WASHINGTON, DC THEATER REVIEWS

The Broadway composer Cy Coleman is completely underrated. His range of musicals stretch from traditional musical (Little Me) to 60's pop (Sweet Charity) to comic operetta (On The Twentieth Century). His greatest triumph is the hard jazz / film noire musical City of Angels. On Saturday night, the DC...

Director Marcus Kyd has assembled a solid roster of professional actors to give Michael Milligan's mythic drama, composed entirely in iambic pentameter, a grand staging.  On the Globe Theater's stage it was the actor's presence, the actor's gift of language that held the audience rapt with attentio...

Change takes many forms in CAROLINE, OR CHANGE: dramatic historical change, personal change, pocket change. The word itself is used frequently in Tony Kushner's Tony-nominated musical, which takes place in 1963 amidst the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the assassination of John F. Kenne...

Director Francesca Zambello's Gotterdammerung is truly awesome-in both the original and contemporary senses of the word.  The conclusion of a four-part epic, this six-hour installment depicts the final struggle for ownership of a magical ring whose owner might rule the world-but which also holds a ...

Like the musical icons who inspired the work, The Washington Ballet's program BOWIE & QUEEN toys with the art form - respectful of classical roots yet pushing forward. The pieces innovate, celebrate and they have fun. While BOWIE & QUEEN is full of heart and poetry, the irreverent and humorous momen...

When the foreign correspondent Paul Watson snapped a grisly photo in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993, he'd receive both a prize and a curse. He got a Pulitzer Prize for capturing the awful moment of the body of a soldier being dragged and desecrated down a side street, but also heard a imagined voice fro...

In the third installment of the Washington National Opera's mammoth staging of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung at the Kennedy Center, a new Brunnhilde awakens, Fafner's dragon turns out to be more of a monster truck, and the titular star of the work, Siegfried, turns out to be much more of...

Overall, there's a lot of mass appeal in this production, some fun musical moments, and opportunities for the entire family to visit the familiar and well-loved. Unfortunately, it simply pales in comparison to what we have seen before....

Ten years of planning and $10 million in production costs couldn't prevent the Washington National Opera from pleasing all the gods in its ambitious staging of all four operas in Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung....

Adventure Theatre-MTC has pulled out quite a few stops with their current production.  Playwright Damon Chua has taken Hans Christian Anderson's famous tale and created a fascinating one-hour tour of 18th century China.  This Emperor's Nightingale features everything from chubby, bamboo-chewing pa...

In 2006, then Washington National Opera Artistic Director Placido Domingo announced that the Opera would take on their first complete cycle of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). In the subsequent years, the opera produced the first three of the four-some, but not in...

Two shows in Repertory: DEATH OF A SALESMAN and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE...it just doesn't get better than this....

What a thrill it was to hear George Gershwin's opera with the BSO under Maestra Marin Alsop....

A little bit of this and that, a little bit zany and off-kilter, there was something for everyone to enjoy....

Akhtar's script is so beautifully complex yet simple, and asks some hard questions. The performances and physical production elements are first-rate. This is one of the strongest productions I've seen all season, and perhaps in recent years in the Washington, DC area....

JOURNEY TO THE WEST is visually stunning and highly inventive production that features an expert ensemble of actors bringing both humor and humanity to an epic story....

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LOOKING FOR ROBERTO CLEMENTE is back again for a second production at Bethesda's Imagination Stage, one of premiere locations for theatre for young audiences in the DMV. From wee ones in booster seats to parents and grandparents, this musical play hits a huge home-run. Writer Karen Zacarias and co...

There is but poor substitute for a trio of fools on a romp to entertain; nay, but it is futility at its finest to resist the siren call of slapstick's song. Anyone else have the urge to, as I call it, "Shakespeak" after an evening of Shakespeare? No? Just me? Ok, well no matter. In any pentameter, t...

I am enormously thrilled that Strathmore took this one on. It's not the kind of event the largely classical venue usually presents and I hope to see more risk-taking in the future. The pieces offer up stories that need to be heard, and there's no denying the music and performers are first rate....

Edward Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? has long been considered an American masterpiece, with some of the best dialogue in the history of drama. The current production by the City of Fairfax Theatre Company, directed by Ed Zakreski, presents this classic material with startling effectiveness...

In all my years of watching (and sometimes reviewing) a variety of artistic presentations at the Kennedy Center, I can hardly think of any other event that so perfectly offers a nicely packaged look at what the performing art center is all about....

It was 100 years ago this year when Hugo Ball chose a nonsense word to label the anti-art movement of World War I - dada....

Olney Theatre Center Associate Artistic Director Jason King Jones directs an enticing psychological thriller....

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's near masterpiece of a musical MY FAIR LADY took Broadway by storm 60 years ago this year and has become a 20th century classic. I am happy to report the plucky flower girl from the mean streets of London who gets molded into a proper lady is as lovely as ever as...