176 stories by "Steven McKnight"
As the weather turns to the cooler days of autumn, 1st Stage invites you to take a trip to the warm weather of Palm Beach in Michael McKeever's frothy farce Suite Surrender. Your vacatio…
Hollywood has made billions cashing in on our fantasies of having special powers like the comic book superheroes. Yet some people actually turn the dream into reality by dressing in cost…
It's time once again for my annual tribute to new plays and playwrights . These are the relatively recent original plays which made their area debut in the DC area during the 2011-2012 t…
Source Festival’s Rites of Passage theme involves "moments that define who we are."Â These pivotal moments help define our character and provide a solid basis for a number of differ…
Visitors come to a beautiful island seeking to fulfill their hopes and are greeted by an enigmatic host with a foreign accent and his short assistant. A description of the old ABC show F…
Theo Turner thought he had escaped his parents and life in a double-wide trailer for an academic life exploring the formation of the universe. Unfortunately, he finds that he and his wif…
The Rites of Passage, the second of the three 10-minute play events which opened the Source Festival, involves those pivotal moments that help define our character and provide a solid basis …
Source Festival, DC’s longest-running festival of new works, will be presenting 25 new works from artists around the country over the next few weeks. For those who like quick takes, So…
David Mamet’s one act paired with Zachary Fernebok’s Navigating Turbulence One of the characteristics of a good play, or a good piece of music, is that it can receive diffe…
Many plays dealing with the dawn heart of the AIDS crisis feature justifiable anger and fury. Yet Steven Dietz's 1994 play Lonely Planet demonstrates that a gentle approach can be just as po…
Life's not easy if you’re young prince Telemachus. You miss the dad you barely remember, people think you are too young to take over for a king and demigod like Odysseus, your moth…
We have all had the experience of passing an attractive person on the street. While you or I might let the memory go after a minute or two, for Joe, she was the girl of his dreams and he…
While "two losers in love" is popular with modern playwrights, Blackbird may be the bleakest example of the genre around. The Barrelhouse Theatre production of Adam Rapp's play offers an…
Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman is a story of black-on-black bigotry, parental abuse, internalized self-loathing, and alcoholism. In other words, just another fun night at the theatre. Ke…
In a new prologue written by David Grimm for Susanna Centlivre's The Gaming Table, Tonya Beckman Ross promises verbal virtuosity and laughs. It is a promise that is kept in spades by Fol…
Matthew J. Keenan's new play, A Christmas Carol just opened at Keegan Theatre, has a gritty realism that is unmatched among the holiday fare now playing in the DC area; it’s as bracing…
Imagination Stage's new musical production of Dr. Dolittle combines two stories, the traditional Dr. Dolittle tale and the story of its origins in letters written home by Hugh Lofting while …
As an experiment in audience participatory theatre, dog & pony dc's Beertown is an interesting and memorable adventure. As part of the civic adventure, audience members are encourage…
David Ives’ Venus in Fur, which had an acclaimed and multi-extended run at Studio Theatre earlier this year, opened on Broadway last night to strongly favorable critical response…
A central question for any two character play is whether the playwright can keep the audience interested. Sarah Treem's The How and the Why succeeds through an intelligent blend of perso…
If family theatre ratings, like Olympic diving, included a degree of difficulty factor, the Kennedy Center premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and her Dog! Â would earn a v…
Once in a while all of the stars align to create a magical theatre event like MetroStage's production of John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo. The script, the cast, the direction, the …
If you are looking for a crowd pleaser to open your theatre's season, a fine farce like Don't Dress for Dinner is an excellent choice. 1st Stage launches its new year with an enjoyable p…
With the Audience Choice Awards nominations being announced soon, it is a good time to consider and honor my favorite contemporary plays which debuted in the Washington area during the 2010-…
Abbott & Costello. Martin & Lewis. Now, add to the list of great comedy teams "Darwin and Squirrel." That's Darwin as in Charles Darwin, the nineteenth century father of …
