No, this isn't just A Christmas Carol with an accent; it is a riff on the familiar Dickens structure, transported to the equally familiar stage world of an old Irish bar. The ghosts and visi…
Rare is the show that would be better if it were significantly longer. At a mere thirty-ish minutes, Nameless Theater's Honey comes out to nearly a dollar a minute for the ticket price. And …
Craig Wright's The Pavilion is a modern classic because it wades through a starlit sentimentality on its way to a clear-eyed lesson. As a tale about a man trying to reunite with his lost lov…
Essentially Rent, but half as long and without everything that makes Rent unlikeable to modern sensibilities. Monumental Theatre Company's top-notch production of Brooklyn the Musical, which…
I'm going to spoil one of the twists in A Burial Place for you. It comes about 25 minutes into this 100-minute production of A Burial Place, and sadly those first minutes before learning the…
The Internet, cell phones, and photoshopping are not only for the young, and the narcissism they engender is not only the provenance of millennials. The most refreshing thing about Gustavo O…
The debut production of Best Medicine Rep, a new theater company dedicated to comedy, is not really a comedy. The Consul, The Tramp, and America's Sweetheart, written by artistic director Jo…
The sentiment expressed in the jaunty tune "Slap That Bass" tells us why Signature Theatre has chosen to stage Crazy For You: "the world is a mess with politics and taxes and people grinding…
A look back at the past that contains a look back at the distant past, Top Girls comes across as almost more of a recently-written period play than the 1982 piece that it is. That is a credi…
"A lot with a little" encapsulates 4615 Theatre Company's jewel-box production of Sophocles' Electra. British dynamo Nick Payne's clean, contemporary translation of the classical revenge-and…
The best thing about The Smartest Girl in the World is that it is not actually about how smart the titular girl is, but about how much she learns from her brother, and how much her brother l…
Spiraling in, and spiraling out: two opposing journeys are on offer in a pair of hour long Pinter plays, directed by Shakespeare Theatre's Artisic Director, Michael Kahn, in his second-to-la…
Black People's Houses might be this play's title if it were a play written today and set in DC. That title would probably give a better sense of how provocative and satirical it is. Concerne…
Two plays in one: a well-observed drama about a woman's mid-life crisis, and an academic and occasionally comedic delve into the complexities of feminist theory. Peter's Alley Theatre Produc…
Lakeboat was thought controversial when it debuted 40 years ago, but now it seems almost quaint, verging on classy. The very first script by David Mamet, it features many of the hallmarks…
A choose-your-own-adventure review – pick one of the following: a) I have little or no idea what the Burning Man festival is; b) I know about Burning Man, but have never been; c) I am …
Satire is a noble pursuit, but it can also be used as an excuse. Regardless of what a would-be satirist puts onstage, if you dislike it, he can say that your negative reaction is the point. …
"All women should see this show," said a male audience member in the lobby, enthusiastically. "What about the men?" his female companion asked. "Well, it's not for men," he offered, to which…
In its tenth anniversary, CulturalDC's Source Festival has chosen to revisit one of its previous hits to celebrate, and has made the prime choice of Perfect Arrangement for this honor. It's …
"Can this nation be the same one that until recently behaved so magnificently?" wrote Václav Havel, in 1978, in Czechoslovakia. That unnaturally relevant line is spoken by a character in …
The Arabian Nights is perhaps the quintessential Constellation Theatre show, and therefore ideal for them to revisit ten years after they first presented it, as part of their anniversary sea…
There may be no local theatre with a house style more suited to The Fantasticks than Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. Before every show, and during every intermission, representatives of the …
Perhaps we can call this 'slow theatre,' as an analog to the 'slow food' movement. George Bernard Shaw's epic five-act Back to Methuselah is now being concluded, a full three years after Was…
A viscerally entertaining romp about a grieving woman tortured until she falls in love with her captor, Synetic's wordless-Shakespeare adaptation of Taming of the Shrew is a quality showcase…
Half of MET's production of Top Girls is a nightmare staged like a dream; the other is a dream staged, if not so badly as a nightmare, then at least as a bit of a mess. The famous first port…