748 stories by "John Stoltenberg"
Since mid-January an intrepid troupe of musical-theater students has been rehearsing the sweet and soulful show Violet at The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts under the ab…
Watching Arguendo"an actual Supreme Court transcript staged cheekily for chuckles by Elevator Repair Service, the New York"based troupe specializing in literary vérité"is like watching …
If/Then, the musical with the biggest heart you can imagine, is now back home in the Big Apple, and just like its main character, Elizabeth (the incomparable Idina Menzel), it is starting ov…
As many who follow local theater news know, Theater J's production of The Admission has been preceded by an offstage drama"a who's-right/who's-wrong argument, a what-really-happened/wh…
Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful is set in 2009 and takes place mainly in Philadelphia but also travels to San Diego, Japan, and Puerto Ri…
Molotov Theatre Group has an uncanny knack for converting its tiny black-box nook into an auditorium-scale operating theater for surgical dissection of the dark side of human nature. With it…
Among the exhilarating pleasures of seeing American Idiot now on tour at the National Theatre is experiencing this angsty, amped-up ode to antiestablishment disaffection performed …
It takes a wagonload of courage to take on Brecht these days. His "alienation effect" esthetic challenges every theatrical convention that makes a show a contemporary commercial success. He …
If there was an open casting call for the role of you, who should get the part and who shouldn't? Must the actor be descended from a gene pool that arose in the same area on the globe …
Orlando, WSC Avant Bard's upcoming production, is based on Virginia Woolf's classic 1928 novel in which Woolf based the character Orlando on the woman she was madly in love with. In both the…
If you're willing to let your inner child stay up after bedtime and go out and play at The Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater instead, you're in for an evening of theatrical wonderment and …
The evening began enchantingly. The audience was seated on four sides of a square playing area lit by stage lighting, so we could look across and see one another's faces in that wonderful ex…
I had not been to kid's theater since I was a kid. As an inveterate theater buff, I was dimly aware there was much highly praised professional children's theater in the DC Metro area"but I w…
Urinetown: The Musical holds a special place in my theatergoing memory. I first saw it in New York City days after the September 11, 2001, attacks because then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani told me…
History hit an astounding "rewind" and "refresh" button last night at The National Theatre. An abundantly assorted audience of Washingtonians rose as one to applaud an iconic work of mus…
Avid and discerning theatergoers seeking a fresh take on a beloved classic will not find a more rewarding gift this time of year than Our Suburb, brilliantly directed by Judith Ivey, which j…
Washington Improv Theater has been tickling DC audiences for 15 years. When I discovered the madcap company a while ago, I got hooked on the spot. Hooked as in addicted. Feeling the need for…
"Audience integration" is a buzzword that has been flying around awhile but only recently landed in my brain. In live theater, it means going beyond removing the fourth wall; it means erasin…
It is one thing to amble through a modern art gallery and appreciate an innovative multimedia installation"some videos and audio here, some projections and lighting effects there, perhaps so…
Hootenanny is a word one hardly hears anymore. Whole generations have come along for whom it elicits blank stares and a big "Huh?" The press release for Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Wo…
The first time I saw If/Then, I knew I would be seeing it again. The show's beauty, originality, and heart won me over, and that experience increased all the way through. I wrote a review fo…
The fresh new musical If/Then"now in a tryout run at The National Theatre on its way to Broadway (where it is destined to be embraced by theatergoers who will want to see it again and aga…
On the evidence of Mies Julie, Yael Farber, who wrote and directed it, must be counted among the most important theater artists on the world stage today. Beyond brilliant: important. R…
"How's your family?" are the seemingly innocuous final words of this startling and riveting new play. Carly, a quintessentially desperate housewife, is on the phone with a female neighbor in…
There's dramatic tension"and then there's traumatic tension. Molotov Theatre Group's absolutely riveting production of Extremities"William Matrosimone's wicked good play about a wic…
