Teresa Castracane News

The Shakespeare Theatre Company has opened its 2024-2025 season with a fun, frothy, beautifully rendered Comedy of Errors by the theatre’s “resident playwright” William Shakespeare and directed by the company’s artistic director, Simon Godwin. Godwin layers visual and aural punch to keep the pace lively – including a band of versatile on-stage musician storytellers.

What did our critic think of THE WAVERLY GALLERY at 1st Stage?

This is almost certainly the funniest thing you’re likely to see all year. Leave your delicate sensibilities behind and go.

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 fascinating story of one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th Century, flawless presented by a sublimely talented cast.

This is the premise for 1st Stage’s production of Postcards from Ihatov, adapted and directed by Natsu Onoda Power. Postcards from Ihatov is a captivating exploration of Kenji Miyazawa’s works and life.

Rose: You Are Who You Eat is an irreverent (yet, concurrently, affectionate) look at a performer/cabaret artist’s autobiographical impulse and gender identity questions/affirmations set against the metaphor of cannibalism as a “who gets devoured?”/”feasting/ingestion”  metaphor ---that plays into “double entendres” on family, the role of the mother and the individual evolving in the womb. This extremely quixotic and subversive play by ultra-creative performer and writer John Jarboe celebrates queerness while “riffing -off” on themes of memory, trying to connect to identity and breaking through dissonance into a celebration of the autonomous self.

What did our critic think of THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM at Keegan Theatre?

On May 25th, Olney Theatre Center unveiled the world premiere of the musical Long Way Down at the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab. The piece was adapted from Jason Reynolds's novel of the same name, which has received accolades such as the National Book Award and a Newbery Medal, and was written (books, music, and lyrics) by Dahlak Brathwaite, with additional writing (books, music, and lyrics) by Khiyon Hursey. 

The semantics and silence that delineate love and disclosure are operating at full throttle in the probing personal story of playwright and performer Adil Mansoor in the theatrical experience that is entitled Amm(i)gone. As the uber-talented Mansoor invites his very traditional Pakistani mother to translate Sophocles’ Antigone into Urdu, one soon realizes that this is just the starting point of a very interactive theatrical exploration that soon unspools into a multi -layered explication of the issues of culture, faith, family, history and, most especially, the special bond between a mother and a son.

Today’s subject Judy Kuhn is known to musical theatre aficionados from her performances in Rags, Chess, Fun Home and more on Broadway. Currently this off the charts performer is living her theatre life at Arena Stage in Unknown Soldier in the role of Lucy Anderson. The production runs through May 5th in the Kreeger.

'Unknown Soldier' is a beautifully performed show with a fascinating exploration of memory, love, and loss, but its main flaw is that it is a show seeking out answers to a mystery it not only fails to resolve, but further convolutes at every turn. While there’s truth in that, it’s also a little dissatisfying, as life itself often is.

See first look photos of Kerstin Anderson, Perry Sherman, Adam Chanler-Berat, Lora Lee Gayer, Nehal Joshi, and Judy Kuhn in the musical Unknown Soldier, having its D.C. premiere in Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theater, through May 5, 2024.

What did our critic think of THE NANCE at 1st Stage?

What did our critic think of MIGRAAAAANTS OR: THERE'S TOO MANY PEOPLE ON THIS DAMN BOAT! at ExPats Theatre?

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

The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Arin Arbus at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, is an extraordinary feat of storytelling. It is simultaneously epic and spare. With just three actors it unfolds the captivating and intimate story of one immigrant family that evolves its company, navigates pious lives, innovates new ways of doing business, and ultimately unravels over time into instability and a crushing financial crisis.

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.

What did our critic think of SHUTTER SISTERS at 1st STAGE?

Today’s subject Stephen Oremus has been living his theatre life for many years now as a music director/pianist/orchestrator/arranger/musical supervisor. His career is something many of us dream of having but very few of us actually achieve. His current project brings him full circle. Stephen is the Musical Supervisor/Arranger/Orchestrator for Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage production of tick, tick..BOOM! which is running through February 4th in the Eisenhower Theater. Stephen was the show’s original Orchestrator/Arranger/Musical Director in 2001. His work can be heard on the original cast recording.