Theater Review: Hang Up and Dial Again
The pandemic shutdown, now entering its seventh catastrophic month, has necessitated a certain creativity if any theater at all is to be produced or consumed. Mostly, this has been through…
Wisdom from Terrence McNally, 1938-2020
Theater suffered a loss this week when the playwright Terrence McNally died at 81, of complications of our current plague, the coronavirus. It was a sad irony since many of…
The Last New Play in Washington for Now
It may have been unrealistic to open a new play amid the coronavirus pandemic, but "The Realistic Joneses" did just that on Saturday at Spooky Action Theatre, a group whose…
When the Riches Ran Out for ‘Timon’
The week the stock market erases its year's gains may be just the right time to open a not-often produced play about swift changes in fortune. "Timon of Athens" has…
The Touring ‘Simon & Garfunkel Story’
There is certainly a dramatic story to be told behind the highly successful 60s duo Simon & Garfunkel from a brief high school success that got them on “American Bandstand”…
A Soulful ‘Motown Christmas’ at Signature
Because Christmas is mandatory on entertainment stages all month, it’s no surprise that a cabaret at Signature Theatre is again devoted to the Yuletide songbook. But in a clever and…
Dave Chappelle Snares Mark Twain Prize
The 22nd recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Sunday was a hometown hero, comedian Dave Chappelle — a perfect pairing, said comic Sarah Silverman, since…
Reviving ‘Merce Cunningham at 100’
Merce Cunningham’s legacy lingers in contemporary dance, and avant-garde collaboration. He eliminated storylines in dance pieces, concentrated on movement as pointed as abstract art and vaulted modernist music (particularly that…
‘The Juliet Letters’ Live Again
Running a small opera company requires innovation enough, but Washington's Urban Arias goes further, by commissioning new works, or finding pieces that are little known or rarely performed and infusing…
Channeling Troubled Donny Hathaway
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…