Itai Yasur

Now on tour, a new musical makes landfall at Olney Theatre Center with a fantastical song worthy of our attention

Young Artists of America's BIG FISH was a night to remember for the next generation of singers, dancers and musicians.

Olney Theatre Center's AVAAZ charts one woman's journey from Tehran to 'Tehran-geles,' singing a bombastic song of freedom all the way.

TEMPESTUOUS ELEMENTS, Arena Stage's latest Power Play premiere, champions the under-appreciated, local historical figure Anna J. Cooper: mother of Black feminism, brilliant educator, and embattled teacher/principal at DC's M Street High School.

MISTAKES & MEDIA perfectly resembles the culture it attempts to speak out against: it's loud, has a short attention span, is obsessed with pop culture and completely unable to step away from it's smartphone, even in the theater. 

Far before the first lines are spoken director Aaron Posner, known for his unique reinventions of classics, and his creative team have created a new home for Stoppard's absurd spin on Shakespeare, and while doing so have breathed life into a classic nearing its 50th anniversary.

Remounting a work originally presented at Woolly Mammoth's rehearsal room earlier this year, the Alliance for New Music-Theatre now brings their original adaptation of METAMORPHOSIS to the new Capital Fringe performance venue. The Trinidad Theatre, located at 1358 Florida Ave NE, is exactly the type of small, hip, black box that DC isn't known for, and it's as good of a host as any for METAMORPHOSIS as the Alliance prepares to take their production to the Prague Fringe Festival later this month.

Armed with a new, more relevant, adaptation by Annie Baker, director John Vreeke has pulled together a lively and energetic take on Chekov that is a hilarious as it is heartbreaking. A great team of designers and extraordinary cast has made Round House Theatre's take on UNCLE VANYA a highlight of the season.

Poulenc's music is almost hard to believe; romantic without sweetness, contemporary without alienating, and among the extraordinary composers repertoire this epic opera stands out as a remarkable achievement, and this season Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello has designed a beautiful production to accompany it. That and some of the most impressive vocal power on display anywhere in the city makes the Kennedy Center's latest operatic offering an absolute joy to the senses.

While some might complement Clandestine-Arts' production of BARE: A POP OPERA for its 'can-do' attitude, there's a difference between the type of youthful inexperience that leads to theater that is exciting and new, and the type of reckless abandon that is at best moderately amusing and at worst incredibly dangerous. That is to say, there's nothing wrong with upstart theater company Clandestine-Arts' creative vision of producing emotion-driven musicals with low budgets, but theater is an incredibly technical art form. Whether the venue is a Broadway 2,000 seater, a high school auditorium, or a hole in the hall black box in Adams Morgan, there is never an excuse for a production so shoddily put together that the audience can reasonably fear for the performers safety, as well as their own; especially not at the admission price Clandestine is charging. At the end of the day, what really seems to be lacking is a sense of adult supervision.

Woolly Mammoth's beautiful theater in which every seat has an intimate view of the expansive stage and the company's diehard dedication to new plays has found another win in Lisa D'Amour's follow up to 2013's DETROIT. Upon entering audiences are immediately greeted with recordings of tribal music and a stage dense with flat planks giving the illusion of trees stretching far above. This play is all about transformations, sometimes subtle and sometimes ridiculous to the extreme, and it couldn't have found a better home than Woolly, who's aesthetic seems motivated by the constant need to innovate, explore, and reinvent, not only from season to season and production to production, but often from act to act and even scene to scene. All around, the creative, production, and design teams have risen to the challenge of A'Mour's play and together have created an epic highlight in the DC theater scene.

Disney is known for bringing the magic to its theatrical events, but there's no enchantment in this touring production of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Instead, NETworks has skimped on the production values and has presented a night of theater that is often tacky and rarely captivating. In other words, this BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is more beastly than beauty.

It seems only fitting that in its efforts to introduce a musical form as grown-up as the opera to younger audiences, that the Kennedy Center has picked for this holiday season the children's classic THE LITTLE PRINCE, a story all about grown-ups trying to understand children trying to understand grown-ups. As the author's original dedication reads, 'All grown-ups were children first,' and in this family friendly production, the Kennedy Center has put forward something for the grown-up and the child in all of us.

The original score by Cushing is a surprising gem, with extremely well written and witty lyrics and catchy, memorable music sung with bravado and finesse by the talented cast.

While an oldies-filled jukebox revue complete with a nod to today's boy bands might not sound like the most appealing night of theater DC has to offer, Arena's skillfully lighthearted take has the audience gasping, laughing, singing along, and even dancing on stage, so take the plunge into your radio and let Five Guys Named Moe show you the way.

From Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninoff to Shostakovich, the BSO treated the Music Center at Strathmore to a musical journey that bridged romantic and contemporary Russian music.

With a strong cast and surprising production values, KAT's THE ADDAMS FAMILY is a smile inducing, laugh-fest the brings cheese, heart, and a high-energy score to Kensington Town Center.

Marc Goldsmith's play about the romantic misadventures of a little person, both in stature and emotional maturity, is making its DC-area premiere after its original award-winning New York International Fringe Festival production in 2006.