Roger Catlin - Page 5

Signature Theatre’s cabaret series has been mining the riches of the 1960s for some time, from Bacharach to Woodstock, with repeat visits to Motown. A new show diverges to Memphis for its own flavor of gritty soul and the gems that came from its own indelible record label.

The latest Second City production at Woolly Mammoth aims to bring “Black joy” in the tradition of its past successes there, such as 2016’s “Black Side of the Moon.” That show came to D.C. on the teeth of a dispiriting election, as does the new one, “Dance Like There’s Black People Watching.”

As the first person to serve as Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra, Ben Folds has had several opportunities over the past few years to perform with the organization.

It was 20 years ago when 'Mean Girl' first hit movie theaters, cementing a certain kind of malevolent high school clique even as it launched a million memes, introduced a generation of actresses and established a pink dress code for its female fans years before “Barbie.” A rite of passage in itself, “Mean Girls” has never really gone away.

It was 30 years ago this week that a stylish Portland, Ore. lounge combo played its first gig, motivated by something with which Washington D.C. audiences could easily relate: politics.

It figures that a Riot Grrrls version of “The Tragedie of Macbeth” at Taffety Punk would focus on the witches - or three wyrd sisters, as they’re called here 

But the new play by Dave Harris at Studio Theater is framed the same way: Six people marooned in an afterschool detention classroom on the Friday before Martin Luther King weekend, who bicker, flirt, nearly fight, and wonder if the presiding teacher will ever come to sign forms allowing them to go home. 

Bandhouse Gigs, an outfit that assembles top local musicians to honor a variety of artists from Bob Dylan to the Stones, began its life outdoors at the Strathmore, honoring Nils Lofgren. For a big event Saturday with the full title “Strathmore Presents A BandHouse Gigs 20th Anniversary Tribute to DC Legends,” an attempt was made to honor no less than 24 acts over three and a half hours, involving, by one count, 75 different musicians. 

The latest Righteous Brothers farewell tour pulled into the Strathmore in Bethesda Thursday, entertaining an elderly crowd who enjoyed hearing their hits from the 1960s.

The talented actress and sometime playwright has appeared in dozens of shows in D.C. — and several at Signature, including an award-winning performance in its Ragtime last year. Here, she shares her passion for jazz singers from the golden era that have never gone out of style in a personable revue backed by a couple of ace musicians.

The Faction of Fools Theatre Company specializes in the arcane form of the Italian Renaissance, commedia dell’arte, with elaborate masks, exaggerated movements and a kind of extreme reading of what often are classic texts. The troupe’s “Commedia Romeo and Juliet,” revived earlier this year, was a good example of that. 

It’s hard to imagine the impact George C. Wolfe’s razor-sharp satire “The Colored Museum” must have had when it opened in New York nearly 40 years ago. 

The intent of Wolf Trap’s annual “Broadway in the Park” event is to blend the star power of the Great White Way (if it’s still called that) with the rising stars of the local co-presenter, Signature Theatre.

It was a one-two punch to fans of David Bowie in early 2016 when the rock star was suddenly pronounced dead and two days later, on what would have been his 69th birthday, released his final album, “Blackstar,” a preordained farewell addressing his demise.

After the former First Lady of Argentina died in 1952 at 33, after a life that inspired plays, books, movies, musicals and dance productions, she was such a charged figure everybody knew that simple burial would not do.

What did our critic think of DIXIE'S TUPPERWARE PARTY at Kennedy Center?

What did our critic think of HOMELESS GARDEN at Avant Bard?

The producer Larry Klein honored the memory of Leonard Cohen with a 2022 tribute album that had a hushed sensibility and taste, as well as an impressive array of vocalists. Hoping to continue that feel, he began work on an equally fine performance version with the same title, “This is Now: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen,” which played two nights with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center over the weekend. 

It’s the painting Girl with a Flute, long attributed to Vermeer, that adorns the program cover of the Washington Stage Guild’s world premiere production of “An Unbuilt Life.” 

You meet in the hotel lobby and go up the elevator in two groups of 10 to the fourth floor. Once assembled there, you’re led to a community room where you take your seat around a table covered in clumps of black earth that we’ll soon come to learn is peat. Irish peat, from the bogs. Three hundred pounds of it, shipped from the Emerald Isle.