Review: Red Theater’s Hamlet Is Intimate and Text-Driven
It’s the top of the first act. As the lights come down and the guards enter, those familiar with Shakespeare’s famous piece know what is about to happen. The guards […]
Review: Cock at Open Space Arts Is a Knock-Down, Drag-Out Good Time
Open Space Arts is a collective that focuses on work that combats homophobia and antisemitism. The current production is Cock by British playwright Mike Bartlett. In 2009, the four-actor show debuted at […]
Review: Love Song, a Quirky Rom-Com by Remy Bumppo, Shows Us That Love Can Be Magical
Beane is a bit peculiar. He doesn’t seem to enjoy life. His apartment attacks him. He answers questions before they’re asked or doesn’t answer at all. But once Beane meets […]
Review: What the Weird Sisters Saw by Idle Muse Reenvisions Macbeth Through the Eyes of Its Most Elusive Characters
Reminiscent of the Three Fates of Greek mythology and famous for their incantation, “Double, double, toil and trouble,” the weird sisters of Macbeth are an iconic trio. But what does the world […]
Review: Pride Arts Stages Shakespeare’s R & J, the Classic Romance, With a New Kind of Magic
Four young women actors, dressed in today’s version of a parochial school uniform (of this, more later) mime a school day, beginning with their confessions. “Bless me, Father, for I have […]
Review: Red Orchid’s In Quietness Presents a Puzzling Story About Marriage and Conservative Religion
In Quietness at A Red Orchid Theatre asks a lot of its audience, especially an urban liberal (most likely) audience. The play pits feminism against fundamentalist religion. It asks us to believe […]
Review: Mother Courage at Trap Door Theatre Brings Brecht’s Anti-War Rhetoric Home to the 21st Century
Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 play, Mother Courage and Her Children, is the greatest anti-war play of all time. Anti-war, anti-government and anti-capitalism, as we learn in the opening scene of this stirring […]
Review: Dario Fo’s Marxist Farce, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, by Gwydion Theatre Speaks to Our Economic Pains
Dario Fo’s 1974 Marxist farce, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, has plenty of messages for us in today’s era of inflationary prices. In its staging by Gwydion Theatre Company, we learn […]
Review: Rosenberg Tells the Story of the Lawyer Who Helped Prosecute the WWII Espionage Case
The truth doesn’t matter. That’s the premise and it’s repeated throughout the performance of Rosenberg, a new play being staged by Open Space Arts, and directed by Michael D. Graham. Set in […]
Review: Trap Door Stages the Stylish if Mystifying Play, The Pragmatists—Is It an Anti-War Play?
Two old friends, their bonds apparently fractured by despair at a collapsing world or something else entirely, meet again. One is artistic and the other is a practical man, a […]
Review: In Water People Theater’s North & Sur, Two Poets Meet—and Magic Happens
Dijo el cuervo, “nunca más.” That famous line of 19th century American poetry, “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore,” is a thread that runs through North & Sur, the new play being staged by […]
Review: In Three Crows’ Beauty Queen of Leenane, McDonagh’s Dark Comedy Illuminates
Before last year’s The Banshees of Inisherin… before Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri… before In Bruges… before all the Oscars noms and Tony nods Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has racked […]