Teresa Castracane News

1st Stage Theatre's production of Lobby Hero features a solid, talented small cast who does their best with the out-dated script written by Kenneth Lonerga

New York's UCB Theatre, which grew out of a small group of comics you know in the Upright Citizens Brigade, now contains hundreds of performers you don't know putting on scores of different comedies, sketch shows, online shows and all manner of improv shows at what are now a handful of stages.

The 1st Stage production of be Floyd Collins by Tina Landau, Music and Lyrics by Adam Guettel, Additional Lyrics by Tina Landau features Hasani Allen, Frank Britton, Evan Casey, Maggie Donnelly, Ben Lurye, Edward C. Nagel, Jennifer Lyons Pagnard, Scott Sedar, Russell Silber, Joshua Simon, Harrison Smith, John Sygar, and Carl Williams. Nick Olcott directs the production.

1st Stage's production is - for me, at least - a very, very welcome addition to the 2015-2016 theatre season. While Guettel's intricate and original score is, quite simply, extraordinary - and reason enough to make the trek to the McLean/Tysons Corner area to hear it sung live - Director Nick Olcott and his talented and committed cast and design team offer other reasons to pay this little gem of a production a visit.

Producing Artistic Director Carolyn Griffin is pleased to announce that MetroStage will present the award-winning play BLACK PEARL SINGS! by Frank Higgins April 21-May 29, 2016. Sandra L. Holloway will direct and William Hubbard will music direct this production.

Producing Artistic Director Carolyn Griffin is pleased to announce that MetroStage will present the award-winning play BLACK PEARL SINGS! by Frank Higgins April 21-May 29, 2016. Sandra L. Holloway will direct and William Hubbard will music direct this production.

David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize winning play Proof is about as well constructed a play as ever written. The simple story revolves around Catherine, a young woman on the eve of her 25th birthday who is dealing with the death of Robert, her mathematician father; the arrival of her precocious sister, Claire; and Hal, a young former PhD student of her father's coming to go through his writings.

1st Stage, Tysons' award-winning professional theatre, has extended its production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning PROOF by David Auburn through May 8. Artistic Director, Alex Levy directs the production at 1st Stage. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Epic in scope and poetic in language, this beautiful, haunting play crosses continents and challenges the boundaries of time to tell the story of one family and the events that bring them together and drive them apart. Encompassing four generations of fathers and sons and their mothers, lovers, and wives, the story is sweeping yet extraordinarily intimate. A crucial message of hope weaves its way through this tale as the expanding family learns from the past and approaches the future with tenacious spirit. A riveting mystery, the play is a 'metaphor for the impossibility of escaping the past, for the way we are all shaped by what came before-and are living in the shadow of what comes next.' -TIME Magazine.

WSC Avant-Bard's magical production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream offers is an absolute delight. It doesn't matter if you are the most hardened grown-up or the most precocious, spoiled brat the world has ever seen. You will be entranced by this production's creativity for much of the show's 2+ hours' traffic on the Gunston Arts Center stage.

The 1st Stage production of HARVEY by Mary Chase features Tonya Beckman, Jonathan Lee Taylor, William Aitken, Elliott Bales, Robert Grimm, DeJeanette Horne, Carolyn Kashner, Kelsey Meiklejohn, Emily Morrison, Sue Schaffel, and Tim Torre. Michael Chamberlin returns to 1st Stage to direct the production. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

With World War II raging on in Europe, Veta Simmons and her daughter, Myrtle Mae Simmons are fighting a battle of their own against Elwood P. Dowd, Veta's brother, in order to try to keep their social lives intact. However, all of their tactics cannot keep Elwood from inviting his friend, Harvey, to their social events. Harvey is Elwood's best friend and they do everything together. The only problem is that Elwood is the only person who can see Harvey, a pooka in the form of a six foot tall rabbit. One afternoon after a disastrous Wednesday forum, Veta decides that it is time to commit Elwood to Chumley's Rest, a sanitarium.

If you view this production as an entertainment for those whose taste runs to Mad Max, to Rocky Horror, and to the movies of Quentin Tarantino (none of which I'm knocking, but let's not call them Shakespeare), then this may be a lark for you.

You'd hardly identify E.M. Lewis' world premiere, NOW COMES THE NIGHT, opening the season at First Stage in Tysons as a part of the Women's Voices Theatre Festival.

Absurdist comedy and sparking physical comedy collide in Taffety Punk's Inheritance Canyone

Under the direction of Joel David Santner (who will shortly be moving to California for film school, a great loss to the DC area) the company has proven yet again that when viewed with fresh eyes, the early First Quarto version of 'Hamlet' is a limitless source of inspiration for artists and audiences alike.  Although the company pulls its aesthetic punches by inviting a few guys to join the cast (including Marcus Kyd in the title role), the performance is of a dependable, high quality that makes this a rare, intimate view of the Bard's work.

Sadness and joy is a recurring motif in music. In Jan Marans' provocative play, Old Wicked Songs, it is a motif that is played out both figuratively and musically. In Marans' play Viennese music professor Josef Mashkan points out that only those who have suffered can truly emote beautiful music. Countries that have seen centuries of war and oppression can express music more passionately than those that haven't (which, he claims is why there are no true great British, American, or Japanese composers).

Taffety Punk's current production of The Tempest demonstrates how Shakespeare's work is infinitely elastic in terms of creativity and casting. Riot Grrrls, a faction of Taffety Punk Theatre Company dedicated to all-female productions of the Bard's works, has come up with a low-tech, low-cost, intimate staging that is as finely tuned as anything you'd pay big bucks for uptown.

John Patrick Shanley's thought-provoking drama DOUBT, A PARABLE certainly has earned its share of accolades since it premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2004. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play, Shanley's screenplay for the film adaptation was also nominated for an Academy Award. The single act play has been brought back in a meticulously detailed production by 1st Stage in Tysons. The playwright's work is reason enough to head to the intimate space 1st Stage calls its home near Tysons Galleria. Shanley's tense, four-person rumination on scandal, gender roles, Catholic church politics, and the power of doubt to bind us or tear us apart is worth a look any time it finds its way to a stage. I just wish the 1st Stage production had more of a spark to ignite the passionate debate and ambiguous mystery Shanley has written.