This rendition is most riveting when it focuses on all about the characters who (spoiler alert) help him get seated on the throne.

>> Sheffield’s The Long Blondes, often called a female-fronted version of the Arctic Monkeys, are at Rock and Roll Hotel tonight with Nicole Atkins and the Sea and Five Four. $12, 8 p.m. >> Latin jazz legend and Grammy winner Eddie Palmieri begins a four-night stint at Blues Alley tonight, with 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. sets through Sunday. Tickets are $35. >> John Updike will be at Temple Sinai to read from his book…

Czech conductor Jiří Bĕlohlávek led this weekend’s National Symphony Orchestra concerts at the Kennedy Center. This heralds the opening of a Czech mini-season in Washington, with a program of symphonic music from his homeland. Next month, Bĕlohlávek will conduct the much-anticipated production of Janáček’s Jenůfa at Washington National Opera. On Friday night the three short programmatic works under Bĕlohlávek’s baton were welcome obscurities. A Mozart concerto and a perennial favorite, Smetana’s tone poem Moldau, provided…

> > If we know you, the DCist reader, you are no doubt feverishly caught up in DC’s celebration of the life and works of William Shakespeare. Feel like delving deeper? Get on board with Wordfest’s Shakespeare Reading Group at Chapters one week from today at 6pm, and get a guided tour of Richard III from University of Connecticut Professor Emeritus Arnold Orza. If you ask us, Richard got mad swift-boated by the Bard, but,…

It’s official: we’re going to have no social life this January, as there are too many great productions premiering this month for us to do anything else but plays, plays, plays. We’ve got a ridiculous amount of Shakespeare, a beloved Sondheim musical, a new work by an old favorite, and we haven’t even gotten to Kathleen Turner. It’s a good month to be a theater lover. We adore Neil LaBute here at DCist, even though…

Labor Day is just around the corner, a time of relaxation, barbecues, final trips to the beach, heavy traffic and…dozens of plays crammed into one weekend? The Kennedy Center hopes it can lure theater-lovers away from their family functions and jaunts to the shore, and get them to take advantage of the Fourth Annual Page-To-Stage New Play Festival, held from Sept 3-5. The free event’s lineup was announced this week, and it is brimming…