Carolyn Kashner

How could you not love a play about theater critics? Especially where, as in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, now available in virtual format through Spooky Action Theater’s website, the critics are pompous, abrasive and criminally uninformed. Moon (Robert Bowen Smith) and Birdboot (Steve Beall), critics both, are the only audience – perhaps we should say witnesses – to the butchery known as Murder in Muldoon Manor. Muldoon is an enterprise so catastrophic that it makes Nothing On (the calamity being performed by the actors in Noises Off) seem like Beckett, or Shakespeare, or – Stoppard.

Walking into the Nu Sass world premiere 'Weep' is like stepping into the living and work space of its characters.

HUB Theatre's production of American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables, directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer, features powerful moments, but certain artistic choices prevent the production from making its full impact.

The Hub Theatre, specializing in new plays that highlight our common humanity, is thrilled to present the world premiere of American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables by playwright Sam Hamashima, directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer.American Spies will run from July 12 - August 4, 2019 on the stage of NextStop Theatre in Herndon.

Spooky Action Theater is good about seeking out interesting works from unusual sources. Their latest is from Carole Frechette, an award-winning Canadian playwright whose work has only sporadically been produced in the states.

Last season on Broadway there was a play called Time and the Conways presented at Roundabout Theatre Company. The play hadn't been seen on Broadway since 1937 and after seeing it I understood why. That said, the production had a great look and a very good cast so you could forget about the stodginess of the script. Bethesda, Maryland-based Quotidian Theatre Company's current production of Hobson's Choice bears a resemblance to Time and the Conways because you don't ever see it performed. Unfortunately, the production values – a result of a limited budget – and some questionable casting can't hide all the warts of Harold Brighouse's over 100-year-old script.

In the course of American history there have been 44 men to become President of the United States. In the course of just under two hours, 5 very capable women embody those 44 men, plus their wives, mistresses, political opponents, and everyone's favorite non-POTUS, Benjamin Franklin.

One week before the first anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration as President, NextStop Theatre Company, near Reston Town Center, has debuted the 45th entry into the popular play 45 Plays for 45 Presidents to a sold out opening weekend.

Pinky Swear's production of Natalie Ann Piegari's new play SAFE AS HOUSES boasts an excellent cast, a well-designed set, and a gripping concept: what would you do if your husband, who vanished ten years ago, suddenly showed up at your house as if no time had passed at all? But the intriguing idea never gains forward motion. Due to an underdeveloped script, a plot never materializes, and the experience is stagnant and underwhelming.

Horton Foote's NIGHT SEASONS, directed by Jack Sbarbori at the Quotidian Theatre Company, examines the nature of a life defined by money and greed, and the notion that perhaps living is the greatest punishment of all. Foote, best known for his 1962 screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird, delivers a quiet critique of capitalist culture and asks us to consider what "home" means. NIGHT SEASONS places us in Harrison Texas, 1963 on Josie Weems' (Jane Squier Bruns) 93rd birthday, though the play deals in flashbacks and the setting easily slips back and forth through 1923-1963 and the years in between. Josie Weems (Jane Squier Bruns) is the manipulative glue that holds the rambling Weems family together by subtly managing finances and allowing and prohibiting marriages at her discretion.

Quotidian Theatre Company wraps up the 2017 season with the Washington, DC area premiere of Horton Foote's NIGHT SEASONS.

The Hub Theatre will present THE LATE WEDDING by Christopher Chen. The production is a marriage of firsts! Hub's production marks the play's DC area premiere and the company's first collaboration with Helen Hayes Awards-Nominated Director Kate Bryer (Associate Artistic Director, Imagination Stage).

Exquisitely timed for the final run to the White House, Keegan Theatre 's production of 'What We're Up Against' is a whomping good time. GIven the theme of male mediocrity confronted by female professionalism, comparisons between the characters onstage with current candidates and talking heads will be inevitable. This is just the comic jolt this town needs, see it now!

The Keegan Theatre opens its 20th season with the regional premiere of Theresa Rebeck's What We're Up Against, a scathing, ferocious comedy about sexism in the workplace. Set in ahighly competitive architecture firm, What We're Up Against takes an explosive look at the complicated battle of the sexes and one woman's response when she tires of slamming into the glass ceiling.

The Keegan Theatre opens its 20th season with the regional premiere of Theresa Rebeck's What We're Up Against, a scathing, ferocious comedy about sexism in the workplace. Set in ahighly competitive architecture firm, What We're Up Against takes an explosive look at the complicated battle of the sexes and one woman's response when she tires of slamming into the glass ceiling.

The Keegan Theatre opens its 20th season with the regional premiere of Theresa Rebeck's What We're Up Against, a scathing, ferocious comedy about sexism in the workplace. Set in a highly competitive architecture firm, What We're Up Against takes an explosive look at the complicated battle of the sexes and one woman's response when she tires of slamming into the glass ceiling.

NEXTSTOP Theatre's production of Crimes of the Heart provides a few bursts of heart-stopping drama with minimal laughs and leaves the 1970's aesthetic at the door.

'Crimes of the Heart,' by Beth Henley, plays Thursdays through Sundays through March 20, 2016 at NextStop Theatre Company, in Herndon, Virginia.

NextStop Theatre Company's third professional season continues in February 2016 with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Southern Gothic tragicomedy, Crimes of the Heart. NextStop's production will open February 25 and run through March 20, 2016.