65 stories by "Ryan Taylor"
How do you distinguish between "liking" a piece of art and "respecting" it? Is it even possible to like something if it completely devastates you? If thinking on it too deeply causes physica…
10. The Last Burlesque Produced by Pinky Swear Productions I'm partial to the work of prolific DC playwright Stephen Spotswood (I've produced and directed his work myself), and his story of …
This time, I survived. The team behind DC Dead is back with a sequel to last year's surprise interactive horror hit. Whereas last year's version was something of a final goodbye to the New Y…
There's so much great free art in this town. Smithsonian’s out the wazoo. Free performing arts are a little tougher to find, with one of the major providers being the good people of Th…
The spirit of the Fringe has infiltrated the national headline-making Women's Voice Festival. With a lively, if modest, production of Jennie Berman Eng's Whenever You're Near Me (I Feel Sick…
Can I use fairy magic to go back in time and kick my own ass? (Or should I say Bottom?) Because 2012 Ryan completely missed director Ethan McSweeny's original take on his giddily horny versi…
It's a strange, if exciting, thing to watch a production at war with it's own thesis. At a time during which much of the national conversation in the theater industry is about diversity of v…
A disaffected 20-something falls in love with the embodied mental projection of Mary-Kate Olsen, running away with her imaginary lover to an island paradise. Gosh, that's an irresistible pre…
Alex Mills in assless underwear. … … … I have been informed by my editor that "Alex Mills in assless underwear" does not constitute a sufficient review of Synetic Theater's…
Amazing how people can talk themselves out of doing the right thing. Mix a heap of overthinking and a dash of inertia and you can warp morality into anything that fits your interest or mood.…
I yelled "bravo" during a round of applause yesterday. I've never done that before. And it wasn't even at the end of a show. It was during the act break. Of a children's dance piece. Color m…
The United States of America has been at war for 14 years. 4489 Americans have died in Iraq. 2356 in Afghanistan.* Over 52,000 wounded. 970,000 disability claims registered with the Veterans…
I'm not a church-going man; the theater is my church. It's where I go to experience, and aspire to create, the sort of communal experience that a house of faith provides so many. Call me an …
Trigger warning: this review contains references to a play containing linguistically graphic depictions of sexual assault, forced abortion, racism, misogyny of the violent sort, disembowelme…
With a title as juicy as Bad Jews, a writer better be able to back up the bravado with some some serious skill. Luckily for DC audiences, Joshua Harmon is a young writer of uncommon emotiona…
Heading into the forcefully cheerful holiday season, Scena Theatre's got a nasty little gift waiting for audiences at the Anacostia Playhouse. Mark Ravenhill's Handbag is packed with copious…
In recent years there has been a marked uptick in collaborations between the DC professional theater community and Gallaudet University, the famed local school for the deaf. I've been a prop…
As a director with a sideline in criticism I've always feared my fellow artists would one day eat me alive. I never thought it would happen so literally. DC Dead, currently shambling the hal…
At a key moment in the Dirty Dancing musical, currently kicking off its national tour at the, er, National, Samuel Pergande's Johnny struts through the audience, mounts the stage, walks conf…
Nobody in the world of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's The Totalitarians seems all that interested in little things like gender, race, sexuality, party affiliation or class. In Nachtrieb's cynical wo…
If the Zeitgeist Festival is truly an indicator of the current global evolution of theater, than I'm happy to say this industry is as strange, wonderful, bizarre, rough, frustrating, intimat…
There's a certain irony in producing The Threepenny Opera in shining Shirlington. Signature has chosen to present one of the great polemics against human degradation in a community fastidiou…
I respected Arguendo more than I liked it. From a technical perspective, it's near flawless. Four fine actors (Mike Iveson, Vin Knight, Susie Sokol, and Ben Williams) play the nine justices …
The BROS were in town for one vanishingly short weekend. The Baltimore Rock Opera Society brought their grungy magnus opus Gründelhammer to Alexandria's Torpedo Factory. Gründelhammer is a…
Every great young actor should get his shot at Hamlet. The Dane is the tragical crown jewel, the great emo star-maker. It’s to Synetic's credit that upon remounting the production that…
