70 stories by "Andrew Walker White"
Of all the grand tear-jerkers, those epic romances that make you want to tear your heart out and roast it on the barbecue, Tchaikovsky's masterpiece Eugene Onegin stands out. Packed with bea…
As the clouds have gathered over the past two years, we have witnessed the coarsening of our politics as one party promotes an increasingly strident brand of nationalism, corruption, and inc…
If you're a fan of stand-up comedy, you know the highs and lows that come with artists working the crowd with fresh material they've been practicing for weeks. With their eyes on you and you…
For all his brilliance, Shakespeare still suffers from the occasional whining of critics about his later "problem" plays. Longer and more complex, with familiar plot lines splintered and gra…
We all have our own holiday traditions " lighting candles one night after the next, caroling, choral concerts, dreidel-spinning, Christmas Revels, Christmas-day Chinese fare, etc."and they a…
If you want to get yourself in the mood for the Folger Theatre's current hit production of Macbeth " a famous adaptation from the 1660's of William Shakespeare's original tragedy, by his god…
Aficionados of ancient tragedy will tell you that the main difference between the Romans and the Greeks was that the Romans "Seneca, especially"loved their violence served up downstage cente…
Let's stop for a moment to consider how much of the grey matter we've got upstairs, between those infernal ears, is dedicated to memory. Even as you read this review your mind is stockin…
Dystopias can be off-putting places, for those in search of more traditional fictional locales. Why would you want to begin your story in a wasteland, where everything we associate with civi…
Truth be known, there is much about Ronald Reagan that is eminently unlikeable: his shameless embrace of the southern, "State's Rights" strategy, his contempt for social welfare programs, hi…
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." –William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun. Of the many great moments in the late August Wilson's Twentieth Century cycle, the most powerful…
The Contemporary American Theatre Festival is off to a rocking start, and with the local premiere of Bekah Brunstetter's ripped-from-the-Supreme-Court-blotter comedy The Cake, the Festival m…
Ah, summer " that fabled time of fireflies and lemonade stands, seersucker suits with wilting collars, tubing along a quiet stream, and of course — theatre. Â Â Live theatre. Â …
Back in ancient times, tragedy was prized for its cathartic experience; fear, rage, pity, the whole range of human emotions would run through you, and on a grand scale, too, with thousands p…
If you're a Mozart fan " and if you aren't, you should be " you probably have your favorite 'conspiracy theory' about why the composer met his untimely death at the age of 35. Thanks to Pete…
It's a classic art-imitating-life-imitating-art situation: to make a production relevant, the director decks out the cast in modern dress to create the illusion that Shakespeare was writing …
We live in a world where self-righteous anger is the new god. It's getting to the point where we can barely shift our torches and pitchforks aside long enough to tweet or post on Facebook. W…
Spring has sprung, the dogwoods are in full flower, and there's a truly delicious cat-fight to be had in McLean"take my word for it. Now that the solemnities of the season have been properly…
As improbable as it may sound, the plays of Anton Chekhov are vivid proof that there is such a thing as joyful melancholy. You can commune with his characters' misfortunes and acknowledge th…
Is it just me or do the French have a way of taking the most mundane, everyday objects and making poetry out of them? Consider the humble plastic hair-curler, those tiny, porous tubes tha…
