WASHINGTON, DC THEATER REVIEWS

Quotidian Theatre Company's presentation of 'The Mollusc' is delightful, emotional, and fun....

The national tour, now playing the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, gave me the opportunity to take another look at the show. Let's just say I'm really glad I had the opportunity....

Running a small opera company requires innovation enough, but Washington's Urban Arias goes further, by commissioning new works, or finding pieces that are little known or rarely performed and infusing them with reliable company talent that can electrify their purposely small audiences....

I'll get this out of the way: one of my biggest theatrical pleasures is when entire worlds are created and destroyed and recreated in front of us. So, I'm an easy target for a show like She Sings Light, one of the Capital Fringe Curated Series, in which one of the first things we see is the ensemble...

As part of this year's Fringe Curated series, Hatpin Panic by Iris Dauterman is a relevant romp through the long-running suffrage movement with a heart of giddy resistance. The opening scene is set at the turn of the 20th century where a group of women  defend themselves from street harassment usin...

Master monologist Mike Daisey is known locally for his many performances at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. When you go to a Mike Daisey performance you expect to continue the conversation afterwards. His stuff is that thought provoking and is always spot on....

This past week marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of the iconic entertainer Judy Garland. Can you believe she was only 47 when she passed? Think of the body of work she left us in such a short life....

Signature Theatre concludes its 29th season with a World Premiere musical written by, in my opinion, one of the most underrated writing teams working in musical theatre today. Blackbeard written by John Dempsey (Book & Lyrics) and Dana P. Rowe (Music) has everything you could ever want in a musical....

Children will thoroughly enjoy the vivid physicality of Alvin Chan's hour long adaptation of The Ballad of Mu Lan, onstage at Bethesda's Imagination Stage through August 11. Chan's use of the stylized movement Jingju (Beijing Opera) suits both the 1500 year old Chinese tale and the requisites of chi...

There's a transcendent moment in 'Twisted Melodies,' the one-man Donny Hathaway show by Kelvin Roston Jr. at Mosaic Theater Company, in which the audience and performer are one, singing and clapping to 'The Ghetto,' under his direction, and getting a groove on....

There's one thing I find comforting about theatre that I take care to remember: we will always find new ways to tell old stories. In particular, it seems like our theatrical landscape repurposes the stories of the Greeks at a breakneck pace. Hadestown, Anais Mitchell's retelling of Eurydice and Orph...

The Second City, known for both its poignant comedy and its incredible alumni list, knows it's difficult to wrap your mind around the world we live in today, let alone navigate it. Their latest residency at The Kennedy Center, aptly titled 'America; It's Complicated!', is the perfect response. Smart...

EVERY BRILLIANT THING at Studio Theatre takes an audience of individuals and transforms them, in 65 short minutes, into a collective. It is theatre in its purest, most primal, form, and it's hilarious to boot. Described by The Guardian as 'one of the funniest shows you'll ever see about depression' ...

Elderly assisted living can be a shared room prison, so the set for David Lindsay-Abaire play 'Ripcord' at the Keegan Theatre has the tidy room explode a coupe of times into some unexpected scenes, from a haunted house to the blue skies that give the comic play its title....

GWEN AND IDA is a work of fiction, a fantasy. Any resemblance to actual human beings is purely coincidental,' concludes the program for Gwen and Ida: The Object is of No Importance, currently at Caos on F Street. Of course, the lives of painter Gwen John and actordirector Ida Lupino could each make ...

Inspired by Common's 1994 'I Used to Love H.E.R.', director and playwright Goldie E. Patrick has brought together a dynamic cast of five to tell the story of the role of women in Hip Hop. What unfolds is a love letter to HER and to all women who have shaped and influenced Hip Hop....

Rock of Ages, directed by Martha Banta and choreographed by Janet Rothermel, is still as Poison coons 'nothin' but a good time.' The cast of Rock of Ages brings concert level energy to the musical. It's contagious and infectious from glam metal songs to the soft rock ballads....

Perhaps it's the lofty, Shakespearean-style introduction, the outsized musical selection ("Flight of the Valkyrie" is used more than once), or the references to one of the most devastating dictatorships in modern history, but 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui' sets impossibly high expectations for i...

Forest Treas (pronounced 'Triage'), the season closer for Pointless Theatre Company, is a new work by Navid Azeez inspired by the October 2002 sniper attacks that looks at the effects of the media - specifically, omniscient cameras - on a community facing ongoing tragedy. The show is a sharp mixture...

Overall, FALSETTOS makes a strong impression at Kennedy Center and is most definitely worth the trip....

Playwright Evan Linder achieves a fascinating balance in the poignant 'Byhalia, Missississippi.' While it's hard to fully root for any character, it's equally difficult to dismiss them completely, and that balance allows the show to explore deep, often difficult themes head-on....

In a city where seemingly everyone is from somewhere else, A Doll's House Part 2 is about something all of us have had to do at some point or another, return home to face our past. Fueled by a powerhouse cast led by the dazzling Holly Twyford, Round House Theatre's production is a homecoming not to ...

The central performance in Sarah Ruhl's The Oldest Boy, now playing at Spooky Action Theater through June 30, belongs to the ensemble as a whole. The title character, a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist lama, is brought to life not by a single actor, but by the seven actors that create his world. Some a...

Director Megan Behm has embraced the world of old French farce, and crafted a contemporary satire that is as frenetic and slap-stick as it is wickedly witty. Minnicino's rhyming couplets constantly leave you gasping for breath with laughter, and every single member of the cast has honed their charac...

Throughout theatrical history many great ladies of the theatre have tackled the role of Thornton Wilder's famous matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi in the musical Hello, Dolly! In 2017 a brand new revival of the show hit Broadway starring Bette Midler (with Donna Murphy alternating in) and later on in ...