Category Archives: Theatre

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. Already Roston’s Hathaway has broken the fourth wall and recognized the audience surrounding him [...]

The new artistic director and co-director of the New York City Ballet looked a little nervous Tuesday as they awkwardly welcomed the Kennedy Center audience to their annual week-long residency. Jonathan Stafford and former company star Wendy Whelan, who had been in their new roles less than five weeks, are the first to lead the [...]

Humbug’s my usual reaction when there’s yet another variation of “A Christmas Carol” on local stages this time of year. Can’t someone come up with an original idea for a Christmas play? No such complaints at The Keegan Theatre, where their response is a sublime one, written so deftly it hits the touchstones of the [...]

So many Romanovs these days! There’s Matthew Weiner’s Amazon series in which various supposed survivors of the doomed royal line emerges in modern day, with a new episode every Friday. And now there’s “Anastasia,” the popular musical that was just installed for a month-long run at the Kennedy Center. It’s based on the 1997 animated [...]

What was it like 21 years ago when Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive” premiered off Broadway? It was more shocking, maybe; probably more balanced with laughs; and perhaps challenging in presenting audiences with a story of ongoing, predatory pedophilia from a family member. The D.C.-born playwright had developed it with another D.C. theater [...]

The innocent woman who had just been groped by a powerful man intent on defiling her turns to the audience and asks plaintively, “To whom should I complain?” and even more starkly: “Who would believe me?” The powerful man underscores her dilemma. “Who will believe you?” he says. “My unsoiled name, the austereness of my [...]

“Seinfeld” might have been a TV show about nothing, but shows by the Upright Citizens Brigade at Woolly Mammoth literally begin with nothing. The “Four Gorgeous Women!” as they kept calling themselves, came out on stage (a fifth person, a guy, who was listed in the program, didn’t materialize). And aside from a sci-fi themed [...]