Friday, January 8, 2016
“It’s complicated.” So begins—on a note of supreme understatement—Writer/Performer Aaron Davidman’s captivating and insight-rich solo show, Wrestling Jerusalem, the third provoca…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:42PMFriday, December 25, 2015
The event had a provocative hashtag in its title: As if to reference an emergency that is tragically trending worldwide. As if to signal the evening’s explicit link to a global community o…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:33PMWednesday, December 23, 2015
Stars of David: Story to Song—a rapturously beautiful concert musical now in a limited engagement at Theater J—is a unique blend of thrilling singing and insightful biography. Illuminati…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:26PMMonday, December 21, 2015
Rorschach Theatre has produced another one-night-only show in its adventurous and eclectic Klecksography series, and Saturday night I went to report on what I saw. If I had to encapsulate th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:24PMSaturday, December 19, 2015
Signature Theatre’s production of West Side Story is every bit as eye-filling and ear-thrilling as any lover of this great American musical could wish. On a spacious thrust stage inside th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:10AMMonday, December 14, 2015
There is a shibboleth shared by liberals and conservatives alike that when a young black man shoots to death another young black man in the inner city, the fault lies in themselves. Somethin…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:34PMThis being a show meant for kids, I defer to a critical opinion I overheard right afterward, voiced by a child not yet 5: “That was really cool! Really funny too!” Coauthored by Mario …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:59AMSaturday, December 12, 2015
‘Tis the season for jolly laughter, and if you like humor that’s loopy, irreverent, quick-witted, and fresh, you’ll fit right in at Washington Improv Theater’s annual Seasonal Di…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:25PMTuesday, December 8, 2015
Plays about playmaking have an enduring appeal. Think Noises Off, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Shows about shows on the musical stage have indelible charm. Think Chorus Line, Kiss …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:34AMMonday, December 7, 2015
When I first saw Joshua Harmon’s brilliant play Bad Jews at The Studio Theatre about this time last year, I could not contain my enthusiasm. I praised it to the skies: Bad Jews is so over-…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:53AMFriday, December 4, 2015
On my explorations into the local universe of university theater, I’ve sighted some terrific stuff. Most of it I’ve written about for DCMetroTheaterArts (see links to my recent faves…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:58PMTuesday, December 1, 2015
If it is true that theater originated as worship and ritual—as a healing form of human communion with sacred mystery—then that history is surely raising the rafters of the Anacostia Play…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:04PMSunday, November 29, 2015
When a dark farce titled Entertaining Mr. Sloane opened in London in 1964, it was viewed as rude, scandalous, and repugnant because of its homosexual content and its three main characters’…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:23PMMonday, November 23, 2015
Theater J’s first triumph of the season was Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ semi-autobiographical Queens Girl in the World. Its second is also loosely autobiographical: Stephen Karam’s So…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:39PMSunday, November 15, 2015
Appomattox, the magnificent and powerful opera by Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton that premiered at The Kennedy Center last night, looks at American history with a breathtaking urgency …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:49AMSaturday, November 14, 2015
When an actor comes on stage and tells you to silence your cell phone, etc., then identifies himself as a newt, you might be a bit perplexed. And when, further, he announces that all the hum…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:01AMTuesday, November 10, 2015
Back in December 2014 I had a conversation with the Director Kevin Finkelstein that has stayed with me. I had just seen his staging of A Klingon Christmas Carol, a one-night-only seasonal no…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:57AMMonday, November 9, 2015
You know that feeling you get when you go to something—you attend it as a visitor or you drop in as an interloper—and by the time that something ends, you feel as if you belonged to it?…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:20PMThursday, November 5, 2015
To judge by social media, love and madness are a thing. Here are few choice examples now making the rounds in the meme-osphere: “Love is merely a madness….” (William Shakespeare) “Th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:36AMWednesday, November 4, 2015
There comes a moment early in Act One when Raymond, a young man who left his family in Rwanda to learn film making at NYU, returns to his homeland, which has become a devastation. The 100-da…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:38PMMonday, November 2, 2015
I left Winners and Losers thinking, Wow, there’s more here than meets the eye. Or, as one of the performers said in an interview, “The show really bangs around in your head….” On the…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:40AMFriday, October 30, 2015
I may have missed it, but to my knowledge no playwright in the current Women’s Voices Theater Festival set out to write a feminist-socialist play and explicitly said so. (Not that there’…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:09PMTuesday, October 27, 2015
The intriguing tagline for Constellation Theatre Company’s 2015/16 season is “Playtime for Grownups,” which could not have been more appropriate on opening night of itsAvenue Q—the w…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:28PMSunday, October 25, 2015
saw this show last nite. LMAO. 2 funny. OMG. u G2G. So might read a hasty text from a self-absorbed hipster about Smartphones, the ridiculously delightful farce now playing at in a brisk and…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:06PMFriday, October 23, 2015
With a stand-up comedy act plus five skits, the laughs last Saturday at Straight Outta Hell—Next Day Theater’s one-night-only sketch-comedy surprise—were well earned. Producer Matt Spa…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:55PMThursday, October 22, 2015
I have now seen 26 entries in the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, and six have shot to the top of my list in terms of writing I most admired. (I mean the playwriting itself, not the produ…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:45PMWednesday, October 21, 2015
When a particular company and a particular playwright hit it off such that they keep knocking it out of the park—as have The Keegan Theatre and Belfast-born Rosemary Jenkinson—theirs has…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:10PMWednesday, October 14, 2015
To date I have been to 20 productions and one staged reading that are officially in DC’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival (11 of which I have written about for DCMetroTheaterArts)…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:14AMMonday, October 12, 2015
When I saw the SeeNoSun OnStage production of Tracy Letts’s first play, Killer Joe, a year ago June, I wrote a rave and called it “a powerful knockout of a show.” So it was with keen a…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:53AMSunday, October 11, 2015
Hootenanny by Monique LaForce is a two-hander with an unsettling story up its sleeve. It’s a story about a man and a woman that incrementally builds nerve-fraying psychological tension fro…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:29PMFriday, October 9, 2015
If you were looking for a local troupe to put Alice’s fabled Wonderland on stage, your top choice would have to be Synetic Theater. And no wonder. Synetic’s trademark physical theater en…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:17PM 
