Family politics are prickly enough, but throw in a proudly political left-wing clan and you’ve got the makings of some proletariat pyrotechnics. Amy Herzog’s play After the Revolution is…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:33AMWacky ain’t for wimps. Capturing that seltzer fizz, cream pie lightness of classic slapstick is far trickier than it looks. Even the queen of loopy Southern Gothic, Pulitzer Prize-winning …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:22AMPretending becomes a pretext for change in Annie Baker’s subtly engrossing Circle Mirror Transformation, which unfolds with verite veracity at Rep Stage under the direction of Suzanne Beal…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:49AMThe F-word. Not exactly a rarity in contemporary theater. But another F-word is—feminism. Feminist theory and the compromises women make combine into a snappy and rueful comedy by Gina Gio…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:52AMVanessa Hudgens is a brief breath of spring amid this harsh winter as the spirited gamine Gigi in a new, Broadway-bound production of the Lerner and Loewe musical Gigi now underway at the Ke…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:23PMIt’s exhilarating when history not only comes to life, but catches fire. That’s what happens in Kemp Powers’ powerful fact-fiction mash-up, One Night in Miami, an East Coast premiere b…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:58PMEating yourself to death. Not recommended. Trust me, I tried. The 400-lb. life I led 9 years and 190 lbs. ago was living from the neck up. Anything else was too hard, too painful. Because of…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:56AMYou want to put on a letter sweater, grab some pom-poms and root for Diner, the world premiere musical based on Barry Levinson’s seminal male-bonding movie, to find its way. The ingredient…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:44PMLeapin’ Lizards! “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” and “Tomorrow” have been auto-tuned to the point where the lyrics sound like they’re being sung by a toaster oven rather than by the o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:35AMHolly’s poisonous, faulty lights can electrocute you, Christmas trees are firetraps, and watch out for salmonella lurking in that egg nog. The holidays can be murder. That’s apparently t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:57AMKids, gather ‘round the glow of your smartphone screens and listen to a story. Once upon a time, there was a thing called newspapers—thick stacks of paper with words printed on them, wor…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:29AMCoworkers: How was your weekend? Me: Great! I saw this nearly four-hour play in D.C. about labor unions and the American Communist Party! Coworkers: [Sounds of crickets chirping] To put it m…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:49AMLaura Eason’s Sex with Strangers is a booty call with brains. Funny, sexy and insightful, Sex with Strangers is a play about hooking up—and the often messy consequences when the afterglo…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:13AMThe multi award-winning musical Next to Normal (it even garnered a Pulitzer) grabs you in the essential organs—gut, heart, brain—from the first power chord and doesn’t let go until the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:53AMDitch the Disney princesses and all that pink. Fairies, especially night fairies with their dark eyes and shimmering garb of midnight blue, are feistier and more fun. Flory (Tia Shearer, wou…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:00AMHow can something so sumptuous also be so balanced? That’s the delicious riddle of Center Stage’s production of Amadeus, which, under the assured direction of artistic director Kwame Kwe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:27PMSometimes, a break from Broadway brass and bombast is a good thing. No one savors glitz and a Merman-esque belt more than this critic, but the still power and poise of Once may make you re-t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:16AMMetamorphosis meets The Actor’s Nightmare in Theresa Rebeck’s boisterous and mind-bending comedy The Understudy, a satisfying season-opener at Everyman Theatre directed with absurdist el…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:59AMStephen Sondheim’s incandescent 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George inspires like a great work of art. You never tire of looking at it and you see new things, feel new things every…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:24PMWhen we first meet Julian (Alex Podulke), he’s a talking head. The brainchild of techies and artificial intelligence scientist Claire (Barbara Kingsley), Julian is a robot learning to be l…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:21PMJeez, all the palookas want in North of the Boulevard is an effing break. Is that too much to ask? They don’t want millions or to rule the world. They just want to pay some bills, maybe ge…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:02PMAt last, a play about planning and project management. If it weren’t for the stage lights and stadium seating, you might think you were at work, trapped in a 100-minute meeting with Powerp…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24AMPlaywright Charles Fuller delves into another grim aspect of military life in One Night. His 1982 play A Soldier’s Story dealt with racism and black self-hatred at an Army base in Louisian…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:52AMNever mess with a goddess. That’s the lesson of Venus in Fur, director Roman Polanski’s frisky and taut film adaptation of the 2010 play by David Ives that brought kink back to Broadway …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:15AMThe roadshow version of Buyer & Cellar starring Michael Urie? It’s like buttah. Barbra Streisand will probably never show up at a performance—c’mon Babs, Carole King put on her big…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:28AMSide Show lets its freak flag fly with a glorious production that combines astounding visual artistry, a ripping yarn and a tingly emotional score, stirringly sung by the company, which is a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:30PMGoofiness is not a term normally associated with grief, but in Colman Domingo’s sparkly play Wild with Happy, the mourning process becomes a madcap romp, a Disney-fied fantasy that is both…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:15AMNormally, a feeling of weariness accompanies seeing two productions of the same play so close together. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Studio Theatre in Washington did Tribes, British playw…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:29AMIt’s a relief to be retired from the meat market after seeing Cock, the pugilistic, punch-drunk comedy by British playwright Mike Bartlett about relationships and shifting identities that …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:33AMRollicking, driving and at times as plaintive as a blues song sung against a starless night, Olney’s production of The Piano Lesson by August Wilson plays a melody of feelings you can’t …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:27AMThe X-Men and other morphers have nothing on Nanna Ingvarsson, the local actress fluidly shape-shifting into seven characters that form a community united by tragedy in the one-woman show Th…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:07PM
