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The current popularity of composer Stephen Schwartz begins and ends with Wicked, so a National Symphony Orchestra Pops Concert saluting him at the Kennedy Center does so as well. Conductor Steven Reineke began with a medley of themes from the Oz derived musical marking its 10th anniversary and he ended with Jennifer Laura Thompson and Julia [...]
The Golem is an ancient character of Jewish history that keeps popping back into the wider culture, whether it be in the books of Michael Chabon, in the odd “Simpsons” episode, or in the new novel by Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni. That Taffety Punk, the innovative, rebellious and punk rock theater company in [...]
By the time Voltaire got around to writing Candide, he had been kicked out of Paris a couple of times for his outspoken work. The 1759 book, whose subtitle was “or Optimism,” earned him the enmity of the government and religious leaders alike, as well as lasting fame. The latest variation on Candide aims to be [...]
In all of the plays and movies about writers, there are usually very few scenes of actual writing being depicted. This may be understandable – the solitary endeavor makes for dull spectator sport. In Michael Hollinger’s play Ghost-Writer, however, currently at Metro Stage in Alexandria, the typewriter is front and center and, at least a [...]
In its 27 seasons, in its several homes, the literary-minded Washington Stage Guild has become one of the best known purveyors of the work of George Bernard Shaw. Now, it’s become the theatrical authority on the works of T.S. Eliot. Not that the group will stage the Eliot-derived musical Cats anytime soon. …a production so [...]
A popular way to stage Shakespeare is to add a lot to what isn’t on the page, with grunts, wild laughs, wails, odd emphasis, exaggerated gestures, and running around meant to enliven a text that is, after all, 400 years old. The Tempest, the Bard’s final play, has received a variety of different readings, perhaps [...]
Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth has been trying to get at the core of a story for more than a quarter century. It’s a good story, too, about how one confronts one’s own family history, deals with it, and carries it on. The latest variation, Andy and the Shadows, currently playing at his own [...]
American soprano Angela Meade has embodied Bellini’s Norma before, in concert settings along her prize-winning ascension into opera’s spotlight. But the new Washington National Opera production of the opera allows her to fully embody the role for the first time in the kind of vocal performance that will blow back your hair. Bel canto was [...]
After a couple of initial, lesser attempts, Giacomo Puccini first found his footing in opera with Manon Lescault, an adaptation of a popular 19th century novel that had already been made an opera by Massenet a few years earlier. Injecting it with his own Italian sensibilities and drama made it a quick hit after its [...]
Something very special is happening at Signature Theatre in Arlington. In the current Shakespeare’s R & J, Joe Calarco is giving an urgent, arresting production of his genius recasting of the Bard’s great romantic tragedy as a forbidden text in a repressed Catholic boarding school. The marching feet of the young regimented students in their [...]
The lights go bright at first in the new No Rules Theater Company production at the Signature Theatre. Brighter, brighter and then boom: Black. The Ark Theatre at Signature doesn’t allow one possible lumen as we hear characters moving about the stage right in front of us. Yet we can hear their banter about the décor [...]
Give credit to the Forum Theatre for presenting a play about wartime in 21st Century, particularly at a time when war is the last thing on the American’ mind, as TV news has dropped war coverage as a regular item. Its production of Bill Cain’s 9 Circles brings front and center the pain and horror of the [...]
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night begins with a shipwreck, with its passengers washing ashore on a strange island before the romantic comedy of errors and cross dressing begins. But for the Taffety Punk version of the play, they linger a little longer in the water, or a world between the deep and the shore. Nobody speaks those delicious [...]
The history is fairly palpable in the new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at Ford’s Theatre. It’s the 75th anniversary production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that reflected life in a tiny New England town over a period that concluded exactly 100 years ago. And then there’s the setting. As a recent resident to D.C., [...]
