WASHINGTON, DC THEATER REVIEWS

Theatre Prometheus has taken over the Capital Hill Arts Workshop space for a couple weeks, and has done Adams proud. Director Chelsea Radigan has assembled a fine cast who gives Or, its best shot. Led by the assured, charismatic Dina Soltan as Behn, you get a taste of adventure, intrigue, sex (well,...

Few characters become so embedded in the fabric of pop culture that merely the mention of a color can elicit their memory. Such is the case, however, for Elle Woods, the golden-haired Malibu native at the center of Legally Blonde. Talk about the color pink for too long and someone in your circle is ...

We are now at the midpoint of summer and you are most likely looking for something a little bit different to do with your kids before sending them back to school. What if I told you that the Kennedy Center is currently producing a World Premiere Commission that is both entertaining and educational? ...

It's rare to see a show that feels like it could only happen in one place, at one time. Especially at The Kennedy Center, known for the utmost professionalism, temporal tightness and delivery of all its professional shows - you go to The Kennedy Center because you know you're going to see a show whe...

Richard Byrne's latest effort, An Evening With Lola Montez, is as intricately-constructed a play and persona as you can possibly imagine, and actor Mary Murphy personifies to perfection the low-born Irish divorcée who became a sensation through little more than grit, and a determination to rise abo...

In order to pull off a successful solo show there are a few things you absolutely need to have....

The pitch for Thanksgiving at Macbeth's is about what you'd expect from a show called Thanksgiving at Macbeth's. Stitched together from a number of Shakespeare plays to create a 'new' play, it follows a badly behaved socialite family gathering for dinner as they're filmed for a reality television...

Dreamer/Seeker, written by Devan Andrews and directed by Rocky Nunzio, is one of this year's several Capital Fringe offerings that use one of Shakespeare's plays as inspiration. A longstanding tradition, there's a seemingly infinite number of ways to remix the canon; this show uses both a productio...

Synetic Theater brings its unique spin to the high seas with an inclusive and immersive adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. The production features a stellar cast, many of whom are making their Synetic debuts....

Is there a more over-done piece than Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? Enter author Rachel Garnet. Garnet's Starcrossed: The Tragedy of Mercutio and Tybalt turns the familiar tale on its head....

With a little raunch and a lot of heart, If These Balls Could Talk! gives you a glimpse of the performer's life in the big city; it's a whirlwind tour, and well worth the ride. Valentino's charisma and her ease with the audience are wonderful, evidence that we indeed have a seasoned performer who k...

Some questionable casting choices and a book by Chad Beguelin that's filled with a little too many eyeroll worthy anachronistic jokes, aside, the touring production has a few elements that make a trip to the Kennedy Center worth it....

While it takes a few minutes to really start moving, Natasha Preston's Conversations - which she wrote and performs - is one of the most emotionally raw and honest pieces of theatre I've seen this year. Preston has taken a period of personal tragedy and funneled it into a multi-layered show that c...

There's a moment in Intimate Dinner, written and performed by Lauren French, that made me laugh harder than anything in the Capital Fringe Festival so far, and it's a quiet gesture - she just swings a towel onto her shoulder. It's not a punchline - it's just a small character moment - but it regist...

It was rare that a Democrat became governor of red-state Texas in the 1990s; rarer still that she was a woman....

Described as 'a dark romp with teeth' - a wonderfully evocative tagline - A Short History of Unfortunate Animals is one of the more abstract Fringe offerings this year. Choreographer, performer and writer Lorien House (writing under the name Glena Trachta) presents, in just 45 minutes, a series of...

Part of the adventure of any Fringe show is how best to utilize a space that was not necessarily built as a performance venue and there are plenty of approaches to creating an immersive experience for your audience. One of my personal favorites is live music. In Air Mail / Par Avion, the mood for th...

Some events in history are too large in scope for us to properly grasp and process them. It is in small, personal stories that we are able to gain a greater understanding of just what has occurred and how it may echo through time. Time and time again, we return to the individual narratives, the thre...

Body. is the kind of kinetic theatre experience that Fringe was created to showcase. An ensemble of eight using movement and spoken word to encounter all of the things we don't want to talk about: body image, gender, race, toxic masculinity, the menstrual cycle, masturbation......

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....

Gerry is the kind of guy who arrives at a party like an explosion, talks a mile a minute, has an opinion about everything, exudes outrageous hilarity and hardly lets anyone else get a word in. With him around, why even cast other characters at the party?...

Prologue Theatre's 'The Explorers Club' is both immensely funny and immensely profound. The careful attention to detail and context pays off greatly, and the result is a wonderful experience for the audience....

Resurrecting and redefining the misunderstood women of myth and history is not breaking ground for a Fringe Festival in the #MeToo era, but Rewiring Eden manages to make its mark with a thoughtful enough conceit - what if all of those women had the opportunity to meet one another?...

Capital Fringe is one of the best places to catch artists self-producing work in DC, many of them for the first time. One of this year's standout offerings, Codependent, is a swift, funny and heartfelt comedy written by Julia Karis and Emily Rekstis. Over the course of 75 minutes, we follow best f...

Jeremy Heere is a socially-awkward, hopelessly uncool student languishing at the bottom rung of the high school's social ladder. "I don't want to be special, I just want to survive," he sings in the opening number of Be More Chill, a show that makes its Washington-area premiere in a wonderfully effe...