If I had left Thursday night's performance of Modern Terrorism just thirty seconds earlier, it would be easy to write about, because the play itself is really good and the current production…
Shephard's Heartless Probes an In-between Existence All I remember from my first encounter with Sam Shepard's plays is that one of the characters in La Turista works and works at making sens…
Georgetown Filmmakers Offer a Vision of Freedom The East, a new movie by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, addresses some of the broadest, farthest-reaching dilemmas troubling the world today…
The 39 Steps: a Whirlwind Comes to Purcellville Playwright Patrick Barlow calls The 39 Steps "an adaptation," and I would assert that every production of it is an adaptation of that adaptati…
Folger's Twelfth Night is Beautifully Conceived It's a disk, or a lens, or giant kaleidoscope, thirty feet high and thirty feet wide. Or a big round stained-glass window, maybe, slanted like…
Unhappy Family Fights It Out at Arena Stage Other Desert Cities, the last play in the 2012-2013 season at Arena Stage, takes place on wall-to-wall white carpet in a living room furnished wit…
Pas de Deux: Full Meal with a Light Dessert The room is cold, and vapors swirl around the ducts that bring in air — has it been chilled? It smells like what came out of the defroster o…
Searching for Mr. and Mrs. Right in "The Personal(s)" There's been an accident. We don't know exactly what happened, but we know that Janna was driving, and we know that Don was making Janna…
From The Mountaintop into the Promised Land I thought it was really raining behind the motel room on the Kreeger Theater stage. They must have extended the sprinkler system and built a troug…
A Letter to Mike Daisey Dear Mike, Now that we've escaped from the conventions that would keep you on the stage and keep me at the distance of objective criticism; now that I've shaken your …
This morning I read an article in The Washington Post that helped me understand why the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton sometimes devotes its prodigious talents to plays that aren't …
Arena Stage Explores the Lincoln White House Tazewell Thompson's new play Mary T. & Lizzy K., now playing at Arena Stage, is based on the unlikely friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln an…
Into the Woods Showcases Shenandoah Talent Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods, must pose a tempting challenge for directors. The musical interweaves the plot lines of four familiar fa…
 (Ten stars if we had them) Zimmerman and Ovid Transform Arena Stage The first thing you notice of course is the pool: you can smell it before you go in; you can feel the water in the air…
Arena Stage Makes Good People Great The pivotal character in David Lindsay-Abaire's new play Good People, directed at Arena Stage by Jackie Maxwell, has no lines and never comes onstag…
Appelman and Cisek Plumb the Depths of Henry at the Folger Theatre For a long time I've associated Shakespeare's Henry V with men who go to war to come of age, or men who start a war to come…
Not By Bread Alone: Extraordinary Food Before taking my seat for Sunday's performance of Not By Bread Alone, I stepped into the men's room and blew my nose — really honked it. The g…
At first glance, I took Edmund Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac for a comedy about a misbegotten wretch whose every chance for happiness is thwarted by his nose, which looks like a noble erectio…
Beautifully Orchestrated Opus at Winchester Little Theater The opening scene of Opus says a lot about what's to come. Four men sit on four black stools in a line along the back of the …
Tiresias Speaks Again at Forum Theater The opening scene of We Tiresias poses what appears to be a simple question: What if you could text a couple of your former selves and meet them for a …
Bravura Performance at The Studio Theatre Early in Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s An Iliad, the Minstrel/Poet says he hopes he never has to tell this story again, meaning, I…
British Players Do Holiday Vaudeville Attending The Princess and the Sprout is a little like popping in for a Christmas toddy with the kooky…
Shakespeare Yields to Sedaris in Staunton You hear a lot of laughter at Blackfriars Playhouse. Usually it builds, develops, accumulates slowly, and then overflows in torrents that are hard t…
Christmas Carol Likely to Become a Loudoun Institution There’s a moment in Once Upon a Christmas Carol, a holiday musical by Run Rabbit Run Theatre, that appears to be a mismatch.Â…