"Road Show" has logged a lot of miles on a long, bumpy journey to Shirlington and the cozy confines of Signature Theatre. Who knew that to smooth out the ride, we've been waiting all this ti…
NEW YORK -- So that's what he meant.Back in 2008, when he accepted his first best-actor Tony Award, for the Broadway revival of "Boeing-Boeing," Mark Rylance distinguished himself w…
NEW YORK " While writing "The Humans" " his best play yet " Stephen Karam was striving to be so precise about the space his characters inhabited that he wanted to share it with them. So, at …
NEW YORK -- The challenges they face are so commonplace you could be eavesdropping on Thanksgiving dinner at your cousins': A daughter with a college degree working odd restaurant jobs; a…
Edward Gero will forever savor the first words Antonin Scalia ever spoke to him. "I'm not coming to see the play,"  the justice declared that afternoon in the late fall of 2014, as Ger…
In what may portend a revitalization of links between the Kennedy Center and major British theater companies, the institution on the Potomac will host a short stay this summer of a productio…
Congas and mambos are the dynamic devices by which Moises Kaufman's new Cuban-spiced adaptation of "Carmen" puts its best feet forward. And yet, although this atmospheric version of the Bize…
When soprano Lauren Michelle, in the guise of the hapless, pregnant Irina, begins the opening verse of "Trouble Man," the otherwise stentorian rhythms of "Lost in the Stars" suddenly take on…
In the second of the three blazingly original playlets that make up Suzan-Lori Parks's "Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 and 3)," a slave serving as aide to his master in the Conf…
"Drama's vitallest expression is the common day / That arise and set about us," wrote the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson " words that would suit as a preamble to many of Annie Ba…
Never say never.I thought I was completely over and done with "A Midsummer Night's Dream."Having seen it dozens of times, indoors and outdoors, in productions influenced by the Renaissance o…
When the required lump is raised in your throat as Jenna Sokolowski's Laura hands Thomas Keegan's Gentleman Caller a shiny crystal memento of her awakening, you know that the emotional guida…
"Immigrant!" Anita sneers, playfully but dismissively, at her lover, Bernardo, in the run-up to "West Side Story's" glorious Act 1 number, "America." The time is the mid-1950s, when a large …
A moment arrives in the harrowing and absorbing "I Shall Not Hate" that is so unbearably sad you may want to hide your eyes. As this monodrama by Izzeldin Abuelaish and Shay Pitovsky is in H…
For insight into why blue-collar America is so riled up, fed up and downright distraught in 2016, "Sweat" makes for " if nothing more novel " a useful and colorful bases-covering restatement…
Stephen Adly Guirgis won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year for "Between Riverside and Crazy," a wise, wry portrait of an embittered ex-New York cop whose entire reason for being is the …
In a deal that rockets Signature Theatre into a whole new producing orbit, the Arlington company will team up this fall with the Walt Disney Co. to present a world-premiere musical version o…
At the start of "The Critic," a self-regarding theater reviewer " is there any other kind? " scans the morning papers and disgustedly tosses them all away. They're filled, it seems, with the…
NEW YORK " Right up to the end, David Bowie was exploring new universes. In this case, musical theater was his destination. Just 36 days before his death, in fact, a musical featuring Bow…
Even in a year with a streamlined theatergoing schedule " owing to a book-writing leave " a reviewer could find enough work of real merit to fill out a best-of list. So here, in my slightly …
The perfect Tony. A Maria of pure enchantment. So, yes, it's truly love at first sight in director Matthew Gardiner's riveting new "West Side Story" " and not just for that star-crossed pair…
NEW YORK " That director Bartlett Sher should be considered a master of the Golden Age musical is reaffirmed with his latest handiwork, the deeply affecting revival of "Fiddler on the …
Before we get to the multifarious delights of "Matilda," the musical making a holiday splash at the Kennedy Center Opera House, I have to utter a couple of words about the Opera House itself…
"Pretty" is a word that comes to mind all through an encounter with "Bright Star," the, well, very pretty new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. Everything about the show is pretty: …
"Pretty" is a word that comes to mind all through an encounter with "Bright Star," the, well, very pretty new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. Everything about the show is pretty: …