1,519 stories by "Peter Marks"
For just a few minutes of sizzling shimmy-and-shake, the naughty ol' Chicken Ranch way out in the wilds of Gilbert, Tex., manages to get up the proper head of steam. This temperature rise oc…
The eve of a national political convention is as opportune a moment as any to summon the rabble-rousing ghost of Molly Ivins, the unreconstructed Texas liberal who loved nothing more than to…
When Anglo American actor Michael Benz was 12 and making his way on British television " playing, among other roles, Little Lord Fauntleroy for the BBC " he was asked to present a bouquet at…
Departing from custom, the new producing artistic director of Round House Theatre has decided to scrap two of the plays announced for the 2012-13 season by his predecessor and replace them w…
NEW YORK " The soaring arboretum assembled in Central Park for the Public Theater's open-air "Into the Woods" conforms grandly to the specs for a fairy-tale musical's magical preserve. Would…
Even before the crowds sporting their official admission buttons began receding from the Capital Fringe Festival, which ended Sunday as one of the most artistically successful in the event's…
One of the enduring payoffs of a fringe festival is its unusually broad access to talent that is as yet a well-kept secret. That gratifying attribute is on display in a number of productions…
"Stopgap," playwright Danielle Mohlman's promising new social comedy, is a kind of updating of "The Heidi Chronicles," the tale of a flinty young woman who opts for the concreteness of mothe…
In the reboot of his notorious monologue, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," Mike Daisey sounds an alarm that now has a hollow ring.
Stripped of its most powerful ingredient " Daisey…
Employing words of both consolation and provocation, experimental playwright Young Jean Lee explores the mysteries of spiritual devotion in "Church," her engrossing one-act play being accord…
In this age of merry mashups, few fusions have offered quite as much potential for delectable irony on a stage as the idea of the three singing Bronte sisters.
Actually, there was a brother,…
American history textbooks simply do not do our seventh president justice. Sure, in old paintings, he's got the thick, wavy hair thing going on, and the craggy features do set off a rugged, …
Plying you with lemonade and a chance to exercise your God-given right to stand up and be counted, the civic-minded guardians of "Beertown" draw you cannily into their appealing experiment i…
Embarking on a Fringe experience in the company of the lusty womenfolk of "Cabaret XXX: Love The One You're With" is like starting your day with two triple espressos and a rack full of racy …
As with so many events in a city obsessed with polls and plebiscites, the dramatic thinkers and tinkerers at a young theater company called Dog & Pony DC decided that the impact of their…
From the memory-jogging opening moment (ba-da-da-dum snap-snap!) of the aggressively mediocre musical version of "The Addams Family," audiences know they are in the embrace of that classic A…
We're looking for a few good tweets.
As the seventh annual Capital Fringe Festival gets underway Thursday " a theater, music and dance extravaganza of more than 130 shows that runs through …
Ann Washburn showed us in Woolly Mammoth Theatre's divine, "Simpsons"-inspired "Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play" that the Homer whom playwrights turn to for inspiration doesn't have to hav…
Members of the theatergoing jury: I come before you today to speak in favor of men in tights.
It is the fashion in these meddling times " now perhaps more than ever " to put the doublets in …
The show at Georgetown University was a first for me, and maybe, according to Waleed Shamil, a first for this country. In a black box space in the bowels of the school's Davis Performing Art…
How fitting that just about the time the Kennedy Center was disclosing plans for a revival of "Side Show" " a 1997 musical about the midway " Broadway was announcing a real one. Yessiree, st…
Shakespeare may have had a low opinion of regicide, but that was nothing compared with how he felt about pomposity. If murderers of royalty are summarily dispatched, there are slower (if fun…
Anyone would immediately understand why Erin Weaver so badly wanted the lead in "Xanadu," a musical requiring her to sing, roller-skate, be in peak physical condition and, of course, spend l…
In the final 40 minutes of the flawless Arena Stage revival of "The Normal Heart," one harrowing meltdown seems to incite another " a cascade of anguish as a terrifyingly unknowable killer b…
You know that overused saying: "You've never seen anything quite like it!"? I went to "The Animals and Children Took to the Streets," a 70-minute performance piece at Studio Theatre that rai…
