1,519 stories by "Peter Marks"
Vows do not mean much to Henry, the adulterous playwright at the center of "The Real Thing." But words do. He's so high-minded about language, in fact, that he refuses to help his second wif…
"The Guardsman"? Really? That Paleolithic bit of Broadway foolery? The farcical vehicle that once upon a time (1924, to be exact) starred the erstwhile duke and duchess of the American stag…
BALTIMORE " Of all the nerve! Kwame Kwei-Armah, CenterStage's exuberant artistic director, believes theater is such a vital aspect of the culture that a Pulitzer Prize-winning play on the se…
If only life offered the second chance Shakespeare so magnanimously grants the monstrously miscalculating Leontes of his late-career romance "The Winter's Tale." Sixteen years of penitential…
In a town possessed of more than its fair share of residents with impressive credentials, Hannah Yelland manages to stand out. Yes, Washington is home to ambassadors and generals and Cabinet…
Sometimes, in its ongoing bout with Shakespeare's canon, Folger Theatre goes for the outright pin. At other times, it seems content with a draw. Its new "Twelfth Night" qualifies in the humb…
Amid the cacti and tennis courts, betrayal lies in wait. The comfortably arid retirement of Lyman and Polly Wyeth " impeccably groomed survivors of Old Hollywood and California Republican po…
In the expansive living room of their bright Tribeca apartment, Jon Robin Baitz and his friendly, three-legged dog Trip both pad about restlessly, looking for comfortable places to alight. F…
NEW YORK " The beat of David Byrne's sexy new life-of-Imelda-Marcos musical, "Here Lies Love," never rests. And neither, for that matter, does the audience. In a black-box-turned-disco insid…
NEW YORK " Lest you imagine the career's a wrap for 85-year-old Harold Prince, imagine again. Not only is he working on a retrospective musical, "The Prince of Broadway," based on his own il…
"First of all, forget about the Thirty Years' War," the conflict-hardened and battle-weary Gen. Albrecht Wallenstein advises an audience in the first seconds of Shakespeare Theatre Company's…
You know it as the sculptural quintessence of grit, grace and love of ballet. Now see it as a musical. Edgar Degas's world famous "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen" is the inspiration for an ori…
What one generation absorbs as abject suffering, the next may experience as utter bewilderment. For befuddled is how Andy Glickstein stumbles through his out-loud-neurotic, Jewish American l…
ORANGEBURG, N.Y. " In the basement recording studio of a tract house in an aging subdivision, a former poet laureate of the United States rocks back and forth to the improvisational licks of…
NEW YORK " Dwelling among us, ladies and gentlemen, is a super-race of tiny entertainment machines. Disguised as children, they sing, act, dance, tumble and generally bedazzle, as if each of…
With a voice that rumbles and quakes like an avalanche, Patrick Page unleashes his catalytic energy on "Coriolanus," the Shakespearean tragedy that builds ever so incrementally to a roaring …
He smokes. He cusses. He drinks. He comes on to a woman who isn't his wife. But he also speaks in the inspirational voice of a Gandhi-esque leader who forced America to search its conscience…
NEW YORK " When it's good, "Kinky Boots," the new Broadway musical with the rocking Cyndi Lauper score, is sweetly, vivaciously, irresistibly good. And when it's not so good " well, let's no…
That dependably major meteorological event, Hurricane Daisey, has swept back into Washington. As with past storms of this variety, the latest one seeks to shake an institution to its foundat…
With actress Naomi Jacobson perched on a stand as she's fitted for a gown in Arena Stage's "Mary T. & Lizzy K.," an audience learns what's in and what's out in mid-19th-century haute cou…
If Mount Rushmore had been carved to enshrine Broadway musicals rather than presidents, the four faces gazing majestically out from the mountain might look something like this: Yul Brynner a…
NEW YORK " From the outset, the box-office appeal of "Really Really" astonished actor-turned-playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo. He was surprised when Eric Schaeffer, Signature Theatre's artisti…
Please give a warm welcome to Amy Herzog, a playwright of distinction whose rich portfolio you'll want to get to know. Shaped by deft observation and psychological texture, her work has begu…
Whether it's an intensifying appetite for novelty, a newfound embrace of boldness " or maybe an increase in spinach consumption " something has gotten into the theater makers who are decidin…
The turntable on which Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre places its stage version of "Fanny and Alexander" is an apt visual clue to director Stefan Larsson's elegant production " a beguiling s…
