Tuesday, February 4, 2014
In the Pulitzer-winning 1961 musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” the workplace is a blast. Adrenaline and moxie pulse through the title tune and through songs lik…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:39AMThursday, January 30, 2014
Picture mermaids and shipwrecks, lonely orphan boys long deprived of sunlight and suddenly racing toward danger with pirates. Picture “Peter Pan”: That’s what the happily rambunctious …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 10:13PMMonday, January 27, 2014
The prize for cheekiest title in 2013 Washington theater had already been snatched by Aaron Posner’s “Stupid F---ing Bird,” a free-spirited rewrite of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull.…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:07PMFriday, January 24, 2014
Roger Rees has a tip for whacking novels down to a theater-ready size. “You have to have a good lathe in your hand,” the Welsh-born actor-director says. “A good scalpel or something, t…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:42AMWednesday, January 22, 2014
Washington’s theater prom is getting a makeover. Party! The Helen Hayes Awards, the black-tie gala and open bar after-party long dubbed the “theater prom,” is migrating from its longti…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 05:45PMWho is this brooding, bearded European exile moping about in a Chicago apartment building? Why does his cheerful female friend wear a white hat that actually lights up? What’s with this da…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:02AMSunday, January 19, 2014
Paul Robeson doesn’t fit into “a comfortable black history,” says one of the dozens of characters played by Daniel Beaty in his slick, sober solo drama, “The Tallest Tree in the Fore…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 07:30PMFriday, January 17, 2014
NEW YORK — What does it take to produce new American plays? Money and nerve, and lots of it — especially in the biggest institutions, where the rewards can be great but the risks never e…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:38PMFriday, January 10, 2014
How can Welsh actress Siân Phillips be so in demand at age 80? The roles keep rolling in. “There is a lot on offer,” says Phillips, in Washington to play the imperious Lady Bracknell in…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 10:55AMTuesday, January 7, 2014
“Late: A Cowboy Song” is an early work by Sarah Ruhl, now well-established through “The Clean House” and “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” and a MacArthur “genius” grant as one of th…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 01:24PMMonday, January 6, 2014
“The Old Masters” turns on a famous case about one of the paintings hanging in the National Gallery of Art, “The Adoration of the Shepherds.” According to the gallery’s Web site, t…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:07PMSaturday, December 28, 2013
MTV lifted off in 1981, and two years later “Flashdance” became a huge movie hit by slicking up the fresh new music video style. The stage musical of “Flashdance” now at the Kennedy …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:58AMThursday, December 26, 2013
The “Porgy and Bess” that’s muscling into the National Theatre this week for a brief run is the same one that caused such a theater-world rumpus two years ago. That’s when musical th…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:56PMTuesday, December 24, 2013
How extreme is the craze for adapting movies into musicals? Consider what’s singing out at the Kennedy Center: “Elf the Musical,” based on the 2003 Will Ferrell hit, is currently hoppi…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 04:50PMThursday, December 19, 2013
The main thing to know about “Elf the Musical” is that it makes the 2003 Will Ferrell movie look nuanced. This hyperactive version of the popular film is as over-sugared as Ferrell’s s…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:01PMMonday, December 16, 2013
Now co-starring at the Studio Theatre: Edward Snowden, George Orwell, the National Security Agency and Cold War East Germany. Not literally, of course, but the shadows of snooping and whistl…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:50PMThursday, December 12, 2013
When an audience gets hit with a sustained case of the giggles, how can you adequately describe what’s causing it on stage? Because in “The Pajama Men: Just the Two of Each of Us” at W…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:25PMSunday, December 8, 2013
Patina Miller could do no wrong Friday night at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, even when things weren’t quite going right. The Tony-winning star of Broadway’s current “Pippin�…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 05:04PMThursday, December 5, 2013
One of the most fascinating shows in Washington right now will barely cost you any money. It’s never been rehearsed. It’s performed by a different actor each night, and it’s only being…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 06:49PMMonday, December 2, 2013
Christmas Eve, 1864: Abraham Lincoln frets over the present he bought for his high-strung wife, while Mary Lincoln is in a tizzy over a tree. Not far away, John Wilkes Booth schemes to captu…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:38PMSunday, December 1, 2013
“Glee” star Matthew Morrison smacked of Justin Timberlake at the beginning and Gene Kelly at the end of his Friday concert with the National Symphony Orchestra’s Pops series. Neither p…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 03:51PMSunday, November 24, 2013
Maurice Hines loves you. He loves his family, he loves his life and he loves the spotlight. He’s an old-school entertainer, the life of the party. He wants to make you smile, and he won’…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:26PMFriday, November 22, 2013
Q: How do you navigate the unlikely path from the 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” to Arena Stage in 2013? A: Through Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Bedrock decency and easy likabili…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:33AMOriginal “Rent” stars Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp are onstage at the National Theater in “If/Then,” a brand-new musical by the creators of the acclaimed “Next to Normal.” It’…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 10:26AMWednesday, November 20, 2013
“I like the look of agony, because I know it’s true,” says the murderous heroine of the new play “No. 731 Degraw Street, Brooklyn.” If you recognize that line as Emily Dickinson, t…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:40PMSunday, November 17, 2013
Nobody bristles and barks orders, but a military aura governs the rehearsal room of “A Civil War Christmas” at Baltimore’s Center Stage. A snare drum raps out a martial beat; actors mo…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:12AMWednesday, November 13, 2013
Role-play is what goes on throughout the 60-minute “Bondage,” so let’s pretend. You’re playwright David Henry Hwang; it’s 1992, and you’re still basking as the Tony-winning autho…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 03:55PMSunday, November 10, 2013
“A cumba, cumba, cumba” and “A bongo, bongo, bongo” go the lyrics of “Cumbanchero,” a lively Latin number that Lucie Arnaz used as the irrepressibly upbeat finish to her 90-minut…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 07:22PMTuesday, November 5, 2013
The cast of nine lines up straight across the stage and belts for all they’re worth to open “Crossing,” the brand-new musical at Signature Theatre. The setting of this ambitious yet in…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 10:45PMMonday, November 4, 2013
Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife” premiered in New York in 2003, appeared at the National Theater in 2005, was produced by the Olney Theater Center in 2007 and Baltimore’s Everyman Th…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 01:06PMSunday, November 3, 2013
Tommy Tune has always broken the mold, and the 6-foot-6-inch-tall singin’-dancin’ Texan did it again Friday night at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. In a loping tempo, Tune, 74, …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:59PM 
