Hard-hitting, issue-packed, relevant plays are all the rage right now, but if you are weary of such emotional drain, and would just like some old-fashioned fun, look no further than Olney's …
The air was electric at Kennedy Center Saturday night with the promise of a great fight mounted as opera on stage, and I had what amounted to ringside seats. Champion clearly had some he…
The opera Dead Man Walking is a journey of harrowing truth and compelling beauty. If, as Sister Helen Prejean says, " Grace is waking up to the gospel of encounter," then Director Francesca …
I am being given an intimate look inside the rehearsal rooms of Washington National Opera's Dead Man Walking under the direction of WNO's Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. This report ma…
A rare inside look at the making of an opera. Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello invited Susan Galbraith to sit in on rehearsals of Dead Man Walking…
Big News at the Kennedy Center. Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theater rocked the place last night.. And no one rushed to exit the Opera House auditorium (as they often do at the KC) until …
To the degree that a creative artist can draw you into his world and make you follow him regardless, to merge with his very humanity, that is the measure of his worth. By this measurement, R…
Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has created a dance-theatre piece that is part ballet, modern, and Russian folk dance with plenty of comical pantomime to share the much-beloved folktale of hi…
As I walked up the steps into Kennedy Center's Opera House for the season's opening of American Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake, my heart was fluttering as if for a first love. As indeed it was; …
Washington National Opera announced its programming for the 2017/2018 season on Monday, almost three months earlier than usual. The upcoming season is all part of Kennedy Center's continued …
Watching an opera take its first life breath is witnessing a high-risk birth. There were some serious devotees on hand at Kennedy Center's Family Theatre to support Washington National Opera…
Monday night, Jon Fosse's play felt like a blast of early Pinter with some hoary frost of Edward Munch thrown in for good measure. You know: a threesome locked for eternity in jealous…
As the dimming lights turned the deep red walls of the Kennedy Center Opera House into darkness, the spiky celestial chandeliers seemed to glow with unusual brilliance, welcoming us i…
It takes a lot of balls but maybe not much brain to call a musical "Urinetown," and the joke is made several times in the show just what a terrible name it is. But that's the point. …
Twenty-five years ago at the small Eureka Theatre in downtown San Francisco, Tony Kushner pushed forth the first iteration of a play that would become what many feel is not only a great Amer…
For the past 25 years, Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has memorably gifted our community by remounting one of its recent favorite productions in free performances.  These used to be…
– Notes from the talk delivered by Susan Galbraith at The Smithsonian on August 16th – On a good day in the Greater Washington area there are more than 15 opera companies of vari…
In 1692, Tituba and a gaggle of Puritan girls frolicked by night in the woods outside Salem and allegedly conjured up the devil, an event that embroiled the witnesses and a whole township in…
 Is it true, as Stephen Sondheim insists, that mostly audience expectations dictate whether a work is to be experienced as an opera or a musical? When pushed, however, he is equally a…
 Well, this one's for the birds! Full disclosure. I love a production that is steeped in fanciful storytelling. My background as a former teacher of theatre-movement makes me a sucker…
In a season where we've been hammered by political name-calling and divisive fearmongering, the threat of climate change and global terrorism, and protests and gun violence in hometowns acro…
Under the magic of its yellow-and-blue striped tent, Cirque du Soleil has brought what may be its most rare and delightful show to date. Kurios reminds us that little and "oldie" can be …
 22 Boom! sounded like a sure Fringe favorite. Advertising that it does 23 plays in 70 minutes, it promised something like a Fringe buffet. Light, clever, crisp entertainment, and f…
Do Not Disturb is big as Fringe shows go -an ambitious chamber opera in fact, with 11 singers, 5 instrumentalists, plus stage and music directors. As in his previous work, the "hor…
Unless you have been living under a rock, you know the American musical has been redefined and re-colored by the talented Lin-Manuel Miranda and the phenomenon of Hamilton. Well, Danny Ba…