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Edwin Lee Gibson on playing Dick Gregory in Turn Me Loose
As Edwin Lee Gibson prepares for the first performance of Turn Me Loose, a look into the life of comedian Dick Gregory, September 6th at Arena Stage, his dressing room is full of photos from Gregory’s...
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Review: Turn Me Loose, a play about comic genius Dick Gregory
Dick Gregory was never afraid to speak truth to those who most needed to hear it. Even when it fell like acid rain. Gregory—the rebel comedian who paved the way for provocative, black funny men—ended...
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Review: Anything Goes. stylish, silly musical serves up Cole Porter’s...
The revival of Cole Porter’s 1934 madcap romp Anything Goes at Arena Stage manages to be everything that it can be—an anachronism, tiresomely silly and outright dumb in places, but also the vehicle for...
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Review: Indecent. Paula Vogel’s heartbreaking reveal of Broadway scandal
The glimpses we get into God of Vengeance, the real-life play-within-a-play that’s at the heart of Paula Vogel’s thrilling, stirring Indecent, are audacious, provocative, tender, challenging. And...
View ArticleFurloughed? Arena Stage and WIT offer free performances
Arena Stage is making a limited number of tickets to its productions of Kleptocracy and The Heiress available for free to furloughed Federal employees, Arena Stage informed DCTS today. In addition,...
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Kleptocracy review. A Russian oligarch becomes Putin’s enemy
Kenneth Lin wrote for “House of Cards” back when “House of Cards” was cool. But what denizens of our town know is that, for the terrifying and the bizarre, there ain’t nothin’ like the real thing,...
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Playing Putin. Actor Christopher Geary’s insight into the most dangerous man...
Want to know what the most powerful man in the world is really like? Why not ask the man who plays him on stage? We may judge and condemn others with abandon, but there is one character with whom we...
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Seema Sueko on directing the “revolutionary thriller of the heart”, The Heiress
On Valentine’s Day this year, Arena Stage will open The Heiress, adapted from the 1880 Henry James novel Washington Square by playwrights Ruth and Augustus Goetz. While the play may seem at first...
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The Heiress review, a triumph for Laura C. Harris, leading Arena’s fine cast
We knew about autism in 1947, when Ruth and Augustus Goetz translated Henry James’ “Washington Square” to the stage as The Heiress, but we understood it only as a sum-zero disorder: the patient was...
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Arena Stage announces its 10 play season for 2019-2020
In the 2019-2020 theater season, Arena Stage may well be the place to go to meet interesting people: the acid-tongued Texas Governor Ann Richards; Fidel Castro; Ken Ludwig’s mom and dad, some of August...
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Review: Indecent. Paula Vogel’s play is incandescent
“This play changed my life,” proclaims shtetl tailor-turned-stage-manager Lemml (Ben Cherry) in Paula Vogel’s incandescent Indecent, and as you look up in wonder at the candle and stage-lit faces in...
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Review: Ayad Akhtar’s Junk at Arena Stage
In Shakespeare’s time, Christians were forbidden to lend money at interest (see Merchant of Venice) and so the Western world, intellectually vibrant though it was, was mostly economically stagnant....
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Review: Jubilee, Tazewell Thompson’s glorious tribute to The Fisk Jubilee...
Steeped in history and echoing with divine harmony, Jubilee is an event you won’t want to miss. The cast of Jubilee at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. (Photo: Margot Schulman) A...
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Jayne Atkinson is playing Governor Ann Richards: “If she was alive today,...
Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar are, among a mostly male field, serious contenders to be the Democratic Party’s pick for the 2020 presidential race. All...
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Review: Jayne Atkinson as Texas Governor Ann Richards in Ann at Arena Stage
Wit, wisdom, and class are all on display through the southern, Texas charm and steely resolve of the late Ann Richards at Arena Stage. As portrayed by stage and screen veteran Jayne Atkinson in...
View ArticleFree Community Days at DC area theatres start this Saturday. DC shifts into...
With 32 shows rehearsing for September openings, the 2019-2020 season is about to start in earnest and there are some awesome free celebrations going on. Round House Theatre Bethesda, MD August 24...
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After tours and a Tony, Keith Randolph Smith is back in August Wilson’s...
Keith Randolph Smith is a member of the cast of August Wilson’s Jitney, now in rehearsal, and opening this Fall at Arena Stage. He plays Doub, one of the drivers for the eponymous jitney in Wilson’s...
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Review: Jitney at Arena Stage
Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s restaging of his 2017 Broadway production of Jitney at Arena Stage—bringing to town much of the design team and several of the actors—is a terrific kickoff to a...
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Review: Right to Be Forgotten debuts at Arena Stage
What takes precedent: individual privacy, or public information? Right to Be Forgotten, making its world premiere at Arena Stage, is remarkably nuanced in its exploration of the big debates in Internet...
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“Young people are rising up to shape the world they want to live in.” Joe...
Newsies, the movie, established a cult following in 1992, with a pre-Dark Knight Christian Bale playing Jack Kelly, a 17-year-old newspaper hawker in New York City who leads the 1899 newsboys strike,...
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How 1970’s culture clashes played out on two Washington DC stages
By 1970, Washington, DC had long been a major college town; home to tens of thousands of young people who were trying to define their generation in opposition to the dominant values of their parents....
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Review: Disney’s Newsies, the youth-revolt inspired musical
Newsies is a frolicking, joyous musical with a healthy dose of “kid power:” the perfect recipe for families this holiday season. Based on the original Disney film and drawing from the real-life...
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1984. A “spiritual happening” when Morgan Freeman preached The Gospel at...
Editor’s note: The mix of cultures has always provided a rich stew for theater, showing us both the universality of human longing and the diverse ways in which it can be expressed. So, for example, the...
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Review: Dear Jack, Dear Louise at Arena Stage
When Army Captain Jack Ludwig (Jake Epstein) first speaks his full name early on in playwright Ken Ludwig’s new dramedy Dear Jack, Dear Louise, audiences probably realize that this World War II romance...
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Our 20 most memorable shows of 2019
What matters most, when all the theatrical offerings for 2019 have been made, is what lingers in the minds and hearts of the audience. We asked our writers and the Gary Maker Audience Award recipients...
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Our 23 most memorable performances of 2019
One last standing ovation for these performers whose work quite simply blew us away this year. Ian Merill Peakes, Amadeus, Folger Theatre Ian Merrill Peakes as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus at Folger...
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2020 Visions. Theatre leaders tell us what lies ahead.
We asked area theatre companies to tell us what they were most looking forward to in 2020. Their answers surprised us! Contributors: 4615 Theatre Company . American Ensemble Theater . American...
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“The audience won’t like him.” Family man Haysam Kadri on playing the villain...
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel encompassing the lives of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, living in war-torn Kabul and both married to the same man, Rasheed. The play...
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Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns at Arena Stage, a harrowing Afghan drama
Carey Perloff’s opening scene of the staged adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s shattering novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, moves with breathtaking beauty. Two women in one direction and a man in another...
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Review: Mother Road, a rip-roaring road drama, buddy comedy, musical, and...
“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?” So wonders the desperate Joad family in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” as they burn their belongings before fleeing...
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Review: Celia and Fidel at Arena Stage. Castro and the seduction of power
There are moments in this mesmerizing production of Celia and Fidel during which the entire audience holds its collective breath. We watch as a battle is being fought and a choice is being made. What...
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Director Alan Schneider. Beckett and others trusted him with their world...
One summer evening in 1941, a young graduate student home visiting his parents from Cornell University, attended a performance at Catholic University directed by Walter Kerr. Schneider was so taken...
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DC theatres open lobbies as safe spaces for Black Lives Matter protestors
Update: Source and The 9:30 Club become the latest venues to open their doors to protestors. With thousands of people planned to gather in DC this weekend to protest police brutality, a number of...
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Bring an artist’s performance into your home, or at least to your driveway.
Have you ever wished that your living space could be re-imagined by a set designer? Or that you could gift a personalized greeting or concert by a favorite performer? Or that a theatre artist could...
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Recommended shows to catch this weekend
May 22, 2020 Arena Stage Free View below or view later Arena Stage adds filmmaker to its accomplishments with May 22, 2020, a filmed docudrama, directed by Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith,...
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Arena Stage starts its 5-play season, January, 2021.
Arena Stage, whose ten-play season was cancelled earlier this year by coronavirus, has announced that it intends to restage in 2021 three of the plays it lost this year. To that contingent, Arena will...
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DCTS Performance Guide for the 2020/2021 theatre season
While planning theatre in the time of Covid requires faith and flexibility on everyone’s part, we thought it valuable to show you the shows our companies hope to present. Some are virtual. Some will be...
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DC citizens speak through Arena Stage’s new film The 51st State
Statehood for the District of Columbia has always been a fraught enterprise. It wasn’t until 1961 that Washington residents could vote for President; and before 1973, Congress appointed DC government’s...
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Review: Fannie Lou Hamer: Speak on It! A soul-stirring message on the power...
Lyndon Johnson is said to have called her an “ignorant niggra.” In Fannie Lou Hamer: Speak on It!, E. Faye Butler brings this so-called “ignorant niggra” – Fannie Lou Hamer – to vibrant, embarrassing...
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Lorraine Treanor – These are the plays that won’t let go
These are the plays that won’t let go. They are there as I drift off to sleep, or, unbidden, come to me during the day. This happens more often now, as work here slows to a close. You probably have...
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