Monday, May 13, 2019
Never doubt the sheer power or the relevancy of a great work of opera. All you need for the first are extraordinary musicianship by a conductor, superb singers, and a stage director who can …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:24PMTuesday, April 30, 2019
Brush up – your opera. There will be no better time to turn off, dial down, and otherwise forego small devices and experience the “think big” of live opera than in the 2019-2020 oper…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:12PMMonday, March 25, 2019
How could one not run to a show that, in this day, puts together a story that purposes to go to the heart of a topic that raises both volatile antipathy and gut wrenching emotions of compass…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:25AMMonday, March 18, 2019
Only one week ago, Washington National Opera gave us a cool, minimalist modern take on a romantic opera (Eugene Onegin); this week the company took us back to an old world, even hedonistic a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:39AMMonday, March 11, 2019
The wait of thirty years came to an end Saturday night when Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin returned to Washington in a spare yet stunningly beautiful production. The minimalist ‘box�…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:55AMMonday, March 4, 2019
British playwright Ella Hickson gets an American premiere of her sprawlingly ambitious and provocative play at Olney Theatre Center. Oil is a play written up as a “nexus of oil, economics,…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:29AMThursday, February 14, 2019
Temperatures dropped sharply inside the Kennedy Center last night; they rose again exponentially. There were other, sometime violent, meteorological disturbances. In short, in the space of 8…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:54PMSaturday, February 9, 2019
Billed as a workshop production to which the press was invited, Mosaic Theater Company’s Shame 2.0 with Comments from the Populace opened Thursday night with all hands on deck in solidarit…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:36AMThursday, February 7, 2019
A lone figure stood in the spotlight at the start of what I’ve come to think of as Washington’s most sparkling gala event. In the Opera House space which could have easily swallowed her …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:36PMWednesday, February 6, 2019
Good news to opera lovers, opera is very much alive and growing in its John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (KC) home on the Potomac. While many big and small opera companies in Ne…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:32AMTuesday, January 29, 2019
Sunday night’s opening at MetroStage was a fanfare affair. Not only did the press come out in full force (not always easy to get in the crowded local theater market,) being in the audi…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:42AMTuesday, January 15, 2019
Snow could not deter the faithful from The John F. Kennedy Center last weekend where we saw an extraordinary commitment of artists and audience members gather as part of this year’s Am…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:36AMMonday, January 14, 2019
Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, now in its seventh season, annually holds a mini-festival and commissions a composer-librettist team to create an hour-long opera and…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:48PMThursday, December 27, 2018
This is not a review. Rather, it’s a memory of an event that caused a kind of metastasized growth inside and, until now, kept me from ever being able to attend a performance of the Broad…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:06PMMonday, December 17, 2018
If you like your Christmas holiday fare free of treacle then this is the show for you. No annoyingly twee children shouting out carols in bad English accents and no sticky sugar plums to get…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24PMSunday, December 16, 2018
With the help of one “ordinary” angel with back-pack wings and a gaggle of colorful, singing animals, a story of complete enchantment unfolded, vying for the number one spot on the exten…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:48AMWednesday, October 31, 2018
Librettist Mark Campbell and I last spoke when he was mentoring young librettists in a “supportive role” for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. Now Campbell is fr…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:36AMTuesday, October 30, 2018
Director Aaron Posner has assembled some of the most splendid, certainly several of them among the most beloved actors who tread the local boards. Indeed, Folger Theatre has done further val…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:33AMTuesday, October 23, 2018
Mozart’s delightful Marriage of Figaro has been a perennial favorite, not only produced frequently by opera companies, but its material has been poured over, parsed, and mastered as part o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:04PMMonday, October 22, 2018
What to call the rare and precious experience of sitting in the darkness of a theatre where something has broken out of its own self and taken wing? Some say a magical work of art is one t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:18PMFriday, October 12, 2018
– How does a company, becoming known for staging the classics, navigate what may be the trickiest of all comedies, Venus in Fur? And what is the connection between David Ives’ …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:18AMThursday, October 11, 2018
Cheek by Jowl, London and The Pushkin Theatre, Moscow have brought to Washington a great Measure for Measure. The experience spoke straight to the heart of what we have been living in the na…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:36PMMonday, October 8, 2018
The season’s opening night at Washington National Opera is always filled with excitement, but there were several elements that caused the atmosphere around Saturday evening’s La traviata…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:54AMWednesday, October 3, 2018
Washington National Opera, generously sponsored by Mars, Inc, has created what may be Washington’s most terrific recent tradition – “Opera in the Outfield.” There were 10,000 people …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:32AMTuesday, September 25, 2018
What an opening for an opera! After a low tremolo on the bass and some nice string section writing as violins, viola, and cello join in, suddenly on stage appears a bearded, para-military du…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:04AMFriday, September 21, 2018
Svanda Theatre has journeyed to Washington from Prague in a residency that includes ‘Four Plays from Prague’ in repertory – works that confront us with difficult periods of history whe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:48AMMonday, August 13, 2018
No one can put music and lyrics together the way Stephen Sondheim has done – astonishingly – for decades, since the mid-1950’s. In my interview with Matthew Gardiner, who is directin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:04PMWednesday, August 8, 2018
From Kurt Boehm’s direction and nuanced yet sure performances of the leads to Michael Innocenti’s evocative gorgeous lighting and Patrick Lord’s projections, Keegan Theatre’s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:32PMThursday, July 26, 2018
Three sleek suburban women stay active by running around their neighborhood and spying on their somewhat suspicious neighbor. Choreographer and director Jane Franklin has devised the smart m…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:12AMIn settling in to The Truth, I was reminded of the show within the show of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and its PR buzz of being of “very tragical mirth.” How else could you package a tal…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:12AMSunday, July 15, 2018
With Why is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me?, UrbanArias has given us an operatic gem, and the talents assembled for the production have encased this most entertaining work in pure gold. What…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:32AM 
