626 stories by "Celia Wren"
A hallucinatory domesticity marks this battle in early 13th-century France. Instead of swords, pikes and longbows, the troops are armed with modern household objects and sporting gear: a ten…
"Pay attention!" You won't hear that instruction when you take your seat for Mickle Maher's play "There Is a Happiness That Morning Is," running as part of fallFringe. Still, you'd be advise…
A playwright's arsenal should include a kind of temperature-sensor-and-homing device. Such, at least, is the philosophy of Yael Farber, the dramatist and director whose adaptation "Mies Juli…
It is both fitting and slightly ironic that Charlayne Woodard's first words, at the start of "The Night Watcher," should be "Out of the blue . . . ." Fitting, because that phra…
Perseverance pays off for the characters in "Goodnight Moon," the sweetly impish children's musical based on the classic picture book by writer Margaret Wise Brown and illustrator Clement Hu…
You thought airline security was a hassle? The feisty senior citizen named Miche has had a showdown with a body scanner " and she hasn't even reached the airport yet. Her equally elderly fri…
To answer the obligatory question: Yes, there were bonobos (sort of). At least twice during the whimsical "Bonobo Milkshake," performed by Sally Silvers & Dancers at the American Dance …
The environment " initially " appears to be spartan: a couple of benches on a black floor, in front of school lockers, which are also black. But the visual starkness turns out to be deceptiv…
Congress did not have Bertolt Brecht in mind when it wrenched the government into shutdown mode early this week. But the politicians did achieve " indirectly " a small Brechtian feat Tuesday…
The thud of tools biting into rock. Dripping noises, suggestive of dank subterranean spaces. Early on in director Stevie Zimmerman's lively and absorbing production of "The Pitmen Painters,"…
Would you let your beloved talk you into become a toreador? Especially if it meant waging your first-ever bullfight in front of a king? You would if you were Cosme Rana, one of the love-beda…
Joan of Arc dared greatly. The prince of Elsinore dared " but did a lot more dithering. That difference aside, the protagonists of George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" and Shakespeare's "Hamle…
If you insist on being literal, there is no subway connecting urban America with Liberia, India, Bulgaria and an arena of transformation that may be Death. But on a metaphoric and acoustic l…
For a play whose characters spend considerable time standing at attention " or hovering, with disciplined posture, near a testifying witness " there's an impressive physical dynamism to the …
For an embodiment of anarchy, this whiskered visitor is awfully personable. After strolling into a glum household, sporting his trademark striped headgear, he beams and does a soft-shoe rout…
What's with the uptick in new plays about the Salem Witch Trials? This month, the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., premiered Liz Duffy Adams's "A Discourse on …
Boys will be boys " and therein lies Verona's misfortune. Such is the subtext in the gripping "Romeo and Juliet" brought to the Capital Fringe Festival by We Happy Few Productions. This prop…
The let's-put-on-a-show trope gets an edgy, psychologically sophisticated twist in Jordan Harrison's comedy "Act a Lady," now on view in a plush, spirited production from the Hub Theatre. W…
"Our Boys" is a play with pedigree. According to the Victorian Lyric Opera Company, which is giving this amusing if creaky piece a good-humored airing, H.J. Byron's comedy racked up a whoppi…
Allusions to showbiz, and to literature, pepper the fare now at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, the annual showcase for recently minted plays in Shepherdstown, W.Va. On the festi…
Objects have taken on a terrible significance for Becca and Howie Corbett, the married central characters in David Lindsay-Abaire's play "Rabbit Hole." A copy of "The Runaway Bunny" haunts a…
If he has managed to escape the crocodile that was hot on his trail, when last we heard, Neverland's Captain Hook might have a bright future as an entrepreneur. Not only has this endearingly…
Insurgent idealisms clash and echo in "Caesar and Dada," the frolicsome, piquantly brainy new play by Allyson Currin receiving its world premiere from WSC Avant Bard. And it's not just in th…
If you put together a garage band with your two best buddies, you would expect your own dad to remember the group's name, right? The trouble-prone sixth-grader Nate Wright certainly expects …
There are some for whom glitter-tracking is an occupational hazard. Sadie Hawkins and Buster Britches are two of those people. "Glitter gets all over your house; it gets all over everything,…
