Grim 'Oliver!' turns on the dark: Consider yourself warned by Nelson Pressley

Adventure Theatre MTC is graduating from one-act kids' shows to a full-blown "Oliver!" at Bethesda's Round House Theatre, and what an unpleasant "Oliver!" it is " creepy, ultra-violent and p…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:15am on August 12, 2015☆⚑

Gun-violence play banishes politics by Nelson Pressley

"One in the Chamber" is a play that has something to say but feels the stage is an inappropriate place to say it. Marja-Lewis Ryan's script simply wants to break your heart over an accidenta…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 3:56pm on August 11, 2015☆⚑

Song and dance as a political 'Fix' by Nelson Pressley

The most ridiculously impossible ticket to get on Broadway right now is stamped "Hamilton," because of course everyone has just been dying for a musical steeped in public finance and nation-…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 1:44pm on August 7, 2015☆⚑

Romeo, Romeo " wherefore art thou so old? by Nelson Pressley

Juliet is 70 in the Unexpected Stage Company's "Romeo and Juliet: Love Knows No Age." Maturity is upside down in this show: Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers live in a nursing home, where th…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 2:33pm on July 28, 2015☆⚑

Sondheim goes 'crunch' in prog-metal 'Sweeney Todd' by Nelson Pressley

"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit," sings the vengeful barber of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." In Landless Theatre Company's "prog metal" version, Andrew Lloyd Baughma…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:07am on July 27, 2015☆⚑

In 'Silence! The Musical,' Hannibal Lecter sings, and it isn't pretty by Nelson Pressley

The title of Hannibal Lecter's smutty opening song in "Silence! The Musical" is too dirty even to hint at, yet as Hannibal the Cannibal, Tally Sessions sings this sicko "I Want" song ridicul…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 3:14pm on July 23, 2015☆⚑

'Leto Legend,' saving the day for a woman trying to have it all by Nelson Pressley

The play "Leto Legend" outperforms its premise. A comic-book adventure about the hassles of women trying to Have It All? Come on.Wit and good taste save the day in Kristen LePine's premiere …

SOURCE: Washington Post at 3:51pm on July 21, 2015☆⚑

After Levy, what next for Theatre Washington and the Hayes Awards? by Nelson Pressley

Theatre Washington has been no stranger to controversy in recent years: Howls were raised as the former Helen Hayes Awards labored to transform into a full-time service organization and pain…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:50pm on July 17, 2015☆⚑

Second City comedy finds an edge at Woolly Mammoth by Nelson Pressley

How unsettled is comedy now? The name "Bill Cosby" isn't warmly funny anymore. Jon Stewart skips the opening jokes on "The Daily Show" after the June shooting that killed nine black people i…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 7:23pm on July 13, 2015☆⚑

Capital Fringe 2015 Day 4: In the big house (the Atlas) and on the playground by Nelson Pressley

The Atlas Performing Arts Center has emerged as a crucial partner for the newly relocated Capital Fringe Festival; Nelson Pressley spends an afternoon there. Plus: Rebecca Ritzel has a bad t…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 4:16pm on July 13, 2015☆⚑

2015 Capital Fringe Festival Day 3: Mainly on race by Nelson Pressley

Still charting the new network of Capital Fringe Festival venues in Northeast D.C., Peggy McGlone and Nelson Pressley trek to rough-edged bars and polished theaters for poetic fantasies and …

SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:58pm on July 12, 2015☆⚑

Capital Fringe Day 2: Of Hemingway and the hardware store by Nelson Pressley

Post reporters Nelson Pressley and Peggy McGlone found their respective ways to some of the new Fringe venues in Northeast D.C. on Friday night. They discovered funky stages and questi…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 10:15am on July 11, 2015☆⚑

"The Island" is off for good at MetroStage by Nelson Pressley

MetroStage's remount of Athol Fugard's "The Island," postponed after a handful of performances this spring and announced for a return this week, has been cancelled. The drama is about two pr…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 4:04pm on July 10, 2015☆⚑

2015 Capital Fringe Festival Day 1: Shakespeare, gentrification and D.C. Mayor Bowser by Nelson Pressley

The 10th-annual Capital Fringe Festival launched up and down Northeast D.C. on Thursday night, with nearly two dozen acts on stages from Trinidad to Brookland. This weekend we'll offer notes…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 1:25pm on July 10, 2015☆⚑

'Once' again bares the soul of a Dublin busker, this time on stage by Nelson Pressley

In the half-hour before the musical "Once" begins, you can hit the cash bar on the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater stage and hang out with musicians serving up foot-stomping songs. The p…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 10:00pm on July 9, 2015☆⚑

Fringe festival's new cry: Eastward Ho! by Nelson Pressley

How do you move an annual summertime festival of 100-plus acts in dozens of downtown venues?Pretty easily, it seems. Capital Fringe has fully abandoned its makeshift warren of converted stor…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 6:13pm on July 2, 2015☆⚑

DC Council approves funding to create first "unified cultural plan" by Nelson Pressley

The budget passed Tuesday by the D.C. Council includes up to $200,000 in funding for "researching and drafting a first-ever unified cultural plan for the District," to use language on the…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 4:12pm on July 2, 2015☆⚑

Newly renovated Keegan Theatre looks great, but first show is a bit of a bore by Nelson Pressley

On Friday night, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton attended a ribbon-cutting for the renovated Keegan Theatre downtown. On Saturday, rains flooding Pepco conduits overflowed into Keegan's new …

SOURCE: Washington Post at 6:50pm on July 1, 2015☆⚑

Sending in the clowns with 'Impossible!' by Nelson Pressley

An escape artist gets locked inside a water tank in "Impossible! A Happenstance Circus," and it's ridiculously suspenseful and witty because . . . well, there's no actual water. It's all pre…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:59am on June 30, 2015☆⚑

Hitler musical caper rides again in 'The Producers' at Olney by Nelson Pressley

Playing a stage-struck Führer in the great Mel Brooks number "Springtime for Hitler," Jason Graae beams like a rocket headed straight for showbiz heaven. The eyes twinkle and the smile gush…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 3:03pm on June 29, 2015☆⚑

Arena Stage's 'Camp David' headed to Broadway? by Nelson Pressley

The Arena Stage production of "Camp David" is making its Broadway dreams plain: On Thursday producers announced hopes to take journalist Lawrence Wright's drama to the Great White Way.…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 6:21pm on June 25, 2015☆⚑

Source attack blows minds (relax " it's new plays about bad media habits) by Nelson Pressley

The media circus around a fictional L.A. terror attack is the subject of Timothy Guillot's "The Word and the Wasteland," but the play isn't the only thing " not the way the Source Festival r…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 3:57pm on June 12, 2015☆⚑

Sex trafficking in old Argentina, told in grim songs by Nelson Pressley

A real-life sex-trafficking scheme is the subject of the new tango-infused musical "Las Polacas: The Jewish Girls of Buenos Aires," and Mariano Vales's spidery score is a good match for the …

SOURCE: Washington Post at 3:04pm on June 11, 2015☆⚑

An airborne 'Newsies' delights by Nelson Pressley

"Newsies sell papes." That's the chesty declaration of the scrappy newsboys hawking papers in 1899 New York in the uplifting Disney musical "Newsies." These adorably rough-edged lads sell th…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 2:53pm on June 10, 2015☆⚑

Taking on a fanatic with zeal in Molière's 'Tartuffe' by Nelson Pressley

The grim and striking "Tartuffe" at the Shakespeare Theatre Company strides furiously into the explosive debate about faith and comedy. It's a wrathful show, one that unrepentantly sacrifice…

SOURCE: Washington Post at 5:33pm on June 9, 2015☆⚑