140 stories by "Peter Orvetti"
In my time as a theatre critic, performer, and director in both professional and non-professional roles, one misconception I encounter more than many others is that theatre for young audienc…
“I & You: The Musical” is making its world premiere at Olney Theatre Center in a co-production with New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre Center. It boasts of strong production values, ins…
"Just following orders." It has become modern history's most indefensible defense, a much-maligned attempt to shake off responsibility for one's participation in the banality of evil by clai…
Hope Campbell Gundlah's new play "The H Twins" made its debut at the inaugural District Fringe Festival last summer. Writing here at the time, I called it "promising and important," a searin…
Rachel Bonds's "Jonah," which premiered off-Broadway in 2024 and makes its regional debut at Studio Theatre, is a masterful puzzle box of a play about trauma and the healing power of the ima…
The cast and crew of "Annie" at Theatre@CBT had a hard-knock tech week, missing a few vital nights to the winter storm, but they stuck out their chins and grinned and put on an impressive, s…
"The Snowman and The Snowdog" at Imagination Stage is a gentle and touching original adaptation of the 2012 animated short film that is a perfect choice for families of young children lookin…
Everyone who appears on stage in NextStop Theatre's production of Jason Robert Brown's "The Last 5 Years" does a phenomenal job. Ben Clark as Jamie and Caelyn D. Williams as Cathy are exc…
Playwright Bob Bartlett and director Alex Levy made a wise choice in selecting the chapel at the historic Congressional Cemetery to stage Bartlett's "Mary Shelley's Monsters," a rumination o…
Signature Theatre's production of "Play On!" takes place in the Shirlington company's MAX Theatre, but you will forget that as soon as you step through the door. The space has been transform…
Daniel Maseda's impressive credentials were on full display in "'Be Good' with Paulette," a solo performance at the just-ended inaugural District Fringe Festival. Maseda is a local, but he s…
The District Fringe Festival welcomes an inventive solo performance with "Prey Most Difficult," Corvin Kevlihan's retelling of the Irish legend of Oisin. With its spare staging and modern fl…
Twin sisters Hilda and Helga like their preadolescent lives. They live in a clean, safe place, and though they have lost the parents they never knew, they are cared for by a kindly doctor an…
 Midway through the second act of "A Wrinkle in Time" at Arena Stage, three giant puppets, each roughly nine feet tall, quietly enter the Kreeger Theater from the rear. They make their w…
It is customary during the curtain call of stage productions for the cast to gesture to the booth or backstage to call for applause for those behind the scenes who do so much of the heavy li…
IN Series, a company committed to making "theater from music," devoted its just-concluded season to the staging of works that were once banned. The season, with productions mounted in both W…
Julia Izumi's "Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live and active cultures!)" is not really about Akira Kurosawa and it's not really about yogurt. It is mostly about Julia I…
Nick Payne's "Constellations" opens with Cambridge cosmologist Marianne pitching an endearingly bizarre pickup line at a series of men. But we soon learn that these are not different men but…
Suzan-Lori Parks is one of today's most relevant and most produced playwrights, but one of her earliest works, 1993's "The America Play," has never been performed in the D.C. area until now.…
A talented cast and some clever production concepts cannot overcome the confusion of ideas present in Scena Theatre's production of Sophocles's "Ajax," translation by John Tipton, currently …
The Puppet Co.'s annual presentation of "The Nutcracker" is making its 36th appearance this year, and it continues to be a clever and innovative production that is ideal both to introduce yo…
Some years ago, Adventure Theatre's then-Artistic Director Michael Bobbitt approached playwright Ken Ludwig and asked him to write a show for the children's theatre at Glen Echo. Ludwig agre…
I have reviewed more than 100 productions in my seven years with this publication, and "Astro Boy and the God of Comics" is among the best of them. Created by Natsu Onoda Power, author of th…
For the first time in its 24 years in existence, Shakespeare Theatre Company is presenting the final performances of the STC Academy's Master of Fine Arts program on one of the theatre's mai…
North Shore Theatre Productions, a D.C.-based company specializing in one-person performances through its Solo Classics Series, presents a chilling and captivating adaptation of H.P. Lovecra…
