Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Recent reports of the death of relevance for Angels in America’are greatly exaggerated. If anything, the recession of the AIDS crisis in America (or, at least, in the mainstream American …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:28PMSaturday, July 16, 2016
It can be fun reaching into a mixed bag – not knowing whether you’ll get something good or something so-so is a kind of entertainment in itself. Whether you find that the bag of l…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:40AMTuesday, July 12, 2016
Apologies to the one Trump fan who goes to DC theatre and is reading this, but there is perhaps too much wrong, unbelievable, or historically unprecedented about The Donald’s candidacy to …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:50PMSome people who talk about Fringe offer a warning: it’s uncurated. Anything could get produced. The implication, of course, is that curation is needed to prevent bad art from getting throu…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:25PMMonday, July 11, 2016
What is your personal silliness threshold? Your tolerance level for fourth-wall breaking? Your preferred amount of Tang to get sprayed all over your face? Your answers to these questions wil…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:09PMSunday, July 10, 2016
The only way to make a Fringe show lower budget than this would be to do it without a stage manager. There are no light changes, no sound, nothing but the plain black costume on performer St…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:07AMMonday, June 20, 2016
Before Orlando, this show meant something different. Before that tragedy, a mere two weeks ago – just two days after Rainbow Theatre Project opened Get Used To It! – it would have be…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:25AMTuesday, April 19, 2016
You already know what kind of time you’ll have at Toby Dinner Theatre’s Peter Pan. If the show’s of-its-era difficulties portraying Native Americans would bother you, this production…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:10PMMonday, April 11, 2016
The desires and dilemmas The Nether explores are as dark as they come, so the question for the potential audience member is: are you afraid of the dark? Or do you find it contemplative? …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:37PMMonday, March 28, 2016
The title of this play is also its purpose – to show us what the ancient Greek tragedy of Antigone would look like in modern times, and locate its deeper meaning across the centuries. Wh…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:25PMMonday, February 29, 2016
What’s changed in the thirty-five years since Beth Henley wrote Crimes of the Heart that makes it feel outdated? It’s hard to pinpoint any obvious factors, since the story is a very pe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:06PMThursday, February 4, 2016
The most fun you can have at a three-hour epic about slavery. A huge, sprawling play (with six more parts still coming!) that boils down to a few simple conversations. A story that illum…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:54AMWednesday, February 3, 2016
A fascinating conversation about the fascinating story of an all-too-ordinary man, Conor McPherson’s St. Nicholas, at Washington Stage Guild, is theatre for people who like to laugh at, an…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:28PMTuesday, December 15, 2015
The most outstanding thing about Marcus Gardley’s The Gospel of Lovingkindness is that it wrestles full-body with the most troubling issues of our times yet still is a joy and a treat to p…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:35PMTuesday, August 11, 2015
Perhaps the best kind of political play is the one that has no message at all. With One in the Chamber, Marja-Lewis Ryan is not at all interested in making points, picking sides, or influenc…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:23AMThursday, July 23, 2015
What a way for a theatre company to say farewell. Returning, twenty years later, to the play that first brought them into the world, American Century Theater sets the example for bowing out …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:15PMMonday, July 20, 2015
I sincerely feel rather awful sticking a rating of “2” on this work, because I in no way disagree with any of its points. War is certainly bad, and is often particularly cruel to…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:37AMEveryone’s got a story to tell, but some are more engaging for their wild and woolly details, and others more for the way they are told; Cara Foran’s story falls into the second …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:37AMWednesday, July 15, 2015
I wouldn’t want to meet a Jacobean if The Bloody Banquet was their idea of drama. At the same time, I’m glad we have Brave Spirits Theatre to interpret and serve up this centurie…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:33PMMonday, July 13, 2015
What fluff does Hollywood stick into the other 30 to 60 minutes of its big screen rom-coms? The Wedding Party, a new play by writing team Megan Dominy and Mimsi Janis, proves that a complete…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:49PMSunday, July 12, 2015
An expert piece of craftsmanship, Salvation Road is the kind of drama that is guaranteed to be enjoyed by any who go see it, but nevertheless challenging to recommend. It’s got some st…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:31PMSaturday, July 11, 2015
If the purpose of Fringe is to directly connect art to people and to find the sublime things that slip through the cracks of the establishment, Wombat Drool may just be the quintessential Fr…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:33PMWednesday, June 17, 2015
While not considered one the Bard’s richest works or given the most revelatory treatment, The Comedy of Errors makes for ideal picnic blanket theatre in Chesapeake Shakespeare Company&…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:03AMMonday, May 11, 2015
Who wouldn’t want to see a lost Charlie Chaplin film? The Tramp’s New World was a screenplay for The Tramp by James Agee which Chaplin declined to produce because he felt, at the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:12PMWednesday, May 6, 2015
When a story is forgotten, dropped out of view and from the canon, it may be justly, because it has fallen hopelessly behind the times, or unjustly, because it still has something to give &#…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:55AMSunday, March 22, 2015
What would you call the blend of music and genre in UrbanArias’ world premiere Blue Viola? Standard terms like “chamber opera,” “folk opera,” or “comic op…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:05PMMonday, March 16, 2015
One of the most sensible approaches to Shakespeare’s problem plays is simply to cut out the problematic parts and zero in on the play’s beating heart. With its long one-act prese…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:42AMMonday, March 2, 2015
It’s difficult to come into the middle of something, but, to take a stab at a George Bernard Shaw-like observation, aren’t we all living all our lives having come into the middle…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:31AMWednesday, January 14, 2015
A tense build-up; a long-anticipated entry; desperate shouting of instructions; begging for supernatural aid; an explosive climax; a satisfied finish. Depicting all the passion of a major ra…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:49AMWednesday, December 10, 2014
Inside the gorgeous brick edifice of the new Chesapeake Shakespeare Company home in Baltimore rises another brick edifice, this one made out of flat, painted wood but no less impressive. The…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:09PMMonday, November 24, 2014
We’re truly blessed to have such sharp talents right here in D.C., who can take a comic strip and whip it up into a classy, pleasant children’s musical seemingly effortlessly. Wh…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:07AM 
