BWW Review: WET's STRAIGHT WHITE MEN Examines Privilege but Takes the Long Way Around
As you enter the theater for Washington Ensemble Theatre's Straight White Men , currently playing at 12th Ave Arts, you are greeted with Hip Hop music with questionable lyrics amped up to the point that you can feel the bass in your filings. You're told at the outset of the show that the reason for this is to take away the privilege of being comfortable from most in the audience who wouldn't care for that. What follows is Young Jean Lee's overly stereotypical and clich examination of four straight white men and their privilege. So, I can only assume seeing an interesting play with a point was also a privilege we were denied.
Theatre9/12 to Present WAITING FOR LEFTY
The actors of Theatre9/12 present one of the most important plays of the 20th century: Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty first presented by the famous Group Theatre. Set in the Great Depression and addressing the exploitation of the working classes, the play centers around the 1934 Taxi strike in New York City.
BWW Review: Forced RUTH AND THE SEA from Pacific Play Company Offers No Resolution
In Horton Foote's beautiful play "A Trip to Bountiful" we care about the journey because we care about Carrie and the characters around her. Unfortunately in Morgan Ludlow's new play "Ruth and the Sea", currently playing at Annex Theatre from Pacific Play Company, we have few chances to get to know or like Ruth and her family as we mostly just end up seeing them be bitter and snarky to each other. That coupled with some forced dialog and exposition and clunky story structure, and what amounts is a journey that I wish I hadn't taken.
THEATRE9/12 Presents THE EQUATION, a New Play by Charles S. Waxberg, 1/24-2/15
In our time of soaring unemployment, sketchy Wall Street practices, and increasingly vast income polarity, the examination of a capitalistic economy and what it does to humanity asks to be explored. Originally commissioned by the UNITAS Theatre Co. of Los Angeles who felt the plays themes were too controversial for a new company, the workshop was produced nevertheless by the cast and crew and since revised by its author. Told through reverse chronology in Depression-era New York City with layered scenes in a nearby town house one generation later, THE EQUATION engages the audience in a "how-done-it" about a birth rather than a death. This period "play of excavation" reveals a physician and his wife who attempt to adopt the infant son of a Russian woman desperate to give her child a shot at the American Dream glittering impossibly beyond her grasp.
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE? Opens Tonight at The Little Theatre on Capitol Hill
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE? features two comedic one-acts, one serious dose of fun: 'The Way of All Fish,' a comedy by Elaine May, and 'I Can't Remember Anything,' a wry and witty observation by Arthur Miller. Paul O'Connell directs Eleanor Moseley,* Christine Mosere*, David S. Klein, and Ruth McCree. The show opens Today, November 8th for a 3-week run at The Little Theatre on Capitol Hill.
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE? to Open 11/8 at The Little Theatre on Capitol Hill
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE? features two comedic one-acts, one serious dose of fun: 'The Way of All Fish,' a comedy by Elaine May, and 'I Can't Remember Anything,' a wry and witty observation by Arthur Miller. Paul O'Connell directs Eleanor Moseley,* Christine Mosere*, David S. Klein, and Ruth McCree. The show opens Friday, November 8th for a 3-week run at The Little Theatre on Capitol Hill.
Our American Theater Presents 'DON'T DRINK THE WATER' Staged Readings 4/20 -21
Before Woody Allen started making movies, he wrote this slapstick comedy that takes place in an embassy behind the Iron Curtain. First produced in 1966 on Broadway, and later made into a film starring Jackie Gleason, this circus of miss matched and bumbling characters make for a bracing and laugh filled evening with topical humor that rings remarkably true today.