sunday, June 22, 2014

Magic Time! The DC Black Theatre Festival: ‘Confessions of a Homo Thug Porn Star’ by John Stoltenberg

The DC Black Theatre Festival, which runs through June 26, this year offers some 45 self-produced shows, most one time only. Organized annually by the DC Drama Department, a nonprofit educat…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:16PM
Saturday, June 21, 2014

‘Buyer & Cellar’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company by John Stoltenberg

The laughs come so fast in Buyer & Cellar—and Michael Urie’s solo performance is so brilliantly engaging—that the words “funny” and “fun” seem too puny, utterly inadequate…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:19PM
Monday, June 9, 2014

‘Killer Joe’ at SeeNoSun OnStage by John Stoltenberg

Audiences with a taste for pitch-dark comedy will get their fill of a deliciously unsettling feast in Killer Joe, the launch production of the aptly named new theater company SeeNoSun. Ki…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:21PM
Monday, June 2, 2014

‘The Prostate Dialogues’ at Theater J by John Stoltenberg

Theater J’s finale to its fine 2013–2014 season turns out to be a surprisingly poignant solo performance about a man’s privates. Storyteller Jon Spelman is our genial guide; the genit…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:21PM
Sunday, June 1, 2014

‘Magic Time!’ ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ at The American Century Theater by John Stoltenberg

A resounding round of applause is owed The American Century Theater (TACT), whose sharp, smart production of Judgment at Nuremberg brings this towering play to DC Metro audiences at last. As…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:45PM
Saturday, May 24, 2014

An Interview With Kieyontaye D. Johnson-Carter, Author of ‘Love in Time of HIV’ by John Stoltenberg

When I first saw Love in Time of HIV in May 2012, I was deeply impressed. Giving voice to a young generation’s encounter with the health crisis left them by their elders, the play by Kieyo…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:00AM
Thursday, May 22, 2014

Magic Time! ‘Cock’ at The Studio Theatre by John Stoltenberg

If this were a theater review it would be an effusive rave. The production of Mike Bartlett’s play Cock now at The Studio Theatre is impeccable: The lighting, the sound, the direction, the…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:38PM
Tuesday, May 20, 2014

‘A Midsummer Night’s Riot’ at The Keegan Theatre by John Stoltenberg

Watching the world premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Riot is like watching theatrical lighting strike. For the third time. In the exact same place (the Keegan Theater). With the exact same w…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:53AM
Monday, May 19, 2014

‘Freud’s Last Session’ at Theater J by John Stoltenberg

If conversation were kindling, this two-hander would combust. If argumentation were edible, this debate would be delectable. If a supersmart script played by two stellar actors were a specta…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:54PM
Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Magic Time! ‘The Three Penny Opera’ at Signature Theatre by John Stoltenberg

Signature Theatre’s new production of The Threepenny Opera—directed and choreographed with unerring cunning by James Gardiner—is cringe-inducing, snarky, impudent, and jarring. Everyth…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:01PM
Sunday, April 27, 2014

‘The Amish Project’ at Factory 449 by John Stoltenberg

Shooting sprees have become commonplace in our media consumption. Nowadays breaking news of yet another gunman and his multiple victims (the shooters are always male) more numbs than shocks.…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:55AM
Saturday, April 19, 2014

A Report on ‘Jarman (all this maddening beauty)’ at force/collision by John Stoltenberg

Jarman (all this maddening beauty)-A Report on a work in progress For as long as there have been movies, theater artists have tried to integrate film with live performance. Something about c…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:44AM
Monday, April 14, 2014

‘Magic Time!’: ‘Moth’ at The Studio Theatre’a 2ndStage by John Stoltenberg

Up on the fourth floor of The Studio Theatre is a great big black box of a performance space, which isn’t actually black because its walls are cinder block, rather like an institutional en…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:36PM
Sunday, April 13, 2014

‘Golda’s Balcony’ at Theater J by John Stoltenberg

There’s not a long list of great actors who, through their indelible bravura depiction of a great historical figure in a solo performance, warrant substituting the word “is” for “as,…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:27PM
Sunday, April 6, 2014

‘Camp David’ at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater by John Stoltenberg

The real President Jimmy Carter attended the premiere of Camp David—the engrossing new play by Lawrence Wright in which he is the central character—and offered up this mini-review of it …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:59PM
Friday, April 4, 2014

‘Violet’ at The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts by John Stoltenberg

Since mid-January an intrepid troupe of musical-theater students has been rehearsing the sweet and soulful show Violet at The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts under the able direc…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:15AM
Thursday, April 3, 2014

Magic Time! ‘Arguendo’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

Watching Arguendo—an actual Supreme Court transcript staged cheekily for chuckles by Elevator Repair Service, the New York–based troupe specializing in literary vérité—is like watch…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:57PM
Sunday, March 30, 2014

‘If/Then’ at The Richard Rodgers Theatre by John Stoltenberg

If/Then, the musical with the biggest heart you can imagine, is now back home in the Big Apple, and just like its main character, Elizabeth (the incomparable Idina Menzel), it is starting ov…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:15AM
Wednesday, March 26, 2014

‘The Admission’ at Theater J by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

As many who follow local theater news know, Theater J’s production of The Admission has been preceded by an offstage drama—a who’s-right/who’s-wrong argument, a what-really-happene…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:22PM
Monday, March 10, 2014

‘Water by the Spoonful’ at The Studio Theatre by John Stoltenberg

Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful is set in 2009 and takes place mainly in Philadelphia but also travels to San Diego, Japan, and Puerto Rico. Two …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:52PM

‘Normal’ at Molotov Theatre Group by John Stoltenberg

Molotov Theatre Group has an uncanny knack for converting its tiny black-box nook into an auditorium-scale operating theater for surgical dissection of the dark side of human nature. With it…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:52AM
Wednesday, February 19, 2014

‘American Idiot’ at The National Theatre by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

Among the exhilarating pleasures of seeing American Idiot now on tour at the National Theatre is experiencing this angsty, amped-up ode to  antiestablishment disaffection performed full f…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:18AM
Saturday, February 8, 2014

Magic Time! ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

It takes a wagonload of courage to take on Brecht these days. His “alienation effect” esthetic challenges every theatrical convention that makes a show a contemporary commercial success.…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:38AM
Tuesday, February 4, 2014

‘Yellow Face’ at Theater J by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

If there was an open casting call for the role of you, who should get the part and who shouldn’t? Must the actor be descended from a gene pool that arose in the same area on the globe th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:15PM

Playing (with) Gender in WSC Avant Bard’s ‘Orlando’: Acting Insights from Sara Barker and Jay Hardee by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

Orlando, WSC Avant Bard’s upcoming production, is based on Virginia Woolf’s classic 1928 novel in which Woolf based the character Orlando on the woman she was madly in love with. In both…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:07AM
Friday, January 31, 2014

‘Peter and the Starcatcher’ at The Kennedy Center by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

If you’re willing to let your inner child stay up after bedtime and go out and play at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater instead, you’re in for an evening of theatrical wondermen…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:57PM
Tuesday, January 21, 2014

‘Glassheart’ at Rorschach Theatre by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

The evening began enchantingly. The audience was seated on four sides of a square playing area lit by stage lighting, so we could look across and see one another’s faces in that wonderful …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:15PM
Monday, January 20, 2014

Magic Time! ‘Miss Nelson is Missing’ by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

I had not been to kid’s theater since I was a kid. As an inveterate theater buff, I was dimly aware there was much highly praised professional children’s theater in the DC Metro area—b…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:17AM
Saturday, January 11, 2014

‘Urinetown: The Musical’ at Dominion Stage by John Stoltenberg by John Stoltenberg

Urinetown: The Musical holds a special place in my theatergoing memory. I first saw it in New York City days after the September 11, 2001, attacks because then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani told me t…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:41PM