It takes a tender actress to make a tough pig, and in the unsettling "Civilization (All You Can Eat)," Sarah Marshall lowers herself to the challenge. She's Big Hog, who starts Jason Grote's…
Maybe, if you ask really politely, Natsu Onoda Power will allow you to get up out of your seat at Studio Theatre, give her hardworking cast a good, swift shove into the wings and leave you a…
"Genesis Reboot" asks the metaphysical question: What if God wanted another shot at starting the human race? Because, you know, the first go-round had its bad moments. This time, we return t…
NEW YORK " Here are two things I learned from "Shatner's World: We Just Live in It": William Shatner thinks George Takei can't stand him. And Captain Kirk talks to his dog in the same way I …
It's a nasty drop from the warm and fuzzy Darling family of the popular Broadway musical version of "Peter Pan" to the suffering brood of dramatist Michael Lluberes's new adaptation, "Peter …
Mike Daisey says that though he's never spoken officially to the company whose labor practices he lambastes in his hit one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," he hears regula…
This may be the first time you're hearing of Paul Downs Colaizzo, but on the evidence of his crackling new play, "Really Really," the name bears committing to memory. A sexually charged come…
When Natsu Onoda Power was a young girl (and not yet a creative Power in her own right) she had the idea of traveling to Tokyo from her tiny, isolated rice-farming village and surprising her…
The recipients of this year's Kennedy Center Honors won't be announced until later this summer or early fall " indeed, the deliberations for who will be named are still ongoing. With that in…
With a buoyant air and a bouquet of ripe performances, Folger Theatre further expands Washington's classical borders with "The Gaming Table," a sendup of 18th-century social probity by the R…
The Kogod Cradle, Arena Stage's architecturally high-toned third stage, may not have been the ideal host for "Elephant Room," a tacky bit of absurdist illusioneering, informed by the ambienc…
For all its highfalutin discourse " on abstract expressionism, Dionysus vs. Apollo, the pernicious advance of pop art " the most engrossing moment of Arena Stage's immensely enjoyable "Red" …
Even though two high-profile projects dropped out of Washington's spring theater season " the Kennedy Center's reworking of Rodgers and Hart's"Pal Joey" and Arena Stage's tryout of a musical…
[Some of the content in this entry could not be displayed on this device.] The Kennedy Center showed taste and maturity in (finally) bestowing one of its Honors on the sublime Broadway song…
Robert Falls was, to put it bluntly, tired of hearing himself talk. Decades in the rehearsal room had, in his mind, calcified his directorial style. The process worked well for him, of cours…
So, was the comely Selena Featherstone possessed by a pygmy capuchin monkey named Iago? Not the sort of question one wrestles with on a typical night out. But then, "The Gallerist" strives m…
The party starts early at the vivacious and endearing revival of "La Cage aux Folles." An impossibly leggy actor in drag is waiting at the lip of the stage as the audience files into the Ken…
Why is it that a loving relationship is more apt to withstand bombs than the dormant aftermath? Playwright Donald Margulies poses this question in the steadily engrossing "Time Stands Still,…
Renee Calarco is onto something when she suggests in her new play, "The Religion Thing," that America's biggest taboo isn't talking about sex " or even, as plays such as "Clybourne Park" mig…
The Kennedy Center has had to scrap the centerpiece theater event of its 2011-12 season " a major, reworked revival of the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical "Pal Joey" " after its director, Chri…
In just 10 short years, Washington's theaters have undergone a transformation unlike any in the city's history. Gleaming new palaces of drama have sprung up or been spruced up all over the r…
Underlining the challenges it faces in realizing its aspirations to be a national center for research, Arena Stage announced Wednesday that major components of its 2½-year-old American Vo…
NEW YORK " Although the power stayed on all through the topsy-turvy weather patterns of the fall, the city's theater district has found a key ingredient in the making of plays and musicals i…
Reversing a decision that had enraged Latino playwrights, directors and others, the Shakespeare Theatre Company has taken the unusual step of restoring in mid-run the original names of two c…
"Billy Elliot the Musical" moves " and MOVES. When one of the astonishing young dance machines who rotate in the role of Billy is pirouetting or tapping, executing kickboxing steps or litera…