If you walk by Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater this month between 8-10PM you might feel your soul elevate if the stirring harmony of the Fisk Jubilee Singers leaks through the doors of Kreeger Theater into the night. World-premiere musical Jubilee, written… Read More
Written and directed by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, Studio Theater’s production of P.Y.G., or the Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle at Studio Theater is a boisterous, anarchic, and quirky look at race in America through the filter of music and the lens of the lens. What you get is… Read More
If Gordon Gecko took up playwriting in prison, Junk is the play he would pen (in the pen). Directed with a tireless foot on the accelerator by Jackie Maxwell, Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar’s (Disgraced) rapid-fire script offers an unflinching post mortem on the origins of debt… Read More
Signature Theater’s production of The Grand Hotel, based on the 1929 German novel by Vicki Baum, uniquely combines a bleak morality play with the grandiosity of a large-scale musical. At the glamorous Grand Hotel in 1928 Berlin, a braided storyline weaves the lives of eclectic guests… Read More
The Ford’s Theater revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods is a magical romp through the forest with your favorite fairy tale characters and their “what if they were real” issues. The result is like an extended session on a therapist’s… Read More
Despite its hip title, JQA at the Arena Stage Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle at the Mead Center for American Theater is not Hamilton 2.0 – the John Quincy Adams Story (1767-1848). Playwright and director Aaron Posner’s world premiere has the freshness of Lin Manuel Miranda,… Read More
If you go to Queen of Basel looking for a humorous send-up of of arty-farty snobs in the world of curators and collectors, you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re up for a searing flagellation of the Latin monolith, you’ll be rewarded with this audacious and unflinching… Read More
The Shakespeare Theater Company’s farcical pageant Vanity Fair is a hyperactive love affair between a morality play and a burlesque musical review, appropriately meta-set on a stage within a stage. Unapologetically slapstick, the play nonetheless bares the pathos of women of limited options simply seeking a better… Read More
Villainy sells. In Shakespeare Theater Company’s Richard III, the titular character, played with oily evil by Matthew Rauch, holds spellbinding sway, unspooling audience fantasies of shrugging societal shackles to indulge in our every narcissistic whim with impunity, nay, reward. Titillation eventually sours but it’s an irresistible… Read More
“Admission” (n.) is a word of dual meaning. It can mean “the process or fact of being allowed to enter a place, organization, or institution,” but it also can mean, “acknowledging the truth of something.” Joshua Harmon’s riveting Admissions at the Studio Theater embodies both these definitions in… Read More
