Theater is traditionally thought to be a place of communion, a meeting of like-minded souls who crave a good story. Playwright Annie Baker turns that expectation on its head, along with so m…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:38PMMany languages are bandied about in Brian Friel’s Translations—Greek, Latin, Gaelic, the king’s English, to name a few—creating a rich linguistic tapestry central to the play’s the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:30PMThose pigs. Can’t trust them, can’t ignite a revolution without them. Why can’t they just be content with being what they are–bacon? Pigs, propaganda, the proletariat and politic…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:30PMOf all the reasons to love Baltimore, perhaps the most sumptuous are the Cone sisters—iron-willed Dr. Claribel and the softer, more social Miss Etta—and specifically, the stunning collec…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:10AMThat a play set in an auto parts stamping factory is part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival is reason enough to see Skeleton Crew, Dominique Morisseau’s fine, emotionally feral play…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:05PMAh, the 1%. If you can’t join ‘em, berate ‘em. That’s the thought behind Theresa Rebeck’s cynical, screwball-funny, comedic bed-hopping The Way of the World, a fresh adaptation of …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:28PMThe giddy sense of discovery takes hold of you during Lauren Gunderson’s plays about unsung women throughout history. This fall’s theater highlight was certainly Avant Bard’s luminous …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:18PMAmid a year of callousness, a message of kindness is joyfully delivered in Toby’s Dinner Theatre’s production of Miracle on 34th Street: The Musical, touchingly directed by Shawn Ketteri…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:06PMBefore he was Shakespeare with a capital “S,” he was just plain Will (Nicholas Carriere), an ordinary guy—a fledgling playwright, somewhat disheveled, a bit of a skirt-chaser, and fran…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:48PMWhat wonderful serendipity in Baltimore this October. On one side of Fayette Street, the Hippodrome Theatre recently hosted the musical The Color Purple with heroine Miss Celie realizing he…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:48PMEmilie is like a perfectly icy glass of champagne laced with bitters. Avant Bard’s scintillating production of Lauren Gunderson’s play about Enlightenment-era scientific genius and mistr…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMYou think you’re in for a reenactment of a historical night of American theater, but then The Cradle Will Rock gets rolling and before long you’re plunged into a musical production from …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:48AMWhen the expressive Erin Granfield sings about Iowa, drawing out each letter and syllable, you learn everything you need to know about her character’s quiet restlessness and pent-up longin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:36AMWhat keeps our butts in the pews? Is it faith, fellowship, fear of hellfire, or infatuation with the charismatic preacher up at the pulpit? Lucas Hnath’s play The Christians feistily exami…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:48AMDavid Henry Hwang’s Tony-winning play, M. Butterfly, was an electrifying treatise on gender and East-West tensions and tragic preconceptions when it premiered in 1988 with John Lithgow and…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:06PMWatching Rep Stage’s luminous production of The Heidi Chronicles as a spinster of a certain age, you don’t know whether to belt out “Mirror, Mirror” from Stephen Sondhe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:54PMHappiness is tucked away in an office park in Columbia, MD. Amid the chiropractors, computer businesses, dance schools and Asian delis is the Red Branch Theatre Company, currently the home o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:48AMWho says theater is not educational? Why, just this past weekend I learned that “bootycandy” is a euphemism for the penis. Vocabulary expanded, thanks to playwright Robert O’Hara and I…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:04AMThe big question in Jazz is—where’s the music? This world premiere adaptation by Nambi E. Kelley of Toni Morrison’s 1992 book isn’t meant to be a song-and-dance show, but still it la…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:05PMNevertheless, she persisted. Persisted, pushed back depression and doubt and the burden of care to accept her legacy of genius. The “she” in this case is not Senator Elizabeth Warren but…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:18PMAn enterprising Everyman Theatre board member calculated there are 152 laughs in Noises Off. Surely, he jests. There is easily three times that number in Everyman’s gonzo production unde…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:24PMWe’re lucky to be living where we do. Opportunities abound to see exciting new work, shows in development and emerging major talent. All three fortunes converge in Rep Stage’s stirring, …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:12AMNo longer do we need to shudder to think what Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf would be like as mothers. The Tennessee Williams a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:06AMAn indelible memory from a Michael John LaChiusa musical used to be the sight of Vincent Van Gogh (Jason Danieley) sitting in his bathtub and singing the score for The Highest Yellow in a 20…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PMAfter more than a year-long renovation, Baltimore Center Stage unveils its new modern look—spacious, welcoming, sleek and inspirational—with an equally visually captivating and enchantin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:36AMThe devil need not be a red-skinned gent with a forked tail. He could be Jake Abadjian (Robbie Gay), a gorgeous and charismatic Hollywood star of the blockbuster Dawnwalker movies, playing a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:03PMPlaywright Suzan-Lori Parks is known for her outlandish imagination, creative use of language and boldly askew look at America’s past and history. Her mythic riff on Nathaniel Hawthorne’…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:24AMThe opening scene of The Hard Problem, Tom Stoppard’s latest play since 2006’s Rock and Roll, reminds you of the opening scene from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Passion. Two half-naked b…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:06PMIt is September 2016 and like many Americans who slogged through an endless, brutal summer of presidential campaigning, the Gabriel family seems frayed around the edges. Uncertainty, unease …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:54PMHere we are again on Election Day 2016, a day many Americans would be loath to relive, except for the obvious. If you are to be born ceaselessly into the past, you couldn’t find better bal…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:54PMRight now, “the room where it happens” happens to be the Kennedy Center Theater Lab, where Richard Nelson’s achingly prescient and intimate trilogy of plays The Gabriels pays a differe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:12PM
