1,519 stories by "Peter Marks"
Whether they are crooning a love ballad to Chipotle's burritos or asking the essential cosmic questions, such as "How come all the addicts on 'Intervention' have better apartments than me?,"…
Amy Freed gives zaniness a good name. Her new comedy, "You, Nero," is a silly-savvy lark assembled out of shards of Roman history, scraps of acting argot and a soupcon of naughty business be…
Of all the Top 10 lists I've assembled over the years, compiling this year's drove me the craziest. That's how strong 2011 has been for Washington theater " the best, in fact, in my decade o…
Of all the Top 10 lists I've assembled over the years, compiling this year's drove me the craziest. That's how strong 2011 has been for Washington theater " the best, in fact, in my decade o…
No Shakespeare comedy depends on spontaneous romantic combustion as crucially as does "Much Ado About Nothing." Yes, "The Taming of the Shrew's" Kate and Petruchio must fall desperately in l…
Although the Kennedy Center's highly regarded revival of "Follies" closes on Broadway on Jan. 22 after a 4 ½-month run, the production isn't going into retirement just yet.
Los Ang…
If Lauren Weedman is an acquired taste, I've acquired it. She's a gust from the satiric jet stream, blown east from Los Angeles for an 18-day stand at Studio Theatre. Imagine the agitated te…
As direct and warmly intended as a letter from a friend, "A Second Chance" is a heartfelt new chamber musical about a middle-aged New York banker who lost the love of his life and slowly fou…
What is that man of mature vintage thinking as he sits in the stark rectangle of light, staring out at us with those wistful, hooded eyes? The miracle of superlative acting is that an audien…
Just when you thought nothing more could be said about the origin of Shakespeare's plays comes "Equivocation," Bill Cain's exhaustive and exhausting philosophical fantasia about authorial tr…
Oy, it's been a year. We're beleaguered. Beaten up. Depressed by the economy, distressed by political dithering, swirled by tornadoes, slammed by hurricanes, shaken by earthquakes. Things mu…
In a drastic move for a major regional theater, Arena Stage is dropping one of the spring plays from its current season, an action prompted by the anticipated cancellation of $500,000 in fed…
The new plays of Broadway-proven writers find many paths to success. But not until Ken Ludwig pulled up to Sideburn Road had anyone thought one such path might be the stage of a public high …
NEW YORK " For proof that life's unfair, consider the case of Hugh Jackman. The guy's in the 99th percentile of, like, everything. He's dashing, rugged, rich, well-mannered, famous, at ease …
"Drama's vitallest expression is the common day," poet Emily Dickinson wrote. It's a sentiment that contemporary German dramatist Roland Schimmelpfennig takes to heart in his writing, notabl…
Long before an actor blurted out "Shakespeare!" from the stage of Harman Hall, we fully understood why a Washington theater company that bears the Bard's name would give us a sweet concert v…
This promised to be a fascinating weekend at Arena Stage, where 30 leading lights of the American theater world were gathering " playwrights, Broadway producers, leaders of nonprofit compani…
NEW YORK " When the eternally promising playwright Jon Robin Baitz was lured to network television to write the series "Brothers and Sisters," the signs pointed to another excellent stage cr…
For a young company, Constellation Theatre sure can feel old. Its current offering, a revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man," is the kind of unremarkable production you'd expect…
Blake Robison, who became producing artistic director of Bethesda's Round House Theatre in 2005 and has spearheaded a repertory built on literary adaptations for the stage, announced Thursda…
That bright golden haze is just as radiant the second time around.
"Oklahoma!," the surprise autumn smash at Arena Stage, is back on the Fichandler stage for a summertime fling, looking as s…
NEW YORK " Bill this midsummer card as an Elizabethan throwdown: the Royal Shakespeare Company versus the New York Shakespeare Festival. Virtually within earshot of each other, Britain's bas…
As shattered Uncle Vanya, Richard Roxburgh isn't merely a shell of a man. He's a shell of a shell, a quaking, sobbing wreck. Racked ever more violently by the realization that the professor …
The Kennedy Center showed taste and maturity in (finally) bestowing one of its Honors on the sublime Broadway songbird, Barbara Cook. The singer-actress"83 and still chirping with amazing vi…
NEW YORK " Reaffirming that an out-of-town workout is still a show's optimal fitness program, the Kennedy Center revival of "Follies," seen in Washington last spring, has landed on Broadway …
