754 stories by "John Stoltenberg"
Last night, on the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, I was in a DC theater venue of a very different sort: a tiny white-box art-gallery space dow…
Very Still & Hard to See is neither quiet nor a challenge to perceive. Its aural and optical pleasures are bountiful. For this production of Steve Yockey's cycle of supernatural short pl…
When I arrived to see Drunkle Vanya last night, the first thing I did was order a vodka. I don't typically drink before I review, but in this circumstance it seemed part of my job, since the…
Watching the annual student spring dance concert last night at Howard University, I was taken aback from the get-go. What I saw was so impressive in conception and execution, so powerful in …
There is no humor in one's own unhappiness. To be lonely and disappointed in life is not to be amused. To feel empty and over the hill is not to be tickled. Yet when we laugh at the woes and…
There be eerie goings-on inside the DC Arts Center black box where Molotov Theatre Group is staging a spell-binder of a show about a psychic experiment to create a ghost by occultish committ…
Now playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is a depiction of eroticism so intimate and artful that it left me woozy with awe and wonder. No one takes their clothes off. There are no phony…
So dere's dis play goin' on in town called Da Norvegians, and it's set in Minneapolis and it's got Norvegian characters in it, so I tought I should go check it out, on accounta I vas born de…
After Michael Poandl and John Stoltenberg, both DCMTA writers, saw a recent performance of Passion Play at Forum Theatre, they found themselves chattering back and forth trying to figure out…
You'd be hard pressed to find a better theatrical catharsis for high school angst than Dog Sees God, Bert V. Royal's funny/poignant reimagining of characters from the Peanuts comic strip pla…
The crowd that came to The Birchmere last night to See Jane Sing! got a great big ol' cabaret show full of offbeat tunes and upbeat fun. Jane Lynch wowed 'em with her artful blend of agil…
I had a wonderful time chatting with the multi-talented Jane Lynch. Jane: How are you, John? John: I'm good, thank you, Jane. I'm a complete Gleek. Good for you! My husband and I watch every…
In the words of Countess Aurelia, the title character in Jean Giraudoux's comedy The Madwoman of Chaillot, "Nothing is ever so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set right in th…
Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play is an epic three-part play set in three eras"Queen Elizabeth’s England, Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and Ronald Reagan’s America. It's a fancifully …
If there is a post-9/11 theater in America"the way there was, for instance, a postwar theater in Europe"it just got bigger than before. A new play opened last night that offers a sharp new t…
"You have no idea what I've been through," says Luke early on in Kid Victory, the nervy and unnerving new musical by John Kander (music) and Greg Pierce (book and lyrics) that just opened at…
An update: I went back to see Clandestine Arts’ production of Bare last night (Friday, January 27th) and found the show even more enjoyable than the first time. The quality of  m…
People rarely go to the theater anymore to know what a playwright thinks. We go to be entertained, we go to be moved, we go to be told stories, which might involve hearing what assorted char…
I knew I would be bummed if I missed the Round House Theatre production of Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn. Everything I read told me, "John, you gotta see this." So when I caught i…
A young new theater company called Clandestine Arts has come to town and marked its arrival by tackling the beautifully scored coming out musical Bare: A Pop Opera. With a spirited cast of 1…
There were many moments in Naomi Wallace's The Trestle at Poe Lick Creek, as interpreted by Director Jodi Kanter at The George Washington University’s Department of Theatre and Dan…
The connectivity crew at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company creates some of the most imaginative audience-engagement gimmicks in town. Typically tied to, and expressive of, the themes inside a p…
Anna Deavere Smith's classic Fires in the Mirror is getting a fascinating production this weekend by a very talented ensemble of student actors at Howard University. And on two counts this i…
John Stoltenberg:Â It's great that Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, and Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of Signature Theater, have initiated what will become the Women's Vo…
Martin McDonagh is one of my favorite living playwrights, and I've loved his black comedy The Lieutenant of Inishmore every time I've seen it. So for me the Constellation Theatre Company pro…
