Catalyst Theater’s production of The Flu Season is something you want to like. You’ve got a small, scrappy theater company taking on a complex, ambitious work. There’s a fine cast assembled, and its purely functional set contrasts nicely with its fantastical backdrop of abstract, stormy trees. But attributes aside, it comes down to the fact that, as a play, Will Eno’s work is just a little too pretentious to be enjoyed. The work takes place…

FRIDAY: >> Seems like everyone’s talking about the new nightlife options on H Street NE these days, thanks almost entirely to local bar Tsar Joe Englert. Englert’s latest creation, Showbar Presents the Palace of Wonders (though we hear a lot people refering to it simply as the Freak Show Bar) has been open for a few weeks already to mixed buzz — the decor is cool, the drinks are standard, and the food is…

Rorschach Theatre’s production of A Bright Room Called Day does an excellent job of bringing on the tension. Sometimes it’s during a young woman’s vehement, Reagan-hating scenes set in the early 1980s. In her fervent state of alarm and outrage, she would be just as at home standing in front of the White House today, railing against the current adminstration. Sometimes it’s in watching the breakdown of one character, a tortured homosexual man (Alexander Strain),…