“What makes me a Christian to you, makes you a Jew to me.” So says the title character in Nathan the Wise, directed by Adam Immerwahr. Originally written in the 18th century as a morality play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Michael Bloom has written this adaptation making its world premiere. A morality play can have a tough line to walk, especially to a modern audience – to be empathetic and entertaining without being moralizing and pat –
For fans of Shakespeare’s comedies, Love’s
Labour’s Lost should not be overlooked. Often brushed off as a draft for
Shakespeare’s later hits, there is joy and humor in this play that would be
criminal to dismiss. The performers in the Folger Theatre’s current production,
directed by Vivienne Benesch, rise to the challenge at every turn and carry the
audience along for a raucous and heartfelt ride.
He that loves to be flattered with worthy of the flattery. What if that being flattered is deserving of the flattery? Are they too then still worthy of the flattery? Perhaps even more so! Folger Theatre, in particular Director Robert Richmond, deserves a great deal of flattery for the current production of Timon of Athens, closing out the 2016/2017 season upon the stage inside the great Folger Shakespeare Library. Under Robert Richmond’s judiciously rendered vision and modernization,
This is fresh air. A play so horrifically captivating that it fuses your eyeballs to every flicker of movement, melds your eardrums to every shock of sound, and merges your mind to every explosive thought and disruptive emotion as they occur. Dan O’Brien’s The Body of an American seizes audiences of Theater J with captivating force, tumultuously upending their emotional equilibrium in the exploitative journey of a playwright and his relationship with Canadian Photojournalist Paul Watson.
Theater J presents the brilliant and highly poignant new Aaron Posner play Life Sucks (Or the Present Ridiculous.) Written and subsequently Directed by Posner himself, this irreverent modern variation on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, is a gloriously thought-provoking work that captures the minds of the audiences through laughter, tears, and strange situations. This world premier work is quite possibly the most connective piece of work to address humans as they exist in the world;
