An old-fashioned black-draped dressing mirror is the only prop in the moody, elemental, but by no means elementary "Fuego Flamenco XVI: Intimo," presented by GALA Hispanic Theatre. The mirro…
Technically, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's evening at the Kennedy Center Opera House Tuesday was a performance. But following a pre-concert gala, with an audience in sparkling gowns a…
The National Ballet of Canada presented an exotic bouquet of contemporary choreography Tuesday by William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, and Alexei Ratmansky. The works, all but one performed to mus…
It seems like just yesterday that Matthew Bourne's groundbreaking reinterpretation of a classic triggered gents to walk out at the sight of two men partnered and young girls to cry when conf…
A brilliant musical can only be cheapened by a surfeit of screen effects and novelty casting. But Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats is a mediocre musical, brilliantly packaged, and it benefits nice…
The husband and wife team Irene Sankoff and David Hein's sole theater credit a decade ago was a Toronto Fringe Festival breakout called My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding. Before that…
Alakazam! See a middle-aged man regress to a bug-eyed, slack-jawed 10-year-old while watching eight magicians! So it was Tuesday night as the Illusionists brought their latest production to …
The deconstruction of a cultural touchstone by an acclaimed choreographer is an appealing notion, all the more so to live music. But although it was superbly performed Wednesday night, Mark …
There were, at various points, half a dozen versions of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus floating around. The playwright was trying to square the circle and make his metaphorical work about the tragi…
In theory, Dhana and the Rosebuds, a theater-dance hybrid about a Syrian emigree seeking her refugee grandmother, should be compelling. It is topical. Its wedding of abstract and ritualized …
How shocked must Jimmy Buffett have been when "Margaritaville," his ode to heartbreak and mid-grade alcoholism, became not just a breakout 1977 hit but a potent lifestyle brand? It's about w…
Eleven dancers in white unitards with horizontal black strips at the top extending to gloved hands. In a dawn of pastel light, they hold a marvelous stillness. Four musicians play a minimali…
Recent research has shown that humans' domestication of dogs has altered canines' brains. I have a theory " it has not yet been borne out by science, but I am confident that it will be " tha…
The irresistible paradox of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is its gritty transcendence. It is grounded but out of body, a free-floating passage through a quotidian life w…
In David Lindsay-Abaire's Ripcord, there are two odd couples. The first are roommates Abby and Marilyn at the Bristol Place Senior Living Facility. The second are the farce and melodrama com…
For the South of Evan Linder's play Byhalia, Mississippi, both the American flag and the Confederate one should be replaced by one reading "Bless This Mess." It's racist, classist, misogynis…
A quarter-century ago, C. Brian Williams, who'd honed his step-dancing skills as a member of Alpha Phi Alpha at Howard University, was visiting South Africa at the dawn of the Nelson Mandela…
"The saddest thing in life is wasted talent," Lorenzo the bus driver tells his son, Calogero, in A Bronx Tale. There's no wasted talent in the rock-solid touring production of the musical th…
"Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place," writes the Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, "full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions." The title of T…
The 1990s were a percussive decade. New York brought in 'da Noise and 'da Funk and Stomped even as the Blue Men thrumbed their melodic PVC tubes. Meanwhile, in Australia, steel fitter turned…
If you've got a case of the polar-vortex blues, Signature Theatre has the prescription for you: a two-hour extended-release burst of high-wattage, endorphin-pumping rhythm, courtesy of one F…
The Screwtape Letters, in a touring revival at the Lansburgh Theatre, is a polished, imaginative rendering of a tedious, self-righteous play. The acting and production values in this polishe…
Matthew Bourne's Cinderella, at the Kennedy Center's Opera House through Sunday, is brilliantly imagined and executed. Forget your Disney conceptions, or even the Rostislav Zakharov or Frede…
The Vietnam War ended 45 years ago, and Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg's Miss Saigon debuted almost 30 years ago, but the musical, in a riveting touring production at the Kennedy …
What's more seasonally entertaining than the country's oldest continuing production of The Nutcracker? Sprucing it up with new finery that enhances the company's fabulous performances. That'…