The theater company’s new leader replaces Chris Jennings, who served in the role for 19 years, and will take the helm in February.

Citing inadequate pay raises and unfair treatment of production staff, about 50 staffers are seeking representation with the local stagehands union.

The free series aims to challenge an audience member’s idea of the “classics.”

See the “House of Cards” star perform—and brood over you—at a special one-night-only benefit concert next month.

How can you make a 300-year-old French farce that loses something in translation accessible to a modern English-speaking audience? For the Shakespeare Theatre, the solution is to simply re-write it with that audience in mind, and it works out quite nicely.

The Merchant of Venice remains a challenging work for modern audiences, largely because it’s so difficult to suss out exactly how Shakespeare meant it. Subtleties of interpretation can cause the work to swing wildly between poles of anti-semetism and religious/ethnic tolerance, and that’s without even getting into the secondary point of contention, regarding whether two of the main male characters love each other in a more than brotherly way.

Watching the Shakepeare Theatre’s new production of Harold Pinter’s Old Times is a little like watching a life-size shoebox diorama. Designer Walt Spangler’s set, lit with a cinematic eye by Scott Zielinski, turns the stage of the Lansburgh Theatre into a rigidly-defined rectangle, with white walls, ceiling, and floor, white modernist furnishings, and a long row of rectangular windows at the back meant to look at the sea beyond the walls of this remote English country house. It’s cold, sterile, and more enclosed than one is used to seeing at the theater, and heightens the voyeuristic sense of peering in on a carefully constructed moment in the lives of its characters.

With all the lush romanticism going on over at Shakespeare Theater’s Harman Center, you’d think it were Valentine’s Day, not the Christmas season. Director Rebecca Bayla Taichman’s production of Twelfth Night is one big over-the-top ode to love, and the result is delightful rather than saccharine. The set’s backdrop is all dramatic, supersized roses, and petals cascade from the ceiling each time a character becomes lovestruck (an effect that initially seems schmaltzy, but is later…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: There Will Be Blood We should have held our tongues on our top 10 for the year until the actual end of the year. Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film slipped in just under the 2007 wire in limited release last week, and the director channels John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, and his own wild-eyed imagination…

>> The Shakespeare Theatre Company has started a special program, called 20/10, that offers people aged 35 and under discounted tickets for their performances. The program launches tonight, with a special performance of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine where all of the tickets will be $10 for the under 35 crowd, and they’re promising a DJ, drink specials and door prizes for those who take advantage. Call the box office at (202) 547-1122 for details. >>…