319 stories by "Robert Michael Oliver"
Oliver Sacks’ non-fiction book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, consists of a series of neurological case studies. Each study examines one of Sacks’ patients, each of who…
There is nothing quite like “a vast morsel.” When Jane Ira Bloom plays her soprano saxophone, her wiry body jutting and jagging to the notes popping out of her horn, vastness of …
The KC Jazz Club opened its 14th season last Friday with a soul-tossing river of jazz. Gary Bartz starts the evening with a prayer: “Sadness must leave this room,” as Paul Bollen…
Part II of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America opened last weekend at the Round House Theatre. A joint production with the Olney Theatre Center, the restaging of Kushner’s modern da…
Synetic Theatre, which gave Washington a Silent Hamlet, now brings audiences a wordless Dante’s Inferno. And a silent 100 minutes never sounded so good. Created by Paata Tsikurishvili …
Theresa Rebeck’s sharp-knuckled comedy, What We’re Up Against, received its regional premiere at Keegan Theatre this week, and the laughs abound. An architectural firm hires a yo…
Oh, what a difference 200 years make! Jane Austin’s novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published anonymously in 1811. Folger’s Sense and Sensibility, adapted by Kate Hamill and di…
Round House Theatre and Olney Theatre Center have teamed up for a truly remarkable Washington event: Parts 1 & 2 of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Angels in America. On Mond…
Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, now playing at Studio Theatre, is a fabulous, funny, smart, and ever more relevant vision of a world in the midst of upheaval. Director Michael Kahn, always …
The 4615 Theatre Company returns to Woolly Mammoth’s classroom theatre with its DC premiere of Saviana Stanescu’s Aliens with Extraordinary Skills. With its touching story, en…
Not long ago, Washington was the Murder-Capital of the USA. Crack Wars. Drive-Bys. Domestic Violence. Police Brutality. And all on a daily basis. The Murder-Capital of Europe in 1993 was app…
Let’s say a wealthy patron approaches an ensemble theatre company with a proposition:Â “Shakespeare? Why so much Shakespeare? Why so revered? Surely, other playwrights deserve …
Act Like a Grrrl! by the Actors Bridge Ensemble opened at the Martin Luther King Library this Thursday. More paratheatre than straight performance, this rendition of Act Like a Grrrl! repres…
Act 3 of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) is entitled, “Exorcism” and, indeed, the infamous Martha and George exorcise their demons, as well as th…
We Know How You Die, the Upright Citizens Brigade’s improvised, audience participation exploration of the Oracle, its predictive methodology, and its impact on the American political&#…
I’ll be frank: for much of 8 Stops, Deb Margolin’s newest solo performance piece, now at Unexpected Stage Company, I was bored. I didn’t necessarily want to commit suicide,…
Chisa Hutchinson’ The Wedding Gift takes its audience into a fascinating world: an exotic “paradise” where matriarchy rules and the white / black power dynamic is turned on…
Ronan Noone's The Second Girl received its second chance opening at the Contemporary American Theater Festival last weekend and, like its hardscrabble characters, it's a well-deserved second…
Bags and umbrella in hands, a young woman arrives late for the theater, apologizing profusely and comically all the while. She notices the "live" caged bird on stage while proclaiming what a…
Susan Miller's 20th Century Blues, which opened last weekend at Shepherdstown's Contemporary American Festival, speaks right from the heart of successful, east coast boomer women. F…
The Contemporary American Theater Festival opened Friday, July 8, 2016, for the 26th time: five new plays with five new stories to tell. In Chistina Anderson's pen/man/ship at…
Midway through Glacier: a climate change ballet, a lone dancer, Therese Gahl, glided onto the stage. Costumed in a vibrant blue tutu, her long legs and arms and their deep earth tones,…
The Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is approaching its second quarter of a century of new American plays. This year’s rot…
At the center of Bruce Norris’ tragicomic exploration of American “community” hangs Kenneth (Win Britt), the Korean War Vet who returns home only to commit suicide in his f…
There’s no question that Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a problem play, fraught with old hates that were once considered justified and old beliefs that have long lost their …
