Rogue and peasant slave? Try petulant teenager. Jeffrey Carlson’s take on the title character of Shakespeare Theater’s production of Hamlet, is much more a pouting, stubborn young man rather than a noble, conflicted individual. At first, Carlson’s Hamlet seems a bit affected. He's constantly sniffing, as if a coke addict, and it seems for awhile that his steady whining will be too much to handle for the entirety of a three-hour production. But his portrayal......

So the big winners at last night’s Helen Hayes awards were… puppets? Indeed, Aaron Posner’s unique vision for Measure for Measure, produced at the Folger this year, where puppets took on many of the play’s roles, earned him a best director trophy (he tied with Michael Kahn, for his zany take on Love’s Labor Lost), as well as the award for Outstanding Resident Play. Signature Theater’s Assassins won the most awards of the night with......

Shakespeare Theatre's production of Love's Labor's Lost is, in a word, groovy. The theatre has taken Shakespeare's comedy and given it a 1960s style-twist, and boy does it work. It's not the first time that music has played a key role in the re-imagining of Love's Labor's Lost, which tells the tale of four men who have sworn off love for three years in order to concentrate austerely on their studies, only to be confronted......