Wednesday, September 9, 2015
On Labor Day weekend, Kennedy Center plaza level entry was pandemonium, noisy with skate boarders, who zigzagged and snaked in and out of a recessed pit and across a cordoned-off area. The…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:04AMTuesday, August 11, 2015
Emoting that comes direct from the heart can grab you in the heart, even twist your gut. It’s real. You want to reach out and hug the participants in thanks. That’s what I felt, …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:38PMTuesday, June 9, 2015
Emotionally revitalizing, experimental and spectacular. This gut-wrenching ground-breaker exposes hidden Argentinian history, so expect the unexpected in this well-constructed musical by Pat…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:49PMMonday, June 1, 2015
The oldies never get old; they become classics. So what makes Latino music and romantic songs, called boleros, of the “golden age,” the 1930s, 40s and 50s, so unique and universa…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:52PMWednesday, May 13, 2015
Controversy swirls around the biblical woman Mary Magdalene. Was she the wife of Jesus? Or was she merely a repentant prostitute, showing us how a sinner can be redeemed by following Jesus? …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:03AMTuesday, April 21, 2015
Women who behave rarely make great artists. Local D.C. playwright Karen Zacarías and a well-polished GALA Hispanic Theatre cast and technical team present us with a strange, tragic-comic ma…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:28AMFriday, March 20, 2015
A lone tree trunk, with spiky, bare branches, is the minimalist set. Immediately, I felt thrust into a landscape for Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, uninviting for Spanish hospitality. Ye…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:40AMWednesday, March 18, 2015
The In Series Pocket Opera Company is using its gifted creative team, librettist Bari Biern and stage director Tom Mallan, to the utmost, for a bold, new venture, Don Giovanni, one of Mozart…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:18AMFriday, March 13, 2015
A large round shadow screen looms upstage, like a rising moon. Eight triangular steps ascend, like a pyramid, in front of it, as if leading to a Mayan temple. The stage floor is lit with a s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:57AMWednesday, February 25, 2015
Remember Eisenstaedt’s iconic victory photo, “The Kiss”? Taken in 1945, a sailor in white cap kisses a girl in white, a nurse, as she bends over backwards like a hairpin. Y…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:16AMFriday, January 16, 2015
Remember that illuminating moment when first love hits? It can be a flutter in the solar plexus, an airy sensation in the head. It’s that light-headed feeling that is pure, wholesome…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:19PMTuesday, November 4, 2014
Pasos Azar/Random Steps takes us beyond the expected boundaries of limitations and expels stereotypes. The Gunston II stage is stripped naked to its cement walls with only strip spot-lights …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:29AMTuesday, October 21, 2014
There’s the buzz of excitement and immediacy on the Tivoli Theatre stage. The In Series Pocket Opera’s artistic director and founder, Carla Hübner, tells us that almost 100 year…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:35AMMonday, October 20, 2014
At the lowest abyss of this emotional roller-coaster ride, there is a terrifying life-changing revelation. Yet the staging of this beautiful one-act monologue, written for Uruguayan actress,…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:09AMThursday, October 16, 2014
In a striving-to-be-perfect Latino jazz band rehearsal, guitarists Brianna (Carol Spring), Tim (Jerry Daniel) and Alex (Miguel Amaguaño) strum furiously and sound terrible. Brianna and Tim …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:59AMMonday, September 15, 2014
Cancún is a richly-layered comedy, brilliantly-written four hander, by Jordi Galcerán, Europe’s hottest playwright at the moment, from Catalonia, Spain. Two American couples, subur…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:02AMTuesday, August 12, 2014
The GALA Hispanic Theatre’s founder and producing artistic director, Hugo Medrano, greets me on the steps of the Josephine Butler Parks Center building. This is the Renaissance-revival…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:29AMTuesday, June 10, 2014
Delightful, daring, death defying, ultimately satisfying. In Puro Tango II, the spotlight immortalizes the women who sing soulful and poetic tango songs, as well as the dancers who dance it.…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:18AMFriday, May 30, 2014
What’s real and what’s illusion? This is the key question raised during this impassioned performance. In Lady of Spain, the first of this In Series double bill of “lounge o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:19AMTuesday, May 13, 2014
There’s an old adage, “What goes around comes around,” that’s apt for Argentine playwright Rafael Bruza’s play. But you have to give yourself up and really beli…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:38AMTuesday, April 29, 2014
It takes more than a mother and father to raise a child. So when well-educated women feel the call to work outside their homes, who cares for the kids? Easy: Hire an immigrant. Playwright Li…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:25AMMonday, March 24, 2014
The Elixir of Love (L’elisir d’amore) is much more than an intoxicating revival. Stephen Lawless strips The Elixir of Love of any sugar-coated decor and cartoonish exaggeration a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:01AMTuesday, February 18, 2014
Why does a modern woman need a man to have a baby? Based on that one question this thought-provoking, philosophically complex, one-act situation comedy is a well-performed, naughty, but nice…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:46AMTuesday, February 11, 2014
There are theatrical moments when the impossible becomes possible, when ensemble harmony and a richly-layered, challenging play are beautifully realized. So it is with GALA’s richly-la…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:56AMTuesday, December 3, 2013
A Family Reunion, a mesmerizing modern opera by the late Christopher Patton, a composer of avant-garde new music, hits home where the heart is, but doesn’t hit you over the head with g…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:21AMTuesday, November 26, 2013
The In Series Pocket Opera Company continues it season with another bold and juicy double bill. Last spring, Love and Money, a surprise hit, featured Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:08PMTuesday, November 12, 2013
In 2007, I nicknamed Argentine Liliana Pécora the Sarah Bernhardt of comic actresses for her acting in Women of 50 in Teatro de la Luna’s 10th International Hispanic Theater Festival.…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:23PMFriday, November 1, 2013
Get ready, get set, go to GALA for a fabulous burst of imaginative stagecraft of ancient folklore. “Why should a rabbit have such magnificent antlers?” one masked creature of the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:33AMWednesday, September 18, 2013
The sound of a heart pounds pa-pum, pa-pum, and blends into the strumming of a classical guitar. The original music composed and directed by David Peralto is refreshing and primes us for a n…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:53PMTuesday, September 17, 2013
José Luis Arellano García A play composed of interludes? In pursuit of tracking down what I suspected would be an interesting story about GALA Hispanic Theatre’s world premiere of Ca…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:49AMWednesday, September 11, 2013
Many operas lose their voluptuous richness when they’re flattened into modern translation and costume. Not so with this sumptuous In Series update. Librettist Bari Biern closely knits …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:48AM 
