Review: SUPER FREAK: THE RICK JAMES STORY at National TheatreApril 3, 2024Somewhere between touring tribute acts and high-gloss Broadway jukebox musical bios are the more modest regional musicals created to nominally perform the hits of a legacy pop act, in costume, adding biographical details as a story arc.
Review: SONGBIRD at Kennedy CenterMarch 12, 2024There’s an awful lot of death in opera, Timothy O’Leary, the general director of Washington National Opera, lamented on a recent opening night. And those plentiful tragedies are also often further burdened with overbearing scores, turgid storylines, super-large casts and strident if not shrill performances.
Review: CORIOLANUS at Avant BardMarch 6, 2024The historical Coriolanus, if he existed at all, was Rome’s most fearsome fighter, trained as a child, excelling as a warrior-leader and able to conquer whole other cities sometimes single-handedly. Even so, James Finley, who portrays the title character in Shakespeare’s tragedy in an eye-opening co-production by the Avant Bard Theatre with Longacre Lea, may be working even harder.
Review: PEQUEÑAS INFIDELIDADES (LITTLE INFIDELITIES) at Teatro De La LunaMarch 5, 2024“Pequeñas Infidelidades (Little Infidelidades),” the latest production at the tiny Teatro de La Luna on Georgia Avenue, is a nifty two-hander in which a couple seems to accidentally meet after years apart. Through their banter and barbs we eventually learn the truth behind their past union, their individual paths since and their current intent.
Review: A COMMEDIA ROMEO AND JULIET at Faction Of Fools Theatre CompanyJanuary 24, 2024Commedia dell’Arte was a theatrical style that developed in Italy more than 450 years ago. Intended for the lower classes, with exuberant physical movement, improvisation, lots of masks and stock characters like the Harlequin and Pulcinella, it was a celebratory perfect for the carnivale circuit.
Review: LOVE LOVE LOVE at Studio TheatreJanuary 16, 2024British playwright Mike Bartlett, born in 1980, takes up the legacy of London’s swinging 60s in his play Love Love Love currently running in a sharp, well-acted production at Studio Theatre.
Review: FROZEN at Kennedy CenterDecember 26, 2023The nationally traveling version of the Broadway musical has made its Washington premiere at the Kennedy Center and is already attracting large crowds of adults and many children, some of which are attired in the costumes of its lead characters Elsa and Anna (though mostly Elsa).
Review: BALLET WEST: THE NUTCRACKER at Kennedy CenterNovember 25, 2023The first Nutcracker appear at the Kennedy Center this year is from Ballet West, based in Salt Lake City. And as brisk and fresh as it feels, it comes as something of a surprise that its lineage goes back to the very first U.S. performance of what’s become the most popular ballet in the country by far.
Review: AGRESTE (DRYLANDS) at Spooky ActionOctober 31, 2023Out in an arid, underpopulated northeastern Brazil, an unusual but not entirely inconceivable love story plays out, presented as a kind of morality lesson or at least a cautionary tale.
Review: ORLANDO at Constellation Theatre CompanyOctober 19, 2023Virginia Woolf was onto something when she wrote her novel “Orlando: A Biography” 95 years ago — a tall tale of aristocracy and adventure for a poet who also happens to change gender. It rings true, too, in its adaptation by Sarah Ruhl, the clever and popular contemporary playwright whose version of the story was one of her earliest commissions in 1998.
Review: MACBETH IN STRIDE at Shakespeare Theatre CompanyOctober 17, 2023They aren’t actually that in Whitney White’s concert cum critique “Macbeth in Stride” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. But they do backup singing, some choreographed dance moves (by Raja Feather Kelly), reply and advise the lead and never quite leave the stage, itself dressed up like a spangly nightclub revue (set by Daniel Soule, lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew). In all, it seems perfect for that girl group from Detroit.