"Drama's vitallest expression is the common day / That arise and set about us," wrote the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson " words that would suit as a preamble to many of Annie Ba…
Never say never.I thought I was completely over and done with "A Midsummer Night's Dream."Having seen it dozens of times, indoors and outdoors, in productions influenced by the Renaissance o…
A jaded theater critic falls in with vampires in "St. Nicholas," the popular monologue that helped make Irish playwright Conor McPherson's name roughly 20 years ago. It has a couple things i…
Big established musicals and new plays by women lead a rangy field in the 2016 Helen Hayes Awards, announced Monday evening at the National Theatre. The Shakespeare Theatre Company's "Kiss M…
When the required lump is raised in your throat as Jenna Sokolowski's Laura hands Thomas Keegan's Gentleman Caller a shiny crystal memento of her awakening, you know that the emotional guida…
The saga continues for the Shakespeare Theatre Company as it tries to consolidate its scattered operations into a new administrative facility two blocks from Arena Stage.On Wednesday, STC wi…
"It's pretty clear that there's a love affair between audiences and 'Revelations,' " choreographer Alvin Ailey wrote in his autobiography, speaking of the work that would become the s…
"Immigrant!" Anita sneers, playfully but dismissively, at her lover, Bernardo, in the run-up to "West Side Story's" glorious Act 1 number, "America." The time is the mid-1950s, when a large …
A moment arrives in the harrowing and absorbing "I Shall Not Hate" that is so unbearably sad you may want to hide your eyes. As this monodrama by Izzeldin Abuelaish and Shay Pitovsky is in H…
If you audition for a Thomas W. Jones II show with a standard tune from a Broadway musical, you may be told, "Great. Now, can you sing us something that's not in that tradition? Because we w…
TOWSON " Center Stage aimed to open "As You Like It" Friday, but the company responded to the blizzard forecast and let critics in Thursday night. Nimbleness is the watchword for the troupe …
For insight into why blue-collar America is so riled up, fed up and downright distraught in 2016, "Sweat" makes for " if nothing more novel " a useful and colorful bases-covering restatement…
His canvases may still be selling for a relative pittance, but the Pablo Picasso who shows up at a Parisian bar in 1904 is making a killing on personality. As zestily portrayed by Matthew J.…
The shadow-puppet fairies in WSC Avant Bard's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are a striking lot. Oberon is a muscular figure with an angry thicket of hair. Titania's attendant Cobweb dangles on…
Wendy Wasserstein's "The Sisters Rosensweig" is a tough play: Wasserstein thought it was a Chekhovian drama but was surprised at how much early audiences laughed. It's a drawing-room comedy,…
Partway through dramatist Will Eno's quirky, philosophical and nearly plot-free "Middletown," an eccentric couple who have opted to tour a run-of-the-mill small American community explain th…
Stephen Adly Guirgis won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year for "Between Riverside and Crazy," a wise, wry portrait of an embittered ex-New York cop whose entire reason for being is the …
"A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder" tidily wraps serial murder into an operetta packet with a big ribbon of farce. The 2013 show, touring through the end of this month at the Kennedy …
In a deal that rockets Signature Theatre into a whole new producing orbit, the Arlington company will team up this fall with the Walt Disney Co. to present a world-premiere musical version o…
At the start of "The Critic," a self-regarding theater reviewer " is there any other kind? " scans the morning papers and disgustedly tosses them all away. They're filled, it seems, with the…
Ed Dixon has two distinct gears in his new backstage autobiography "Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose" " adoring, and aghast. For a pleasantly conversational hour, Dixon recalls himsel…
NEW YORK " Right up to the end, David Bowie was exploring new universes. In this case, musical theater was his destination. Just 36 days before his death, in fact, a musical featuring Bow…
When and how did it all go so wrong in the Middle East? Aaron Davidman provides a breathtaking litany at the opening of his solo show "Wrestling Jerusalem.""Golda blew it," Davidman declares…
NEW YORK " Suzan-Lori Parks interrupts herself to look up a word on her cellphone, because that's the kind of thing the Pulitzer-winning playwright does. She's playful yet exacting: Is it fa…
Michael Kahn can quote the first review he ever got as a student director in the 1960s. It was cruel."You remember the bad ones," the Shakespeare Theatre Company's artistic director says, wa…