Imagine there's no director " it's easy if you try " and no designers too. Imagine further that the actors, amidst their other theatrical responsibilities, must put this play together in ten…
Opening night came on a Sunday afternoon for Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns. It's an opera not seen in Washington for ages, and, headlined by the ravishing J'Nai Bridges, the e…
At Shakespeare Theatre's 2020 mock court Thursday night, the veteran Shakespearian actor Ed Gero described the special challenges facing a theater artist who takes on one of the Bard's works…
Molly Brown, a socialite, social activist and survivor of the Titanic disaster in real life " turned into a Tony-winning Tammy Grimes on stage and Debbie Reynolds at her pluckiest on screen …
Opera Lafayette has taken on a prodigiously ambitious task in tackling the "reawakening" of Ludwig van Beethoven's single operatic masterpiece (Fidelio) by giving us the composer's earlier a…
Peter Pan, having swept the Darling children up into the sky with fairy dust, brought them to Neverland, a venue full of pirates and mermaids. There, along with the lost boys, they did battl…
What's most remarkable about Ivo van Hove's shake-up of West Side Story is, for all the Belgian director's ruinous choices " chief among them, an overabundance of distracting video projectio…
Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Simon Godwin's choice of directorial debut wasn't a stretch. Godwin's newly minted tenure at STC begins with a vivid and zesty restaging of his …
There's a saying among actors: "There's no such thing as a perfect show." Anyone lucky enough to see Theater J's production of The Wanderers will have to politely disagree: top to bottom, th…
Paulina Guerrero is the choreographer for the tenth year anniversary of suicide.chat.room, opening this week at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Guerrero joins us to talk about the differences of…
Adam Gwon's chamber musical Ordinary Days is ostensibly the story of four young adults searching for love and their "life stories" in New York City. Yet the real love story at the heart …
We're all in pain " because of loneliness or loss, betrayal or illness " and playwright Young Jean Lee wants to offer us some comfort. This might not be immediately apparent, given the t…
Head Over Heels made a splash on Broadway in 2016, notably starring the first transgender actor playing an out nonbinary character in a Broadway musical  " Peppermint as Phythio. Now, …
When a show lists a Trauma Counselor in the credits and has a "healing space" outside of the theater proper, you know you are in for an intense experience. Kill Move Paradise will make you f…
At its Sidney Harman Hall, The Shakespeare Theatre has mounted what may be the quintessential production of James Baldwin's The Amen Corner. The Amen Corner is set in a church: a Black churc…
Marcus Kyd has two résumés (acting and directing) and a music catalogue. This may not sound special until you realize that both résumés, filled to the margins with production credits, do…
It's an image as ancient and archetypal as Medea and La Llorona, and as modern as Andrea Yates"a woman, a mother, standing over the bodies of her drowned children. From this shocking visual,…
You may feel like you've landed in a retro church service for the first 15 minutes of the sparkling new production of The Amen Corner from Shakespeare Theatre Company, what with the "praise …
The Shark, my desultory 3 year old, was hopping from place to place in Glen Echo Park in anticipation of seeing The Snowy Day and Other Stories, a musical adaptation of one of the most popul…
American History " some real, some imagined " will mark Arena's ten-production 2020-2021 season. The inaugural show at the Mead Center for American Theater will be a world-premiere musical a…
Waiting for Gun & Powder to begin, I was surrounded. To my left, a middle-aged couple, both white, very quiet. To my right, a younger couple, both male. Behind me, three African American…
Brave Spirits' two-year repertory of Shakespeare's history cycle continues with an impressively lively production of one of the Bard's more challenging plays, Henry the Fourth, Part 2. After…
To children, the world is often a large and overbearing place. Think of how difficult it would be if each chair you sat in was three feet tall, the table even higher, and the doorknob imposs…
Ladies"dig out your hat boxes, Crowns is back in town! The production at Creative Cauldron is captivating and beautifully relays the meaning, messages, stories and significance of church…
Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 is a gas giant of a play, Jovian in proportion, profoundly ambitious, wonderfully weird, beautifully written, Dostoyevskian in scope. It is three hours t…