319 stories by "Robert Michael Oliver"
'Proclaiming Presence from the Washington Stage,' a new book by Blair A. Ruble, tells a history with repercussions today.
For the love of Shakespeare! There's no doubt that Americans love their Shakespeare. In fact, many consider him America's best playwright"? Then again, many Americans also love their fake ne…
Rachel Bonds' new play, Curve of Departure, now playing at Studio Theatre, is that rarity among modern plays: it’s traditional storytelling at its most engaging. Enter Rudy, played …
Dylan Thomas–known in the theatre world for his radio play, Under Milkwood, and in the prose world for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, and in the poetry world for “Do Not …
Jazz pianist Christian Sands appeared at the KC Jazz Club last Friday evening with drummer Jerome Jennings and bassist Eric Wheeler: together, the pulse and rifts and energy lifted both hear…
After the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963, Nina Simone turned her singing career toward the Civil Rights’ struggle. After a decade of singing mostly popular…
When the Born Again have the opportunity to witness, they do it before their congregation, and everyone shouts “Hallelujah!” When the Stand Up Comics have that same opportunit…
Lope de Vega, the author of We Happy Few Productions’ current offering at The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, was one of the most prolific writers in world history. Hundreds of plays and t…
Only the indubitable Caryl Churchill could, in a play about a contemporary dysfunctional British family, give us an opening restaurant scene that includes the likes of: Dull Gret (a warrior …
The Isley Brothers rocked into The Kennedy Center's Concert Hall this last Sunday night. Though the Hall is still standing, it may never be the same. Since their founding in 1955, theÅ
The Ron Carter Trio visited The Kennedy Center this Friday night. Consisting of bassist Carter, pianist Donald Vega, and guitarist Russell Malone, the harmonics couldn’t have been swee…
Dizzy Gillespie’s 100th birthday celebration at The Kennedy Center jazzed the Eisenhower Theatre last night. I’m sure the rooftop is still aglow this morning. Dizzy Gillespie (19…
Nonagenarian jazz–what is it? It’s Lee Konitz leading a quartet that includes George Schuller on drums, Jeremy Stratton on bass, and Dan Tepper on piano. And it couldn’t be…
Arthur Miller is best known for his two American classics: Death of a Salesman and All My Sons. American high schoolers still know him for his third significant work, The Crucible. Although …
Big Pharma is not only big, it's growing bigger by the panic attack, by the back spasm, by the botched terrorist attack. We want that pill that makes us happy because that happy is our lates…
Early Pinter is marked by menace. The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming leave a chill in the air, and in the audience’s agitated brain. We are disturbed as much …
The story of Cordelia Lynn’s Lela & Co. is a universal story, told across many borders and many nationalities, ethnicities, and races; during wartime and peacetime, at Super Bowls,…
Woolly Mammoth’s The Arsonists is not so much an entertainment, even though I laughed frequently, psychotically–and loud, as it is a paratheatrical event during which an absurd p…
Lord, in a bourgeois town It’s a bourgeois town I got the bourgeois blues Gonna spread the news all around Any Washington theatregoer who craves a working class show, where the charact…
Tradition Be Damned Immersive has taken over a desanctified church at 700 Delaware Street, SW, Washington, DC. Known as the Blind Whino, or better by the fanciful colors that electrify the c…
Though written 30 years ago, few contemporary plays speak so profoundly to America’s current situation in the world as does David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, now playing at…
Fresh from World War I and a devastated Europe, The Roaring Twenties indeed roared across America. In the midst of a raging economic boom fueled in no small part by the advent of film and ra…
Family-friendly musicals are relatively rare these days. Family-friendly musicals that have adult themes are even rarer. Big Fish, with book by John August and music and lyrics by Andrew Lip…
Fear City is the South Bronx in July 1977. There is nothing particularly unique about that July in that year in that place. Fear, it seems, is a way of life in the South Bronx. Kara Lee Cort…
The Amish with their horse and buggy, 19th century culture; their simple, old world uniforms and habits; their infamous Rumspringa where the teenage Amish is given the opportunity to choose …
