Thursday, February 27, 2020
Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Simon Godwin’s choice of directorial debut wasn’t a stretch. Godwin’s newly minted tenure at STC begins with a vivid and zesty restaging o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:36PMSaturday, February 1, 2020
On the positive side, there’s nothing “scaled down” about the Kennedy Center’s latest Broadway Center Stage series presentation of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s 2008 steamrolling tea…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:36PMFriday, November 29, 2019
The big takeaway from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is the glimpsed exposure to what goes through the mind of a special person—in this case someone with an autism spect…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:42AMThursday, October 31, 2019
A doleful ballad fittingly eases you into Quotidian Theatre Company’s (QTC’s) lovingly rendered production of Conor McPherson’s Port Authority. Three generations of Irishmen then intro…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:36AMMonday, October 7, 2019
The staging of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Fences at Ford’s Theatre seemed made-to-order for a grand slam home run. The memorable backyard drama of father and s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:12PMMonday, September 23, 2019
Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s restaging of his 2017 Broadway production of Jitney at Arena Stage—bringing to town much of the design team and several of the actors—is a terrific kic…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:54PMTuesday, August 27, 2019
There are so many weirdly gleeful moments stuffed in Assassins, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and book writer John Weidman’s darkly comic and brilliant musical vaudeville exposing the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:12PMWednesday, July 17, 2019
Over 100 and some years ago, The Mollusc was the best-known work of an Englishman considered to be in affinity with the likes of Oscar Wilde. About 10 years ago, my colleague at DC Theatre S…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:33PMTuesday, June 18, 2019
I guess I just don’t get Falsettos. The Tony Award® winning musical may have been fresh at its 1992 Broadway debut—it’s mainstream depiction of gay couples was certainly trailblazing�…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:03AMThursday, May 9, 2019
Admittedly, the synopsis for the dystopian kitchen-sink drama The Children at Studio Theatre didn’t tremendously excite me initially, notwithstanding the interest in acclaimed British play…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:54PMSaturday, March 23, 2019
Enchantment awaits those who enter Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim’s wildly inventive, darkly comic thicket of life lessons sprung from children’s fairy tales in a new revival at Ford�…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:44AMFriday, February 15, 2019
Director David Muse’s Richard the Third is clearly rendered, scored to propulsive industrial rock and sets itself apart from previous productions by a series of grisly execution scenes, b…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:48AMMonday, January 21, 2019
I normally don’t like dumb movies of the kind in which the actor Jack Black has made a conspicuous brand. But School of Rock, the sleeper hit from 2003, wasn’t that dumb—it was funny a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:42AMFriday, December 14, 2018
The streak is broken. Playwright David Ives’ winning series of brilliant, hilarious “transladaptations” performed at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) over the last decade ground t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:54PMFriday, November 16, 2018
The revival of Cole Porter’s 1934 madcap romp Anything Goes at Arena Stage manages to be everything that it can be—an anachronism, tiresomely silly and outright dumb in places, but also …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:06PMTuesday, November 13, 2018
As I write this, leaders from around the world are marching down the Champs-Élysées in Paris under a canopy of umbrellas in the rain, gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the p…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:18PMMonday, August 27, 2018
Actress Natascia Diaz’s bold performance breathes transformative life into Fosca—one of musical theater’s most remarkable creations—in Signature Theatre’s resplendent revival of St…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:06AMWednesday, June 27, 2018
In 2015 the president of Prince George’s Community Pool in Mt. Rainier, Md., discovered copies of decades-old correspondence between pool officials and Raymond Bowlding, a local black man,…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PMThursday, June 21, 2018
Other Life Forms, local actor and playwright Brandon McCoy’s new play, is likable—sweet, goofy and well-intentioned—but still needs a lot of work to have any lasting impact. The comic …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:48AMWednesday, May 23, 2018
Playwright Ken Urban’s absorbing new play starts strong and keeps you hooked during most of its snappy real-time runtime before slogging down in a closing exhalation and then abruptly comi…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:36AMWednesday, May 16, 2018
Broadway actress and singer-songwriter Desi Oakley is over 200 performances in on the national tour of the fan-favorite musical Waitress, now at The National Theatre. She plays the lead rol…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:54PMMonday, April 9, 2018
Seeing Two Trains Running at Arena Stage marks the halfway point of my consummation of playwright August Wilson’s decalogue of dramas expressing the 20th century black experience in Americ…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:30PMMonday, March 26, 2018
Referenced more now as “the first show from the guy behind Hamilton,” the decade-old In the Heights created by current cultural darling Lin-Manuel Miranda burst spirited and joyful durin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:19AMMonday, February 19, 2018
The Farnsworth Invention, showbiz writer Aaron Sorkin’s misfired attempt to retrofit a screenplay about the patent battle over television transmission into a stage drama was a dud when it …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:44PMWednesday, January 24, 2018
Much of the fumbling journey of growing up as a teenager is done around other teenagers, not parents or other adults, at least in my experience. And the essence of that pubescent collective …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:55AMMonday, October 30, 2017
There was reason behind the fact that I had not yet seen The Book of Mormon. The show, a pop culture lodestone and the apex theatrical event until it ran up against the wave of adorat…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:36AMFriday, September 15, 2017
A skeleton crew is the minimum number of people needed to maintain something in operation—to keep something alive. The title of Dominique Morisseau’s appealing, thought-provoking drama…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:06PMWednesday, July 19, 2017
Fifty years since Cabaret debuted on Broadway and almost as long since the 1972 film adaptation emblazoned its haunting imagery and seductive score across our collective consciousness, the j…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:54PMTuesday, June 6, 2017
Black rage—internalized, until it’s not. Stories that carry like the blues. Language that ricochets like jazz. Penetration into the trauma of the black experience in America. This is the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:12AMMonday, April 10, 2017
Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking portrayal of a black working-class family and its “dream deferred” in mid-20th century America maintains its timeless grace in a new revival at Aren…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:31PMWednesday, March 22, 2017
The women chant their lines over one another above a rising swirl of offstage clamor that reaches a crescendo pitch. Masha (Caroline Hewitt),—the most troubled of the three Prozorov sister…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PM 
