- Michael Russotto and Eric Sutton are sharing the stage in Steve Dietz' Lonely Planet at MetroStage. Both actors surprised and delighted me with their thoughtfulness and insights in…
Werther, the final production of Washington National Opera's 2011-2012 season, features some wonderful music in Jules Massenet's lyrical score. It is beautifully supported by the strong dyna…
Who says you can't make The Shrew work? I did. And I'll eat my hat. The last time I had seen a truly stunning production of The Taming of the Shrew was in New York's Central Park, a J…
Verdi's first major operatic hit, Nabucco, opened this weekend at the Kennedy Center in a sumptuous new Washington National Opera production by American director and designer Thaddeus Strass…
Space is both an inspiration and one that provides parameters to force/collision, a collective of multi-disciplinary artists. The found space of The Yards Park Canal creates a fitting backdr…
God of Carnage feels like a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the 21st century. Â The characters are better dressed, finer housed, super toned, and a whole lot funnier. But playwright Yas…
A comprehensive and stunning celebration of composer Dominick Argento's work is being presented at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, and it simply should not be missed. Composer Domi…
Contemporary opera is supposed to be a rare and endangered species. Robert Wood, Artistic Director of UrbanArias, says otherwise and believes fervently that it's a cause worth pursuing. His …
UrbanArias has not only landed once more in our midst, but opened its second season and first commissioned opera Sunday night to a full house. This world premiere of Positions 1956 with musi…
When Synetic cooks up Shakespeare, know that under Paata Tsikurishvili's fired-up direction, the team will tackle something bold and often delicious. However, is it any wonder that in Syneti…
As a great "temple" to American history, Ford's Theatre is a perfect venue for 1776, a revival of Sherman Edwards' and Peter Stone's musical about the Second Continental Congress and the wri…
There is something mesmerizing about hand puppets for young audiences. The real world is shrunk, made manageable, and essentially emptied out of grown ups. These puppets' soft, squidgy f…
Playing Molnár, the Hungarian playwright born in Budapest, is a little like snowboarding. You have to ride the dialogue well forward and stay dangerously fast and loose to get plenty of a…
Così fan tutte is one of Mozart's less popular works and is revered more amongst the cognoscenti than general audiences. Despite its beautiful music, the story has always seemed thin to m…
Recently I sat down with Aisha de Haas, jazz chanteuse, Broadway singer, and repertory actress. I had just watched her performance in Metro Stage's Josephine Tonight! where she'd knocked my …
Three shadowy figures stand on a scaffold high above the stage, looking down on a tangle of eight foot strings and contorting themselves in and around each other to bring inanimate blocks of…
What do you get when you cross three bears, reportedly kicked out on their hinies from the Kennedy Center, with an Animal Control cop from Fairfax County, whose dream is to feature his golde…
We knew when we walked into the Kennedy Center Family Theater space, this was not going to be an ordinary play. And when the central character, Ikarus, appeared, we  just knew this wa…
Opera Lafayette will be playing the Palace. Â Having had one performance at the Kennedy Center, Opera Lafayette next moves its production of this 18th century opera to NYC and then to the …
Once more Producing Artistic Director Carla Hubner and her In Series have taken on a double-bill of "pocket opera". And, as she has in the past, Hubner refuses to be either defined or limite…
This simply presented production exemplifies the astonishing power of theatre to unexpectedly grab your heart and carry you off into an adventure of the soul. It was an unexpectedly warm …
'Tis the season, and programming holiday fare for adults can either overload us on Sugarplum gooiness or, ignoring the holiday, risk appearing downright Scrooge-like. But Carla Hubner and he…
At the opening of the third production in Synetic Theater Company's Silent Shakespeare Theater Festival 'Sleep No More' I thought to myself, how can they top the muscular, driving ambition o…
Stay is a story in performance featuring theatre, dance, music and SLAM multimedia. The premiere production of this collaboration, conceived by Playwright/Director Heather McDonald and Chore…
Lucia di Lammermoor, which opened last night at Washington National Opera, is not your daddy's Lucia. If you had come to pay homage to Donizetti's original impulse and bask in its early roma…