Rabbit Hole is the most produced play this year nationally -- does this mean America likes its theater desperately, achingly sad? Much more likely, artistic directors appreciate the general brilliance of this Pulitzer Prize-winning work, which has been adeptly staged by Olney Theater. It's a production with a clean, contemporary look (notice the silvery, twisting trees adorning the streamlined house set) and a team of actors with the grace to carry the rapid, conversational......

Doug Kreeger and Nastascia Diaz star in Rooms: A Rock Romance, at MetroStage in Alexandria this month What the hell is one of the season's most vibrant, exciting new works doing debuting in August in an off-the-beaten-path, half empty Alexandria theater? It's a question best not dwelt upon for long - it's much more interesting to talk about the joys of Rooms: A Rock Romance, the new musical currently being showcased at MetroStage. Taking......

They don't call it the doldrums of August for nothing -- openings this month tend to be sparse. The silver lining? We've got quite a few sneaking up at the end of the month, and those shows that are premiering look pretty damn intriguing. Olney Theatre will take us down the Rabbit Hole, a play about a couple whose lives are changed by a tragic accident (Aug. 6). If Jason Grote's Maria-Stuart, premiering at Woolly,......

Thornton Wilder's The Skin Of Our Teeth, despite having won a Pulitzer, is a play that's hard to appreciate on anything more than an intellectual level. It's clear the author's intent (mostly a commentary on the devastation of war and how we're destined to repeat our mistakes). There are more than a few clever literary allusions, many of them Biblical. The play's dour, end-of-the-world message certainly resonates in contemporary times. And you have to give......

The thing about all those clichés like, "A picture is worth a thousand words"? They're actually kinda true. Iconicity, a smart offering from this year's Capital Fringe Festival, takes such sentiments to heart, and presents a meditation on the power of pictures through a theatrical lens. The title refers to the production's emphasis on iconic imagery and unforgettable, universal events. The "Where Were You?" sentiment we all fall prey to when discussing historical happenings of......

Hey, David Gaines! It's not you, Baby. It's me. Gaines is the gifted mime and movement artist who reduces Akira Kurosawa's epic 1954 masterpiece The Seven Samurai to 45 minutes and a cast of one in 7 (x1) Samurai. He is by any standard an estimable man with a list of credits longer than Toshiro Mifune's katana. He evokes distinct characters using only his body and his voice (though he utters but a single English......

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund exists to help comics artists and merchants who fall victim to dubious obscenity law prosecutions, like the one that anchors the premise of David Johnson's Busted Jesus Comics. While the Fringe Festival isn't supposed to have an ethos, really, Busted Jesus still feels like an ideal piece of material for it: The show is initially abrasive, almost daring you to form an lazy judgment of both the playwright and......

It might seem like a stretch to weave together a coming-of-age-story about two Korean-American girls with Alice In Wonderland and the Greek myth of Medea. But writer/performer Sue Jin Song does this with ease, and her one-woman show, Children of Medea at the Capital Fringe Festival, is a fascinating story performed by a compelling performer. Song embodies all the characters present in her narrative, namely two sisters and their emotionally-withdrawn father. The story teeters intriguingly......

Horatio Hornbeam likes nuts. In his mouth. And if you didn't get it the first time, you'll have dozens of reminders of this fact throughout the production of I Like Nuts! (The Musical), playing at Studio Theatre for the Capital Fringe Festival. The hammering home of such silliness is part of the charm of I Like Nuts!, but it also quickly wears thin. Those who are fans of the "Deez Nuts" school of humor should......

Is it possible to have a raucously good time at a production of a Greek tragedy? Those under the tents at the rocking performance of Dizzy Miss Lizzie's Roadside Revue Presents: The Orestia can answer the hypothetical with a resounding, "Yes!" The show, presented by the folks from Spooky Action Theater Company infuses the Aeschylus classic with a burlesque sensibility, and a rock score to boot. The Furies? Leather-clad, neon-wigged sex bombs with a chilling......

On April 20, 1939, Billie Holiday recorded the song Strange Fruit. Written by a Jewish schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, it became an instant hit and to this day serves as a poignant protest song against injustice. It is also an example—along with images of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walking arm in arm with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma—of one of the more celebrated characteristics of the peculiar African-American/Jewish-American relationship: that of two groups bonded by......

At the intersection of today's American realities and mindboggling fictional dystopia sits Mike Daisey, at a table with a glass of water and a metal briefcase (yes, the one filled with irony). His monologue performance for the Fringe Festival at Woolly Mammoth Theatre is a stellar showcase of storytelling skills, bringing the audience along a trip through the desert to Trinity, the site of the first nuclear bomb test in Los Alamos, with a narrative......

Purple St. James Tuesday: >> Today kicks off the Hip-Hop Theater Festival's seventh year in D.C. The opening "Brave New Voices" event will take place at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage and feature Sonia Sanchez along with the D.C. WritersCorps Slam Team. Free, 6 p.m. For more information about Festival events and ticket availability, visit their calendar. >> Probably the most consistent member of the Wu-Tang Clan, producer/rapper The RZA will be at the......

If Monday rolls around and you haven't spent all your cash on alcoholic refreshments for the 4th of July weekend, here's another way to get rid of your dough: Tickets for the Capital Fringe Festival are now on sale. Visit here to get a synopsis of each show running during the 18-day festival, and we can tell you, the selection is diverse. Cabaret, burlesque, one-man shows, operas about talk show hosts, clowns, samurai and Shakespeare.......

One word pretty much defines the D.C. theater scene in July, and that word is FRINGE. We’ll be providing exhaustive coverage of the Capital Fringe Festival as it draws closer, but know that it runs July 10 - 27. A list of shows is available here if you want to start planning in advance how to delegate your $15 per show. Some of D.C.’s theaters have Fringe offerings as well – keep your eyes open......

Rorschach's back, and in rare form. After a nearly year-long absence from the theater scene when it lost its performance space, the small but ambitious theater company is returning with a jam-packed schedule stuffed with three works running in July, including a four-part serial. If its first offering, a sexy and meditative staging of the world premiere This Storm Is What We Call Progress is an indication of things to come, we're in for an......

Phindile Mkhize as Rafiki in that little-show-that-could, The Lion King. Photo by Joan Marcus. Drama lovers, a word: Here in the lavishly appointed ahr-eee Theater cubicle of DCist’s state-of-the-art underground headquarters, we have what you call an ethos. For us, casting arbitrary, semi-informed judgment on the bustling stage traffic of Our Nation’s Capitol is about a lot more than just getting free tickets to the latest hot offering from reliable companies like Catalyst or......

"But wait...there's a second act?" When the lights go out an hour and a half into Washington Shakespeare Company's Red Noses, it's a surprise when the curtain call doesn't follow. Though not every loose end has been tied up in the play, a humorous send-up of a religious troupe who turns to comedy to combat the devastation of the Black Plague, it's difficult to figure out what else the work has left to say.......

Rene Auberjonois and Nancy Robinette star in Shakespeare Theater's The Imaginary Invalid. It takes a nerd showing up for things to really get going in Shakespeare Theater's production of The Imaginary Invalid. And this is one hell of a nerd. As Thomas Diafoirus, unwelcome suitor to the young Angelique, Levi Ben-Israel has the bushy red hair, the dorky glasses. He sputters, sniffles and belches through his awkward advances to the young heiress, all the......

Brad Oscar and J. Fred Shiffman star in The Mystery of Irma Vep at Arena Stage. Brad Oscar and J. Fred Shiffman are the newest odd couple to hit the D.C. stage in Arena’s The Mystery of Irma Vep. And they pull it off twice in one night, first matching wits as a pursed-lipped housekeeper and a gauche stableman, then as a histrionic former actress and her brooding Egyptologist husband. Along the way, they......

Neelam Patel ... and Neelam Patel Local actress/poet/dancer Neelam Patel’s first foray into the arts was through the world of dance, training and performing in the classical Indian styles of Bharatanatyam and Odissi. An injury forced her to take a hiatus from dancing and in order to feed her creative hunger, she began taking acting classes at Studio Theater, Dody Desanto's movement-based classes at The Center, as well as classes in New York. Patel......

How well you enjoy David Grimm's Measure For Pleasure at Woolly Mammoth will largely be dictated by your tolerance of puns. Because boy, are there a lot of them here, mostly of the tawdry variety. In a way it's not surprising; the work is a satire of Restoration comedy, which relied heavily on sexually-explicit double entendre to get its point (and laughs) across. Director Howard Shalwitz has the corsets and the high-society settings in place......

You have to give Ben Cunis props for sheer athleticism. The co-star of Synetic Theater's production of Carmen spends a good portion of the production hoisting himself over, under and through the winding metal, cage-like set constructed for the production. It's an impressive feat (enough to generate more than a few exclamations of "Oh my!" from some of the Kennedy Center's older patrons). But when he's not showing off his strength, Cunis is equally adept......

The issue of self-identity is one that pervades the art of every immigrant community, especially second generation members of those communities. The question one asks is, "Am I American, or am I [insert ethnicity here]?" While the answer usually ends up occupying some space between the two, the revelation lies in the path the artist takes to find a resolution. The route Kathleen Gonzales follows to answer this question is central to The Bridge......

Does a musical have to break new ground in order to be considered a success? It’s true that Broadway has seen some exciting evolution lately in the form of “younger” works like Spring Awakening and In The Heights. But in an era that’s largely been dominated by jukebox musicals and cinematic retreads, it’s refreshing to see a new production that feels like a return to the old form, and a triumphant one that’s neither nostalgic......

Get psyched -- the Source Festival is back! When the Source Theater went off the map for awhile, so did the annual event, but it's returning this year. The event boasts interesting collaborations between seasoned artists and rookies, and creators in different mediums. It begins June 21. What else is this month? For a little mystery to liven up your summer, try Agatha Christie's classic, The Mousetrap. Olney is staging the work (June 11). It's......

David In Shadow And Light at Theater J Theater J's David In Shadow And Light seems to want to be a lot of things at once. Profound meditation on an epic character. Unusual amalgam of world music sounds and atonal themes. Pop-culture savvy, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat-esque musical referencing the WWE in the same breath as scripture. Postmodern, "in-on-the-joke" type of piece that directly addresses the audience and weaves the future with......

Andrew Long, Ted van Griethuysen, and Aubrey K. Deeker form an uneasy alliance in Antony and Cleopatra. Photo by Carol Pratt. Antony and Cleopatra is a sprawling, lumbering beast of a play — war, international intrigue, doomed love — but the best stuff in the Shakespeare Theatre’s current production is the smallest stuff: he-said/she-said, jealousy, drunkenness. When Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, learns from a rightly mortified messenger that Antony, the Roman General with whom......

Sure, with Folger Theater, two Shakespeare Theaters, and Washington Shakespeare Company all alive and kicking in D.C. (not to mention Synetic's silent Shakespeare productions), it's not exactly hard to get your Bard fix in this city. But what do all those companies have in common? You have to pay for them. That's what's so awesome about the Shakespeare Free For All at Carter Barron Amphitheatre, which begins tonight and ends June 1: you don't have......

It's hard to put a finger on what exactly doesn't gel in Folger Theater's The School For Scandal. The performers, by and large are first rate -- we have Kate Eastwood Norris, she of the impeccable comic timing, as the social-climbing Lady Teazle, and David Sabin as her husband, blustering conspiratorially to the audience at her antics. When it comes to playwrights, Sheridan's no slouch, and it's at times surprising how well the 18th century......