Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Old things may become new. Handel’s opera, Alcina, which premiered in 1735 has done just that – quite magically so. Washington National Opera has dared to take on the classic sorceress f…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24PMJon Robin Baitz fairly sprays the audience with lines that atta-tack-tack like an AK47. You hear the moans of each hit and then explosion after explosion of laughter. In this way, his play V…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24PMTuesday, October 17, 2017
One doesn’t go to Urban Arias expecting masterpieces. The whole adventure is about sharing in Founder and Artistic Director Robert Wood’s risk-taking in mounting new or almost new operat…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:54AMThursday, October 12, 2017
Experiencing a Matthew Bourne ballet is like indulging in a whole box of Christmas crackers from Harrods – stuffed with surprises. It also reminds me of reading something by the late write…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:33AMTuesday, September 12, 2017
Hey, put down your guns! I’m not talking about hand-carrying, capitalist-and-NRA-endorsed devices you can buy on DC streets. I’m talking about the weapons of words we use to hate on ea…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:24PMMonday, September 11, 2017
A legendary Spanish character, that has inspired work by luminaries including Moliere, Goldoni, and Mozart, has leapt onto the stage at GALA Hispanic Theatre in a sizzling new adaptation, Do…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMAida opened Washington National Opera’s season, and the production is stunning grand opera. From the remarkable singing to the stage pictures filled with RETNA’s startling, rich iconogra…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMThursday, September 7, 2017
Everyone is doing them, doing them, doing them. Well, actually no. Some artists say they hate them, notably David Mamet who recently threatened to fine theaters the hefty sum of $25,000 if t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:42AMWednesday, August 30, 2017
Susan Galbraith and Howard Shalwitz, longtime friends and colleagues, talk about Howard’s return to the stage for The Arsonists as he prepares to depart from the company he co-founded …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:24PMWednesday, July 26, 2017
An Octoroon is a big play. It makes you sit up and take notice. It makes you laugh and it makes you wince. More often than not it makes you squirm uncomfortably. I’d say that it is tha…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:33PMMonday, July 24, 2017
It’s a great time in Washington to re-evaluate through drama the weights and balances of our justice system. Downtown at Arena Stage we’re watching Scalia’s story, penned as The Origin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:48AMThursday, July 20, 2017
Times is hard in Bonnie and Clyde. Some would say not so different from now. Climate shifting, turning the land into a dustbowl. Whole businesses destroyed. Banks going under. People out o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:54AMWednesday, July 19, 2017
BON VOYAGE! A Happenstance Escapade is a soupçon, a patisserie, a confection, and, in its smellier moments, a big fromage! But most of all it is Mark Jaster’s love letter to Paris. And th…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:33AMWednesday, June 21, 2017
Some believe that if we keep people who have died in our thoughts and words then they are not really dead. Well, if so, then last night lights were blazing and the world was happily peopled …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:48PMMonday, June 19, 2017
The Kennedy Center was alive with The Sound of Music on Friday night. Almost every seat was taken in the vast Opera House auditorium for the opening night of the latest Broadway-style tourin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:48PMWednesday, June 7, 2017
DCTS writer Susan Galbraith returns to the Prague Fringe festival with Protest by Vaclav Havel, produced by her company Alliance for New Music-Theatre. —————&…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:42AMMonday, May 8, 2017
In most productions, Madame Butterfly is unabashedly atmospheric in its romanticism. “Orientalism” carries us back to composer Giacomo Puccini’s time when the West imagined a fancif…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:02PMWednesday, May 3, 2017
It’s in the air – an urgency to use theatre to get people into the conversation about what many see as our national crisis: the Trump presidency. Now Forum Theatre gets into the act pres…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:02PMTuesday, April 25, 2017
Starting with Kendra Rai’s gorgeously hued Indian-spice costumes, conjuring tamarind, cinnamon and saffron, Imagination Stage’s production of The Jungle Book brings to life the rich imag…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:12PMMonday, April 10, 2017
Mosaic Theater Company is only in its second year of producing but, planting itself firmly on Washington’s H Street corridor in northeast Washington, the team of Ari Roth and Serge Seiden …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:36PMMonday, April 3, 2017
UrbanArias has gone wild! The company that pushes boundaries, reconceiving opera that is short, smart and fast, has given us an opera about a chimpanzee. Luckily, the chimpanzee, which we le…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:48PMFriday, March 31, 2017
Minimal. Stripped-bare. Essential. Pure. Questioning. Uncomfortable. Profound. Spiritual. This is what you must expect when you experience a production by Peter Brook, one of the world’s g…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:12PMThursday, March 23, 2017
Mozart would have been grinning at this youthful production of his tried-and-true opera that reached out to a new younger and diverse audience Friday night, March 17th. Washington National O…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:54AMMonday, March 20, 2017
Seeing something unlike anything you’ve seen before can be curious, mystifying, and even jarring. That was my experience this weekend with Venus Theatre’s presentation of what was, …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24AMFriday, March 17, 2017
Ford’s has given us a magnificent and deeply moving musical about where we’ve come from, featuring, as its main character, America. The superbly attuned ensemble announces with full emot…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:12PMTuesday, March 7, 2017
Hard-hitting, issue-packed, relevant plays are all the rage right now, but if you are weary of such emotional drain, and would just like some old-fashioned fun, look no further than Olney’…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:06AMMonday, March 6, 2017
The air was electric at Kennedy Center Saturday night with the promise of a great fight mounted as opera on stage, and I had what amounted to ringside seats. Champion clearly had some heav…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:03PMMonday, February 27, 2017
The opera Dead Man Walking is a journey of harrowing truth and compelling beauty. If, as Sister Helen Prejean says, “ Grace is waking up to the gospel of encounter,” then Director France…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:32PMMonday, February 13, 2017
I am being given an intimate look inside the rehearsal rooms of Washington National Opera’s Dead Man Walking under the direction of WNO’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. This repor…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:18AMThursday, February 9, 2017
A rare inside look at the making of an opera. Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello invited Susan Galbraith to sit in on rehearsals of Dead Man Walking. T…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:06AMWednesday, February 8, 2017
Big News at the Kennedy Center. Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater rocked the place last night.. And no one rushed to exit the Opera House auditorium (as they often do at the KC) until …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:06PM 
