Glass Slipper? ✔
Pumpkin Carriage? ✔
Lousy step-family, prince and princess, big ol’ ball? ✔✔✔
But if you think you know the story of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, think again. To quote my 63-year-old mother (who at the time of this review, we’re now 12 hours post leaving the theatre and she’s still telling me things she discovered and was awestruck by and enjoyed), “that was the best,
No Place to Go by Ethan Lipton is the antithesis of the Frank Loesser musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying—it’s about the experience of losing a job, and a sense of purpose, without trying. It is also a comedic look at our modern society that smacks you in the face with how honest and real it is, and I loved it.
The story is simple enough: George is a middle-aged man with his own small band who has been working the same day job for the last 10 years as a “permanent part time” employee.
If you look for it, love actually is all around you.
Unless you’re bitter-pill Cassie, whose got an icepick up her hoo-hah over
love, romance, and happy endings. As the zany and quirky title might imply,
Second City’s Love, Factually, is bringing you the jaded and hardened
look at the warm-n-fuzzy feel goods of the holidays this December at The John
F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Appearing through December 29 in the
Theatre Lab,
The real King John of England has a murky reputation. We know him for the Magna Carta. We know him as a villain from the tales of Robin Hood. And, at a stretch, we know him as Shakespeare’s earliest monarch, chronologically. Folger Theatre capitalizes on a chance to tell the rarely-told tale of this questionable king in its current production of Shakespeare’s King John, directed by Aaron Posner.
As the Folger describes,
When you experience something so beautiful, you have to put it into words just to make sure that it is real. Though I purport no ability that will come close to doing Guillermo Calderón’s work an inkling of justice, finding word to convince you to see Kiss at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company for its sheer horrifying beauty and stunning emotional weight is now my mission; the must-see show of the season has risen to the stage with harrowing political relevance,
When the wind howls do you answer it by building a shelter or by building a kite? Forum Theatre answers by not only building a kite but flying it through an emotionally turbulent storm with their 13th season opener, with the DC-area debut of I Call My Brothers, written by world-renowned playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri. Translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles and Directed by Michael Dove, this gripping and visceral tale explores the narrative experience of Amor,
Ay! Ay! Ay! She’s the lady with the tutti-frutti hat on her head! Singing sensation, Brazilian beauty, Carmen Miranda has her whole story explained in Pointless Theatre’s world premiere production of Gimme a Band, Gimme a Banana! The Carmen Miranda Story. Directed by Roberta Alves and Matt Reckeweg, this show appears as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival and is an intriguing examination of a popularized figure told through interpretive movement and song.
It’s too darn hot over at NextStop Theatre Company! They’re shaking up the sizzling end of summer and going out with a big bang as they bring Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate to the stage. One final summer hoorah falls perfectly into place in the intimate black box space under the Direction of Michael Bobbitt and Musical Direction of Steve Przybyiski. This zesty zinger of a show-stopping feel-good comedy,