Results tagged “broadway”

Is gospel?

D.C.-based Arena Stage proudly announced earlier today that for the first time in the theater’s history since 1979, two productions that recently played at Arena will be on Broadway at the same time: Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations starring Jane Fonda, and Next to Normal featuring the entire Arena Stage cast. You can read our reviews of both Arena productions here and here.

In at the National Theater, a bilingual production is hardly a language barrier.

Damn their warnings, damn their lies. Signature Theater has proven that it doesn't take a turntable stage and a National Tour to produce a dazzling and, more importantly, individualized production of one of the theater's most beloved musicals, .

Signature Theater's Broadway-bound musical has a story that is so much more appealing than its lyrics, that it's tempting to wonder whether the whole thing might have worked even better as a play.

was only the second show in history to transition from D.C. to Broadway - and its run only lasted one night.

We've got a secret for you: Sweeney Todd is a musical. We understand there might be some confusion about that, seeing as how the television ads don't have a single note of singing in them, and if you blink during the theatrical trailer, you'll miss the five seconds of Johnny Depp singing buried in the clip. Make no mistake, though. The vast majority of this film is told in song. On the one hand, it's a shame that DreamWorks is acting ashamed of a musical as fun as Sondheim's, full of challenging, yet entirely accessible songs. But it's pretty clear that they're counting on scoring some extra ticket sales by luring in horror fans with playing up Tim Burton's dark, Gothic vision of the material. And that might be a smart move, because Sweeney Todd may just be that rare musical with broad appeal to audiences who might normally say they don't care for the genre.

Yarrrrrr. Forget Jacob Marley and Sugarplum Fairies. What DCist wants for Christmas this year is pirates. And Round House is more than happy to oblige. Their production of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (a new version by Broadway vet Ken Ludwig) fully embraces the pirate fascination that our culture has embraced even before Johnny Depp made the word "savvy" his own. The story is one familiar to many who grew up with the tale --...

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits...

Forget Christmas shopping, paying your bills, reading articulate reviews on your favorite local blog. The Internet is for porn. Such is one of the life lessons the delightful Avenue Q, now playing at the National Theater, provides. The now-famous show is a Sesame Street for the post-college, ennui-ridden 20 or 30-something. This means it teaches us not to spell and know our colors, but instead how to cope with useless liberal arts degrees, commitment-phobic boyfriends...

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Romance & Cigarettes John Turturro's third film as a director is the sort that seems tailor made to become a cult classic. Not nearly polished or glamorous enough to be the sort of Broadway to big screen musical hit that Chicago or Hairspray was, it was too oddball to fit into the heads of most...

It's hard to believe that a musical could get you hooked on phonics. But spelling suddenly becomes irresistible in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the touring production of the Broadway hit, now playing at the National Theater. The pleasing, goofy show takes an amalgam of precocious, oddball kids and makes you root for them all. There are archetypes for sure -- the obsessive Asian kid, the nasal, self-important geek -- but each one...

Have you heard? Geeks wish they were hot. Men love their cars, and don't seem to call after a first date. And women have to wait in long lines for the bathroom, while men are stuck waiting around for them to finish shopping.

Anyone at Steven Blier's latest Wolf Trap recital this past August likely wanted to hear more from mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. Washingtonians had that wish fulfilled by Young Concert Artists, who sponsored her Sunday afternoon recital in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. Cooke and her excellent associate artist, pianist Pei-Yao Wang, presented an attractive program of relative rareties from the 19th- and 20th-century song repertory to a relatively full house. The concert opened memorably with a...

>> The YMCA National Capital at 1711 Rhode Island Ave NW is hosting Mario Lopez and some one-named Broadway star for some dancin', and hoping you won't laugh. [via BrightestYoungThings] >> Salmon Try to Send Larry Craig Up the River [Wonkette] >> Mayor Fenty promised to speed up renovations on D.C.'s oldest pipelines, after low water pressure cost firefighters valuable time in last night's four-alarm Adams Morgan blaze. [WaPo] >> October 1 Means Its...

When Open Circle Theater company announced it would be reworking Jason Robert Brown’s Songs For A New World to revolve around the Iraq war, it was hard to squelch images of flag-waving, canons booming, and rewritten lyrics resembling "I’m not afraid of anything/be it religious extremists, guns or sand." Fortunately, Open Circle’s take has much more sincerity, skill and imagination driving their interpretation, though ultimately, the work stands up better unadorned. Songs, which recently was...

The American Century Theatre’s update of the FDR-era Broadway smash Hellzapoppin’ kicks off with a terrible joke: An announcer on the P.A. who thinks he’s there for another show throws a fit when he sees the copy he’s supposed to read. It’s forced. It’s painful. It’s not funny. Then — Mercy! — a man in a gorilla suit shows up. Man in gorilla suit = crazy hilarious. But if you don't agree, then perhaps...

If you consider yourself a fan of The Fiery Furnaces, chances are, you’re the type of person who appreciates a good surprise. Though the siblings Friedberger debuted in 2003 with Gallowbird’s Bark, a fairly straightforward (if surprisingly literate) take on bluesy garage rock, things quickly took a turn for the weird. The band returned only a year later with the 76-minute Blueberry Boat, a delightfully overstuffed homage to the rock operas of the Who that crammed squelchy Moog lines, blues riffs, church organs and Broadway melodies into miniature epics about lost dogs, pirates and misplaced lockets. While the album’s sudden twists and turns felt like aural overload on first listen, many fans and critics found the makings of a masterwork in the record’s labyrinthine assembly and spiraling narratives. As if to prove that they are capable of producing great pop songs as well (on the rare occasion that they feel like it), the band followed with the terrific singles-collecting EP in 2005.

Between remakes of The Stepford Wives, and sitcoms ranging from "Desperate Housewives" to "Weeds," it’s easy to think the catty, sterile, back-stabbing nature of suburbia has been played out recently as a topic for satire. It turns out that all you need is some super show tunes and some women who can fly to keep the genre fresh. The Witches of Eastwick, making its U.S. premiere at Signature Theater, after a successful run in London...

At this week's concerts, the National Symphony Orchestra premiered the new harp concerto that it commissioned from Mark Adamo. Adamo dedicated Four Angels to conductor Leonard Slatkin, who helped make the commission happen, and the NSO's principal harpist, Dotian Levalier, for whom the solo part was created. On Friday night at the Kennedy Center, Slatkin led the NSO through a sensitive reading of this rather traditional but hauntingly lovely score. The first movement is named...

to choose from. Welcome to June in D.C. theater! Here are the highlights:

doesn't seem like the world's most enduring love story anymore).

As April was the month of 80 zillion new play openings, we kind of thought things would slow down a bit for the theater community in May. Not the case – we’ve got lots of exciting productions to share with you, from post-modern Hamlet comedies to, well, Hamlet itself. Plus, something new from the guy behind “Schindler’s List”. Here’s what’s playing. Catalyst Theater impressed all its larger competitors by taking home the award for best...

, three little words should make you put your reservations aside and rush to the auditorium: "Starring Carolee Carmello."

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In...

Well, they don’t call it Shakespeare in Washington for nothing. This month brings quite the selection of Bard-tastic choices. We’ve got Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare Theater (April 3), The As-You-Like-It-inspired She Stoops to Comedy at Woolly Mammoth (April 1), and The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Coriolanus at the Kennedy Center (April 13). Plus, Edward III just opened this week at Washington Shakespeare Company, and even Lord John Marbury's in DC this weekend, doing the...

I arrived to a half filled Black Cat last night, unsure what to expect from Danish superstars Mew. Their album, And The Glass Handed Kites, was one of the most interesting albums I heard last year, their fey yet bruising style of jangle prog a combination of Jeff Buckley's tenderest falsetto moments and the whiplash of Bloc Party's best Wedding Present imitation in one album that sequences connecting songs to great effect. However, the...

Seriously. Who doesn't love the law of supply and demand? We all learned about it in Econ 101. Yet so few seem to understand it. Maybe that's because so few of us took Econ 102 . Or maybe just because its more fun to simply twist it to justify whatever policy or proposal you want. Either way, after the jump we have this week's supply of transit news. The Examiner offers up more transit wisdom,...

It's officially December, so we find our thoughts turning to holiday shopping. Will you be giving the gift of local theater (or hoping to receive it) this season? Here are a couple of things on our wish list for the D.C. theatre community:

There's something strangely Disney-like about Arena Stage's production of She Loves Me. Is it the candy-colored sets? The cartoonish dancing? The opening song, "Good Morning, Good Day," which calls to mind Beauty and the Beast's "Bonjour" number? Or maybe it's just that leading lady Brynn O'Malley seems to have taken her recent performance as Belle in Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and transplanted it in D.C.? She Loves Me, a classic, romantic musical adored by...