DCist's January Theater Preview
December may have been classic musical central, but January brings a new year and host of exciting options, heavy topics and renowned playwrights showcased by local theatres.
Opening this week is Studio Theatre's anticipated Neil LaBute Festival, highlighting the work of the often-caustic man responsible for, among other things, The Shape of Things and In The Company Of Men. The festival kicks off with Fat Pig, which explores whether a man can overcome his friends' and his own prejudices when he falls for an overweight woman (Jan 4). Also included in the festival is autobahn, a seven-play cycle, and Seconds of Pleasure: The LaBute readings. LaBute-aholics can catch all three plays, get dinner and participate in a discussion for $100 on selected days; visit the Web site for more info.
Speaking of women and body issues, Eve Ensler's The Good Body has a one week engagement at the Lincoln Theatre (Jan 17). The Vagina Monologues author interviewed a variety of women and discussed their body image to produce this work.
Was Meat & Potato Theater's Poe 2000 just not enough of the macabre master for you? See what Signature can pull off when they set the man's life and words to music with Nevermore (Jan. 10).
Moliere's Don Juan scandalized in 1665; does it have the same power today? Find out when Shakespeare Theater Company stages it (Jan. 24).
Also this month:
- American Century Theater performs Spoon River Anthology, examining life in rural america (Jan. 5).
- Folger Shakespeare paints Measure For Measureas a modern satire on legislating morality (Jan. 19).
- Awake And Sing! follows a proud Jewish family through the Great Depression at Arena (Jan. 20).
- Trying tells the story of attorney general and Nuremberg judge Francis Biddle at Ford's Theater (Jan. 20)
- Rorschach Theatre tells a samurai story about young lovers with its thriller Fair Ladies At A Game Of Poem Cards (Jan. 21).
- Roundhouse looks at the trials faced by Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers in Silver Spring (Jan. 26)
- Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's "comic nightmare fantasy" The Velvet Sky(Jan. 30).
- And Theater J will hold a series of new play readings, this month with The Visitor (Jan. 20) and Spring Forward/Fall Back (Jan. 27).
Still playing:
Wicked, which we enjoyed, is at the Kennedy Center through Jan. 15, though it's sold out; See Les Miserables, which we loved, for the last time (they promise!) Jan. 21; Journeymen theater's unique An Experiment With An Air Pump closes Jan. 28; Betty Rules at Theater J bows Jan. 29; Arena's Damn Yankees, which we reviewed, is here until Feb. 5.