How well you enjoy David Grimm's Measure For Pleasure at Woolly Mammoth will largely be dictated by your tolerance of puns. Because boy, are there a lot of them here, mostly of the tawdry variety. In a way it's not surprising; the work is a satire of Restoration comedy, which relied heavily on sexually-explicit double entendre to get its point (and laughs) across. Director Howard Shalwitz has the corsets and the high-society settings in place......

So it's a little Dangerous Minds redux. That's OK. The idea of inspiring young inner-city minds through unconventional teaching methods may not be the most, well, unconventional of stories. But Nilaja Sun's No Child deserves total props for taking a familiar idea and making an entirely engaging one-woman show about it. Sun's story is this: young aspiring actress takes a job to pay the bills teaching a group of Bronx high-school students how to put......

“The thing about an urban legend is that it never happened to the person tellin’ it. It always happened to someone else.” So intones Kimberly Gilbert at the top of The K of D, Laura Schellhardt’s spooky, richly-layered mystery, now in its world-premiere run at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. The show is less a whodunit? than a whatthefuk?, though who-done-what is necessarily foremost on Gilbert’s mind: She plays all 12 of the play’s roles,......

The DC theater community is starting the year off right with...no more productions of A Christmas Carol. Seriously, there's plenty to like in January, from gutsy works to brand-new musicals. The Neo-Futurists (pictured) are back! Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, which our critic Chris Klimek loved, makes a return engagement at Woolly Mammoth (Jan. 4). Stick 'em up! The American Century Theater gets nostalgic for police dramas with their production of Cops......

Cue music: Dum. DUM. Dum dum dum DUUM dum. Dum dum dum DUUM dum. Dum dum dum dummmm…. If that makes any sense to you, you’re probably the target of Charles Ross’s uproarious One Man Star Wars Trilogy, now making a return engagement in D.C. at Woolly Mammoth Theater. The show's exactly what it sounds like -- Ross acts out just about every scene of the three original films with gusto, even humming the movements......

>> Woolly Mammoth's popular One Man Star Wars Trilogy is back, written and performed by Charles Ross. Tickets are $28 for the 8 p.m. show. >> The Alliance Francaise and Twins Jazz present the Dupont T quartet, a group led by bassist Hubert Dupont, a major player in the jazz scene in Paris. Tickets to the 8 and 10:30 p.m. sets are $20. >> Take the opportunity to check out the new Busboys and......

Though modernizing the Odyssey is hardly new territory, Woolly Mammoth’s production of Melissa James Gibson’s Current Nobody still manages to feel fresh. We’ve got a gender flip, and a modern setting. Penelope, now merely "Pen", has been sent to Troy to take war photographs (the Trojan war here doesn’t feel much removed from the Iraq one), while Od is left at home with Tel – for 20 years. The story has kind of a weird......

>> Jazz fans won't want to miss guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel at Blues Alley tonight, feauturing saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Ben Street and drummer Rodney Green. Sets are at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets available here. $25 + $10 food/drink minimum. >> Tickets are still available for Woolly Mammoth's production of The Unmentionables, about which our critic said that it "points Fat Albert’s giant index finger at the audience in a......

The Unmentionables, Woolly Mammoth’s incendiary season-opener, boasts one of the strongest companies to tread a District stage this year. Their comic timing is both tight and loose, like a well-rehearsed but highly instinctive group of musicians. But the real star is Bruce Norris’s play itself, a screwball satire about imperialism, do-gooderism and hypocrisy. Set in equatorial West Africa, this jeremiad finds as much fault with supposedly altruistic relief workers who come to ease their......

Rachel Manteuffel gives a fetching and formidable performance as Grace O'Malley in A Most Notorious Woman, part of the Capital Fringe Festival. And we're better for it - after all, who doesn't want to hear about the adventures of a spitfire, 16th century female pirate? A Most Notorious Woman, written by playwright Maggie Cronin, has a rather fluid structure, jumping quickly from present time to the past, from Ireland to England, without much warning. At......

Well, there’s Rick Foucheaux in a chair playing a dead guy again. And look — Sarah Marshall is acting crazy as only she can. And come to think of it, this is another Sarah Ruhl play that concerns itself with the afterlife. Is there anything original happening here? Yep. Pretty much everything, actually. Dead Man’s Cell Phone, the world-premiere Ruhl now onstage at Woolly Mammoth, tests your patience a bit in the early going,......

FRIDAY: >> It's Friday the 13th. Scaaary? Nah. We laugh in the face of danger. Or at least, you might if you swing by HR-57 tonight for all the DC Comedy Fest events happening on their stages. We gave you the rundown on the festival yesterday, and we'd especially recommend heading over later on to catch the 11 p.m. Leno-Letterman Audition Highlights, which features some of the fest's funnier comedians in longer sets than usual.......

>> Artists Virgil Marti and Pae White, whose new conceptual piece has recently been installed in the lobby of the Hirshhorn, will give a Meet the Artists talk in the museum's Ring Auditorium. [7th St. and Independence Ave. SW, Free, 7 p.m.] >> U Street neighborhood residents get the bait-and-switch from Mayor's office. Until a day ago, Mayor Fenty was scheduled to meet tonight. Now the Cardozo/Shaw Neighborhood Association will settle for Deputy Mayor Neil......

Hyperbole can be dangerous, but it’s hard to think of a more laugh-inducing scene that we’ve seen on the DC stage this season than Kate Eastwood Norris’s exchange with, well, herself, during Woolly Mammoth Theater’s uproarious production of She Stoops to Comedy. Kate is playing two lesbian lovers, Kay Fien and Jayne Summerhouse. The wonderfully self-aware She Stoops is more than conscious of the fact that the actress has been on double duty, and keeps......

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......

Try to think of something you've done every day for the past year. What comes to mind? Obsessively checking email? Brushing your teeth? Buying a no-fat latte at Starbucks? Pulitzer prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks was a bit more ambitious - she wrote one play each day for an entire year. Now, theater groups across the country will be performing those works, and DC is no exception. The event kicks off this Saturday at Studio Theater, where......

Many critics accused the recent hit movie Little Miss Sunshine of borrowing stock eccentric characters from the abstract Land of Generic Quirk. The same might be said of Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis, a play with characters who seem to be a conveniently thrown-together group of wackos rather than anything resembling a realistically dysfunctional family. We’re talking a dominatrix, a possibly-retarded sister, an obsessive-compulsive cleaning lady, and naturally, the Elvis, to name a few.......

So if October's the month for spooky productions and December is the time to get in the holiday spirit, what does November mean for D.C. Theater? Looks like this month, it means a diverse catalogue of everything from Chinese Elvises to Katie Couric (ok, maybe some theaters are apparently still thinking "scary"). Actors' Theater of Washington has the camp-tastic Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, which will serve as a late-night follow-up to its current production,......

FRIDAY: >> It's the DAM! Festival, son. We've already written a blue streak about it, so check out our recent music archives for some great interviews and MP3s from participating artists, and weigh your options between The Red and the Black, the Rock and Roll Hotel, or Velvet Lounge, full schedule with too many bands to list here. Of course, the non-DAM! show of the night is clearly Baltimore's Spank Rock, who'll be bringing their......

FRIDAY: >> In "sucks but it's true" news, the H Street NE scene, while awesomely fun, can still be a dangerous part of town. Argonaut bartender Luis "Quike" Morales was reminded of that fact the hard way late last month, when he was shot in the head while walking home from work. Amazingly, Quike survived, but his mounting medical bills are more than any service industry salary could handle. So head on down to the......

At the Friday night performance of Woolly Mammoth Theater's production of Get Your War On, the audience found just about every moment of the work uproariously funny. Was it because the lines were genuinely clever? Was it because they agreed so wholeheartedly with the author's liberal stance? Was it a much-needed release after enduring years upon years of injustice from the Bush administration? It's hard to say, but it begs the question whether the play......

The Tony's. The Helen Hayes Awards. Opening night of just about anything, natch. The world of theater has a lot of big nights, it seems. Add one more to the list. On October 19, D.C. will celebrate a Free Night of Theater. Participating theaters — and there are many of them — will offer free tickets to some of the area's most popular shows. And we're not talking just a few tiny theaters desperate for......

FRIDAY: >> We interviewed Josh Lefkowitz when he was in town performing at the Fringe Festival, and now he's bringing his thoughtful/hysterical monologue, Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century, to the Woolly Mammoth stage. Tickets are $15, and the show runs through Oct. 8. Details and showtimes are available here. >> Soft Complex has a debut EP, Barcelona, and it's damn well time for them to......

Just as it's back-to-school time for area students, it's back-to-the-boards time for the area's theatre community. September brings with it a host of new productions to get you through the lingering heat. Arena Stage bids us Willkommen, Bienvenue and Welcome with their inaugural production of Cabaret (Sept. 8). The presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson was just crying for a Shakespearean take, at least according to American Century Theatre, who will stage Macbird! (Sept. 8). Two......

Howard Shalwitz, the longtime artistic director of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, co-founded the theatre back in 1980--at a time when the repertory of American plays was limited to academic classics and NYC vogue. With a commitment to new approaches to theatre and a devotion to bringing new playwriting voices into the limelight, Woolly has had not just a tremendous national impact, but has been an important local influence as well as a partner in......

Today at the Fringe, it's your last chance to see a pair of shows from Canada, we give you a good reason to see Atlantis Bones, and Star Wars nerds have their day in the sun. It's everything you need to know about Wednesday at the Fringe, and finding it all is just a click away. New Today: Grounded, by Andrew Ullrich We don't know what Grounded is about, and we don't know who Andrew......

Have you heard? There's this Fringe Festival going on all across the city. It looks like Flickr user Beck Exposed made it out to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre this week and took a fine photograph while she was at it (under a Creative Commons license). The opposing staircases tightly frame the center as the lines slowly take you out to the edges. The photo's EXIF data is here.......

In its first weekend, the Capital Fringe Festival turned downtown D.C. into a moveable feast of performance, as show after show made its Fringe debut. As we enter Day Five of the festival, it’s now time to go get a second helping—a show you want to see again or a show your friends have told you is a must-see. Even still, a handful of shows will get their start today. At DCist, we’d love to......

Short Works Exploring Dangerous Devotion is about as straightforward a title as you could imagine for the three short plays being presented on the Woolly Mammoth stage. Dangerous devotion, indeed: The first piece toys with fascism, the second with love and the third with religion. Ionesco's "The Leader" isn't too complex a work, but is appealing in its exaggerated absurdity. This play belongs to Katie Atkinson, the ringleader of a group of disciplies to some......

In case you were wondering, we checked in with a few people who headed out to the Warehouse last night in the wee hours to see Daniel Burkholder and Jonathan Matis doing their 24 hour long performance piece unmapped, and the pair were not cheating or anything. Kudos to you, gentlemen, for bringing a dose of unhinged ambition. We hope you have a good night's sleep tonight. The Capital Fringe Festival is going all out......