“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,…

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…

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….