The Q-Fest Round Three was a full eight hours of theatre and talk-backs featuring 20 playwrights (five per theatre). Artists from Adventure Theatre MTC, ArtsCentric, 4615 Theatre Company, an…
Before I start the review of the last act of this new play, let me be clear that this is a work in progress, and this was the first public reading of the entire work (over two Tuesdays). It …
Families are never easy. Add in generations of "heritage," familial roles, declining wealth, and seething rage, and a family business meeting becomes incendiary. . . . there was enough tensi…
On Sunday night, nearly 150 households that had signed up for The Colonial Players Virtual Pub Reading brought their A game to a mini-festival of four, one-act plays and a Mad Libs-type of a…
"Zero" is enigmatic, devious, heartbreaking, and breathtaking. Set in a private reform school/residential treatment center called St. Vedastus Academy for Misguided Teens, it does a masterfu…
In 2018, Angela Wilson's play about the Memphis sanitation workers strike in 1968 first debuted as part of the Angelwing Project in Anne Arundel County, MD. Angela Wilson is a founder and pr…
There is good news and bad news. The good news is that the City Fairfax Theatre Company is putting on a live show. The bad news is that is was rained out last night, so I didn't get to see i…
"Spirit Seekers" is a quick romp with a couple of chills and some really funny moments brought to life on Zoom through the efforts of the Dark Horse Theatre Company. It was an engaging, live…
"Wannabe" is an intriguingly deep dive into the lives of five Black kids that follows them from the early 1980s to young adulthood in Front Royal, VA. There are also three white characters "…
Day 10, the final day of Synetic artists' epic 30-story interpretations of tales from The Decameron, has come to an end. However, the stories will be available until July 31, 2020. They all …
Day 9 finds us with three stories that explore loss and coming to grips with it in unexpected ways. All three stories of Day 9 were complex emotionally and featured the movement-based theatr…
This was one day in which masks and social distancing figured prominently, and the music was striking. Day 8 was very physical and beautifully graceful. Even falling down had a poetic grace …
I think that Day 7 could safely be called "Court Jester Day' in the pantheon of Synetic's Decameron. From dolls to clowns to stick figures, it was a day to just be jovial. This was a lighthe…
Day 6 was an extravaganza of dancing in all three stories, which added an extra fillip to these tales of love. The first offering by Valentina Palladino (based on "Day 5, Story 9") was a sto…
Day 5 was thought-provoking and ran the gamut from sheer silliness (and very funny silliness, too) to being driven to the point of madness when everything has been upended. It certainly made…
Joshua Cole Lucas started off Day 4's offerings, basing his story on Day 6 Story. This was very much a nod to the Italian Commedia dell'arte, and proved to be a witty romp. Chichibio is prep…
Day 3 started out very spiritually, and then segued into the profane (in the sense of "sacred and profane.")Â Elena Velasco based her very cryptic story on "Day 6, Story 10" of The Decame…
Synetic, that wonderfully physical innovative movement theater in Crystal City, has come up with a bold streaming idea. They have taken chapters from "The Decameron," a collection of novella…
Salvation can come from unexpected sources. In this play, set in a  flat in Ladbroke Grove in West London in 1952, salvation comes from an ex-doctor in the form of a nascent friendship. I…
In the first of three offerings on July 11, Mandi Lee, who based her tale on Day 6, Story 8, takes us on an epic journey of change. And it all happens in one session in another wise deserted…
This filmed play is an enhanced archive recording from 2016 and features the original English cast. This is an incredibly thoughtful and anguished work and brilliantly produced. . . . It is …
For a show set entirely in a small, out-of-the-way girls' bathroom in a high school, this was a show that was surprisingly big. It was big in ideas and concepts. As a very nice touch, pre-sh…
This was a brisk, mildly diverting new play reading in three acts presented by Maryland Theatre Ensemble. The structure lent itself to elliptical story-telling as it is comprised of three mo…
One judge wore a cream bathrobe with "JUDGE" embroidered on the chest. One wore her robes and looked quite serious. One cracked herself up at one point with her pun (to be fair, everyone had…
'Transferal' by Jack Novak was the last in Spook Action's New Works in Action that was presented for the last month or so on-line on their YouTube channel. Fittingly, it was about letting go…