Roger Catlin - Page 9

Until director Stephen Daldry rediscovered J.B. Priestley's 'An Inspector Calls,' it had been relegated to dull British backwaters as ho-hum sub-Agatha Christie drawing room fare.

'All Save One' is Greg Jones Ellis' world premiere play about a 1950s Hollywood in which a Oscar Wilde-type playwright is ensconced in Hollywood, with a front marriage to a film star, a longtime relationship with a man who has become his secretary, and temptations right outside the window of his beachside home.

What was it like 21 years ago when Paula Vogel's 'How I Learned to Drive' premiered off-Broadway?

In April 1945, the war in Europe had all but wrapped up, but it would be another month before the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender. As such, new immigration policies had yet to be drawn up for refugees in other countries, such as Brazil, where a lot of former Nazis were said to be heading.

The new 'How to Win a Race War,' at the DC Arts Center, is awful. The new 'How to Start a Race War,' at the DC Arts Center, is awful.

The GALA Hispanic Theatre is opening its 43rd season with a new adaptation of Laura Esquivel's popular 1989 novel 'Like Water for Chocolate' that had previously been made into a hit Mexican film of the same name in 1992.

In Kathleen Akerley's 'Interstellar Ghost Hour,' the latest fanciful play from Longacre Lea, an astronaut travels back through time and space to arrive in her deceased parents home to get some answers.

Sarah Ruhl is one of the most produced contemporary playwrights today, with provocative works like 'Dead Man's Cell Phone' and 'In the Room: The Vibrator Play.' Less often produced is one of her earliest plays, the 2002 'Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce,' especially since she reworked it in recent years as a chamber musical.

The admirable goal of the All About the Drama theater group is to reproduce classics of African-American theater. Its second production currently at the Anacostia Playhouse is from Douglas Turner Ward, co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company.

'Seinfeld' might have been a TV show about nothing, but shows by the Upright Citizens Brigade at Woolly Mammoth literally begin with nothing.

Ally Theatre's '#poolparty' is a prime example of discovering a little known chapter of local history, fashioning it into art and creating a more universal statement.

'Holocaust Opera' is probably not the most inviting description for the season ending offering for the In Series.

Talk about 'Freaky Friday.' Brett Abelman's new play 'Switch,' at Fringe Logan Arts Space, is more like 'Freaky Pride Weekend.' A straight D.C. couple matched up by their mutual genderqueer friend find themselves in the afterglow of intimacy having switched bodies and hence gender. The balance of the play is exploring the abrupt switch amid Pride Weekend and trying to figure out how or whether they should try to switch back.

It was 40 years ago this week that the Ballet Nacional de Cuba made its historic U.S. debut at the Kennedy Center. There, the remarkable Alicia Alonso was not only artistic director but star performer, who became a ballet force at the American Ballet Theatre and elsewhere despite an eye condition she had since a teenager that caused partial blindness.

Spooky Action Theater is good about seeking out interesting works from unusual sources. Their latest is from Carole Frechette, an award-winning Canadian playwright whose work has only sporadically been produced in the states.

The kind of well-worn rock club set designer Matthew J. Keenan creates for the production of Laura Easton's 'The Undeniable Sound of Right Now' at the Keegan Theatre is so authentic, with its decades of rock posters, stickers and graffiti, you can almost smell the stale beer in the floorboards. The instincts not to visit the restroom rise to full force.