Roger Catlin - Page 7

Commedia dell’Arte was a theatrical style that developed in Italy more than 450 years ago. Intended for the lower classes, with exuberant physical movement, improvisation, lots of masks and stock characters like the Harlequin and Pulcinella, it was a celebratory perfect for the carnivale circuit.

What did our critic think of AMERICAN OPERA INITIATIVE: THREE 20-MINUTE OPERAS at Kennedy Center?

British playwright Mike Bartlett, born in 1980, takes up the legacy of London’s swinging 60s in his play Love Love Love currently running in a sharp, well-acted production at Studio Theatre.

Like many adoptees when they reach adulthood, Sun Mee Chomet had a desire to find her biological parent.

The nationally traveling version of the Broadway musical has made its Washington premiere at the Kennedy Center and is already attracting large crowds of adults and many children, some of which are attired in the costumes of its lead characters Elsa and Anna (though mostly Elsa).

The first Nutcracker appear at the Kennedy Center this year is from Ballet West, based in Salt Lake City. And as brisk and fresh as it feels, it comes as something of a surprise that its lineage goes back to the very first U.S. performance of what’s become the most popular ballet in the country by far. 

Michael Wilson’s adaptation of “A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas,” first staged in Houston but run for many years at Hartford Stage (where it has returned this season), has been a mainstay at the historic Fords since 2004.

Signature Theatre is helping expand the American Songbook to include rock and pop classics of a half century ago in cabaret shows this winter that will celebrate Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Burt Bacharach.

Out in an arid, underpopulated northeastern Brazil, an unusual but not entirely inconceivable love story plays out, presented as a kind of morality lesson or at least a cautionary tale. 

Virginia Woolf was onto something when she wrote her novel “Orlando: A Biography” 95 years ago — a tall tale of aristocracy and adventure for a poet who also happens to change gender. It rings true, too, in its adaptation by Sarah Ruhl, the clever and popular contemporary playwright whose version of the story was one of her earliest commissions in 1998.

They aren’t actually that in Whitney White’s concert cum critique “Macbeth in Stride” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. But they do backup singing, some choreographed dance moves (by Raja Feather Kelly), reply and advise the lead and never quite leave the stage, itself dressed up like a spangly nightclub revue (set by Daniel Soule, lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew). In all, it seems perfect for that girl group from Detroit.

What did our critic think of LA SALPÊTRIÈRE at Taffety Punk?

The Writer’s Center is just the right place to stage a reverent version of one of Harold Pinter’s best known plays.

There may be no better town for political drama than Washington, and no theater more historically consequential than Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated 158 years ago.

The all-woman production is top-notch, from the vibrant cast to the sharp direction of Elena Araoz. 

Controversial statues have been de-installed long before a racial reckoning meant the end of most Confederate statues in recent years. An 1840 marble sculpture of George Washington was removed from the U.S. Capitol rotunda because some didn’t like that he was shirtless (it sits now at the National Museum of American History) 

The tantalizing notion of a forbidden romance was part of Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana,” Colleen McCullough’s novel “The Thorn Birds” (made into a TV miniseries with Richard Chamberlain), and the hot priest that tantalized Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag.” 

It’s only the third time the Maryland regional powerhouses have collaborated, and people still recall their only other two such efforts, “Angels in America” in 2016 and “In the Heights in 2017. “Fela!” will be equally well-remembered alongside them. 

The National Symphony Orchestra’s intent this weekend was to pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of native son Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On” album, a high water mark for both social commentary and Motown soul. 

The latest musical production from the GALA Hispanic Theatre highlights a specific but not widely known genre — that of Afro-Peruvian dance, music and poetry. Specifically, it’s about  the work of the influential brother and sister team of Victoria and Nicomedes Santa Cruz, who took separate paths to enrich, enliven and expand Afro-Cuban culture in the 1960s and 70s.