Old things may become new. Handel's opera, Alcina, which premiered in 1735 has done just that " quite magically so. Washington National Opera has dared to take on the classic sorceress for t…
Jon Robin Baitz fairly sprays the audience with lines that atta-tack-tack like an AK47. You hear the moans of each hit and then explosion after explosion of laughter. In this way, his play V…
One doesn't go to Urban Arias expecting masterpieces. The whole adventure is about sharing in Founder and Artistic Director Robert Wood's risk-taking in mounting new or almost new operatic w…
Experiencing a Matthew Bourne ballet is like indulging in a whole box of Christmas crackers from Harrods " stuffed with surprises. It also reminds me of reading something by the late writer …
Hey, put down your guns! Â I'm not talking about hand-carrying, capitalist-and-NRA-endorsed devices you can buy on DC streets. I'm talking about the weapons of words we use to hate on each…
A legendary Spanish character, that has inspired work by luminaries including Moliere, Goldoni, and Mozart, has leapt onto the stage at GALA Hispanic Theatre in a sizzling new adaptation, Do…
Aida opened Washington National Opera's season, and the production is stunning grand opera. From the remarkable singing to the stage pictures filled with RETNA's startling, rich iconography,…
Everyone is doing them, doing them, doing them. Well, actually no. Some artists say they hate them, notably David Mamet who recently threatened to fine theaters the hefty sum of $25,000 if t…
Susan Galbraith and Howard Shalwitz, longtime friends and colleagues, talk about Howard’s return to the stage for The Arsonists as he prepares to depart from the company he co-founded …
An Octoroon is a big play. It makes you sit up and take notice. It makes you laugh and it makes you wince. More often than not it makes you squirm uncomfortably. I'd say that it is t…
It's a great time in Washington to re-evaluate through drama the weights and balances of our justice system. Downtown at Arena Stage we're watching Scalia's story, penned as The Originalist,…
Times is hard in Bonnie and Clyde. Some would say not so different from now. Climate shifting, turning the land into a dustbowl. Whole businesses destroyed. Banks going under. People out…
BON VOYAGE! A Happenstance Escapade is a soupçon, a patisserie, a confection, and, in its smellier moments, a big fromage! But most of all it is Mark Jaster's love letter to Paris. And th…
Some believe that if we keep people who have died in our thoughts and words then they are not really dead. Well, if so, then last night lights were blazing and the world was happily peopled …
The Kennedy Center was alive with The Sound of Music on Friday night. Almost every seat was taken in the vast Opera House auditorium for the opening night of the latest Broadway-style tourin…
DCTS writer Susan Galbraith returns to the Prague Fringe festival with Protest by Vaclav Havel, produced by her company Alliance for New Music-Theatre. ————R…
In most productions, Madame Butterfly is unabashedly atmospheric in its romanticism. "Orientalism" carries us back to composer Giacomo Puccini's time when the West imagined a fanciful…
It's in the air " an urgency to use theatre to get people into the conversation about what many see as our national crisis: the Trump presidency. Now Forum Theatre gets into the act presenti…
Starting with Kendra Rai's gorgeously hued Indian-spice costumes, conjuring tamarind, cinnamon and saffron, Imagination Stage's production of The Jungle Book brings to life the rich imaginat…
Mosaic Theater Company is only in its second year of producing but, planting itself firmly on Washington's H Street corridor in northeast Washington, the team of Ari Roth and Serge Seiden ha…
UrbanArias has gone wild! The company that pushes boundaries, reconceiving opera that is short, smart and fast, has given us an opera about a chimpanzee. Luckily, the chimpanzee, which we le…
Minimal. Stripped-bare. Essential. Pure. Questioning. Uncomfortable. Profound. Spiritual. This is what you must expect when you experience a production by Peter Brook, one of the world's gre…
Mozart would have been grinning at this youthful production of his tried-and-true opera that reached out to a new younger and diverse audience Friday night, March 17th. Washington National O…
Seeing something unlike anything you’ve seen before can be curious, mystifying, and even jarring. That was my experience this weekend with Venus Theatre's presentation of what was, …
Ford's has given us a magnificent and deeply moving musical about where we've come from, featuring, as its main character, America. The superbly attuned ensemble announces with full emotiona…