744 stories by "John Stoltenberg"
When the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” comes on the pre-show soundtrack, it’s a tipoff that C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters is going to be a diabol…
“Some of my best friends are white men,” says Sherri, the very liberal white woman who handles admissions at a small New England prep school. Avowedly antiracist, Sherri is on a …
If there’s such a thing as gay wit, Paul Rudnick’s got a load of it. Imagine Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward if they could be out about it. Yeah, Rudnick ranks with them and then …
It was “a century of struggle” before women in the United States won the right to vote in 1920, and the centenary of the amendment that cinched it, the nineteenth, is just around…
DC’s two major federally funded theater venues have both announced that performances will be uninterrupted by the federal shutdown. According to the website of Ford’s Theatre,…
When I was a kid, magic tricks and puppet shows were forerunners to my love of theater. They were like my gateway drug. I got hooked on the wonder and live storytelling. And to this day I as…
“Laws are like sausages,” goes the adage. “It's better not to see them being made.” As it happens, I have a good mental picture of how sausages are made, because for …
Theater and theology have been boon companions for eons. Ever since religion was invented, humans have wanted divinities with drama. Way back in polytheistic antiquity, playgoers imagined go…
Cirque du Soleil’s Crystal is staged on a slick sheet of ice where acrobats and skaters combine to create an amazing entertainment. A spectacular array of chills and charms to thrill a…
There are only ever seven characters onstage in this majestic production"three of them former slaves"but it is as if multitudes of Africans lost crossing the ocean or sold in chains are evok…
The character Lianne Harvey plays in J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, Sheila Birling, really fascinated me. Sheila stands out as no ordinary ingenue. During the course of the pl…
I can’t recall seeing another play by someone who came to playwrighting from standup, but I’ll not soon forget how I laughed my feckin head off at Sonya Kelly’s How to Keep…
Fans of zany humor might remember when AnyStage Theater popped up in the Capital Fringe Festival with its ridiculous (and mostly fact-free) takes on Margaret Thatcher and Amelia Earhart. The…
The controversial scene that ends this “true story of a little Jewish play” has been foretold at length throughout the show and mentioned in much publicity, so it’s no spoi…
“To let one’s hair down” is to open up, be freer than usual, be willing to share. The idiom is apt for what transpires in Barber Shop Chronicles, an extraordinary explorati…
J. B. Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls"a drawing-room drama set in England in 1912 and written there in 1944"has landed in DC with uncanny currency. Now at Sidney Harmon Hall in …
I remember being so bored by my high school American history class that I got a D in it. This was not normal. My report cards always had A’s and B’s. So the kindly elderly woman …
If you’re in a mood for some boisterous joy this holiday weekend"some soul-rousing solos and heartbreaking harmonies in the tenor/bass range"nab a ticket to The Choir of Man. The touri…
Cry It Out"an exhilaratingly funny and touching comedy about new parenthood"is a joyous reminder that when a playwright of Molly Smith Metzler’s skill and compassion writes “clos…
Long before the recent shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Derek Goldman had planned to direct a production of Our Class with student actors at Georgetown University. It is…
“Do you still believe there can be a country for all?” When that blunt question comes up in The Agitators"Mat Smart’s deeply affecting play about the friendship between Sus…
Long Way Down, adapted from the renowned young adult novel in verse by Jason Reynolds, is told in the voice of a 15-year-old named Will and performed by the prodigiously talented Justin W…
If you’ve ever been in an acting class, a group-encounter session, a sensitivity training, or kindergarten, you’ll feel right at home in The Fever. Even if you’re by na…
The vexing concept of consent in sex gets a seductively smart parsing in Anna Zeigler’s Actually. Now playing in an electrically well-acted Theater J production directed by Johanna Gre…
There is so much to be blown away by in The Fall, the powerful and thrilling performance piece devised and performed by seven South African students. Their majestic musicality, their propuls…
