Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Imagine the worst dinner party you could attend. Not the worst for company (everyone here is erudite and cosmopolitan), nor the worst for purpose (a celebration of achievement), nor the wors…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:54PMThursday, September 7, 2017
This DC theater season, several mid-sized theaters are delving into a trend recently popular among the bigger houses: remounting popular productions of previous years. Usually these shows sp…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:42AMTuesday, August 22, 2017
In the past few days, as I’ve let Kathleen Akerley’s play Whipping, or The Football Hamlet (and this review) settle in my mind, I realize that my review perhaps comes off more harshl…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:18PMTuesday, August 15, 2017
Whipping, or the Football Hamlet has rushed into CUA’s Callan Theater with Kathleen Akerley calling this play as writer and director as she does most every humid DC August. As a theatergoe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMFriday, July 21, 2017
Everyone has an idea of how Shakespeare “should” be performed: from the gorgeous flashiness of Shakespeare Theatre Company to the original practice imitations of American Shakespeare Cen…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:09PMMonday, July 17, 2017
A man wanders onstage, a mad look above his riotous beard. Another man comes on, petrified with fear, not seeing the disturbing maniac. With lightning speed, the bearded man pounces and te…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:06AMWednesday, July 12, 2017
If you’ve ever picked up a roommate from an online ad, you know that living with strangers can be, well, strange. In a world premiere from outer space-oriented Nu Puppis collective, th…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:32AMSunday, July 9, 2017
Alana Wiljanen made a good choice in calling her group’s co-created Shakespeare adaptation MacBheatha, instead of the more famous Macbeth, Shakespeare’s sordid tale of a Scotsman murderi…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:32AMFriday, July 7, 2017
There are certain topics that one avoids on first dates. Like race, politics, religion, Moby Dick, your ex. Mixed Blessings is the story of how these topics can make a first date go spectacu…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:36AMWednesday, May 24, 2017
You might be tempted to dismiss Ulysses on Bottles as a niche-appeal “issue play,” but this first opening for Mosaic Theater since receiving the Outstanding Emerging Theater Company Aw…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:12AMTuesday, May 9, 2017
It’s rare for traditional, big budget Shakespeare productions to find new angles on the major works of America’s most-produced playwright, and even more rare for those angles to work wel…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:06PMMonday, April 3, 2017
If you get too weirded out by the second song in Signature’s newest world premiere musical, Midwestern Gothic, where out-of-work mechanic Red takes Polaroids of his stepdaughter Stina in …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:24PMWednesday, March 1, 2017
The hottest theater ticket in DC right now isn’t to a blockbuster musical, a star-studded Shakespearean play, or a big-time production already contracted to hit Broadway. The ticket everyo…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:36AMThursday, November 10, 2016
Six Degrees of Separation shares much in common with Catcher in the Rye, the novel at the play’s moral center. Both are full of terribly unlikable characters who can turn our loathing into…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:06PMTuesday, October 18, 2016
American theater has been mucking about in the sandbox and, meanwhile, the playground, the school, and the entire world have been burning down around us. Those were my first thoughts afte…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24AMSunday, October 9, 2016
“Will film kill off the the theater?” This question, often asked in existential anxiety by theatermakers at an undersold performance, may be the wrong one. That seems to be the message f…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:34PMThursday, September 15, 2016
Everyone remembers their first contact with death. I don’t mean Death, though I assume that first face to “face” meeting in the no-longer flesh is quite memorable. I mean the f…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:08AMTuesday, September 13, 2016
There’s a certain somber and sober tone you expect from shows about disasters. Representations of recent genocides or terrorist attacks especially take on an almost religious nature, a hus…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:56AMTuesday, July 19, 2016
In the storytelling cacophony that is the Capital Fringe Festival, it is easy to forget the pure beauty of bodies in space moving with discipline and grace. Seven Windows provides that eye-i…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:41PMMonday, July 18, 2016
“We all live in stories,” says David J. Goldberg, actor, YouTube enthusiast, and, quite possibly, victim of a vast collusion of intelligence operatives who are conspiring to drive humani…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:52PMI can tell you almost nothing about the content you would see if you went to We Know How You Die at Woolly Mammoth, anymore than I could tell you how you’re going to die. I could say that …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMTuesday, July 12, 2016
Where can you experience the world premiere of a musical with songs by a 4-time platinum artist for only $17 a pop? At Capital Fringe, of course, with Song Reader: the Musical, an earnest an…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:37PMMonday, July 11, 2016
Fear is one of the hardest feelings to convey in the emotional panoply of the theater, but POE, TIMES TWO, a solo retelling of two Edgar Allan Poe short stories, grabs the audience by the g…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:11PMThursday, June 23, 2016
Allegations of physical and abuse of physical abuse and sexual harassment raised by the Chicago Reader against Darrell Cox, Artistic Director of Profiles Theatre, and accusations of bizarre…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:38PMCommedia dell’Arte, the old Italian comedic that forms the foundation for new American comedy The Good Devil (in Spite of Himself), is very much like the Looney Toons of old. Not only is i…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:38PMTuesday, June 14, 2016
With plenty of pop culture candy, quirky magical realism, and a heaping helping of side-splitting silliness, Flying V’s newest show, Matt and Ben, has formulated a raucous recipe for a pre…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:57AMThursday, June 9, 2016
There are a trio of beautiful moments in Floyd Collins threading through 1st Stage Tysons’ newest musical offering. In the first of these moments, Harrison Smith (who plays a small cameo r…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:39AMWednesday, May 25, 2016
Some of the oldest stories still extant of the adventures of legendary outlaw Robin Hood are songs about his untimely demise, a metaphor-rich ballad about honor and being laid back in Englis…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:36PMWednesday, May 18, 2016
All over the promotional material for Synetic’s Man in the Iron Mask, there is a dire warning: THIS PRODUCTION WILL HAVE DIALOGUE. As if audiences have to be warned of talking actors as mu…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:11PMFriday, May 6, 2016
Transmission, the newest and final offering from this iteration of the playwriting collective The Welders, tests my inherent resistance to superlatives. But the problem with resisting the �…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:51AMSunday, April 24, 2016
Most people have that friend. You know, that friend.The one you’re so close to that it makes other people uncomfortable or makes them question your sexuality or makes them say “I wish th…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:17PM 
