This mix-tape of a production never stops moving, but it never really gets anywhere.
The play dramatizes a news story that is all too familiar.
Theater Alliance pairs “Word Becomes Flesh” and “for colored girls…” as a pair of powerful commentaries on black American life.
Do you remember ads in old ’60s comic books urging you to purchase a mail order monkey? The team behind Pepe! The Mail Order Monkey Musical does, and figured the premise was bizarre enough to build a musical around. Which may be true, but unfortunately the material doesn’t live up to the concept here. Most of Pepe!’s time is spent meandering through sing-song musical numbers with cringe-worthy rhymes about suburbia. It all builds toward…
Eric M. Messner and Danny Gavigan in the Theater Alliance’s “Five Flights” Written by DCist contributor Andrej Krasnansky Adam Bock’s Five Flights centers around an unlikely plight – what to do with a dilapidated aviary. But when a father believes his wife’s soul lived in that bird’s home, the stakes for the aviary’s fate get a little bit higher. Theater Alliance’s set evokes the aviary with a nestlike web of branches and broken windows…
Nigel Reed in “The Woman Who Amuses Herself”. Courtesy Theater Alliance. So what was Mona Lisa really smiling about anyway? Was she thinking about a past romantic rendezvous? Wistfully reminiscing about days gone by? Wincing a little over a pesky toothache? Hearing third graders provide their theories on the eternal question (yes, that’s where the toothache theory’s coming from) is a chuckle-worthy aside during in Victor Lodato’s The Woman Who Amuses Herself, now getting…
After seeing two plays in a row based in a mental institution, it’s hard not to go a little crazy. But when the harrowing environment comes with the finessed performances and thoughtful themes of Theater Alliance’s latest, Blue/Orange, it’s worth the trial. In director Jeremy Skidmore’s Blue/Orange, two doctors are treating Christopher (Cedric Mays), a disturbed individual who may or may not be schizophrenic – and also thinks he’s the son of African dictator Idi…
FRIDAY: >> Comets on Fire bring their detailed, funky prog sound to D.C., with openers Benjy Ferree(***) and (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope at Black Cat. I (heart) music tells us that if you love Deep Purple, you’ll like Comets on Fire. Listen to a few tracks over at Hype Machine to test the waters. $12, 9:30 p.m. >> Looking for a straight-up chance to dance? Venezuela’s Los Amigos Invisibles always deliver, with DJ Afro at…
FRIDAY: >> It’s going to be a stormy, steamy night in the District, so we’d recommend heading over to catch one of the Capital Fringe Festival’s most buzzed-about plays, Rorschach’s The Arabian Night, at the Sanctuary Theatre at Casa Del Pueblo. The space doesn’t have air conditioning, so take a cue from our theater critic: “All in all, the dreamy, smoldering Arabian Night is worth every sweltering moment. But follow the cue of the play’s…
Cheaters…women’s sex lives…Salman Rushdie…during March in the D.C. theater world, looks like anything goes; even Anything Goes. Starting off the month is George Bernard Shaw’s Fanny’s First Play, produced by Washington Stage Guild (March 2). This “comedy within a comedy” should prove witty enough, as Shaw always has a way with words. Speaking of renowned male authors, Haroun And The Sea Of Stories, a Salman Rushdie D.C. premiere, begins at the H Street playhouse this…
