Step Afrika!’s Remounted Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence Is Still Good, Could Be Better
In the 13 years since D.C.-based Step Afrika! debuted Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence, the field of percussive dance has grown by leaps and bounds. Black performing artists have benefited from an influx of support, including millions from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Meanwhile, many historically White arts organizations are continuing to increase racial diversity, both onstage…
Don’t Rain on Her Parade: Funny Girl Goes Girlboss
The funny thing about Funny Girl is that the stories surrounding the musical are often more interesting than the play itself. The plot is loosely based on the life of Fanny Brice, a vaudevillian comedian who became one of America’s first mega-celebrities with the Ziegfeld Follies. (The play doesn’t even cover Brice’s extensive film and…
Is God Is: Unapologetically Twisted, Wickedly Funny, and Wildly Entertaining
Constellation Theatre Company plays with fire in Aleshea Harris’ scintillating tragi-comedy Is God Is. Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award and a 2017 OBIE Award for playwriting, Harris’ play weaves biblical mythology and hip-hop into a road epic about twin sisters on the brink of vengeance. Fiercely directed by KenYatta Rogers, Is God Is is…
Topdog/Underdog: The Story of Two Brothers Battling Abandonment
In an apartment with high ceilings, hardwood floors, and mismatched layers of paint covering water-damaged plaster, Booth (Yao Dogbe) hovers over an improvised tabletop of thick corrugated cardboard held level by six sturdy milk crates. He’s practicing his patter as a dealer at three-card monte, a confidence game by which many a mark has been…
The Hatmaker’s Wife: A Magical World of Melancholia and Schmutz
Lauren Yee may not be the most performed playwright on a national level, but she has had an impressive run here in the DMV: In less than 12 months, Arena produced her Cambodian Rock Band last summer, King of the Yees ran at Signature Theatre in October, and now her 2013 play The Hatmaker’s Wife…
Why Black Out Nights Matter
“It feels like church.” That’s how actor Ro Boddie describes a Black Out night, a single performance of a play set aside for an all-Black audience. Boddie has been onstage for a few, including Round House Theatre’s 2023 production of the August Wilson play Radio Golf. Now, he’s back at Round House with Topdog/Underdog, an…
Priyanka Shetty Consults the Cards in Keegan’s The Elephant in the Room
Temperance. The Magician. The Moon. The Devil. One by one on her dressing room floor, playwright and performer Priyanka Shetty reveals the tarot cards in her shuffled stack, allowing their meanings to guide her through a string of personal stories and epiphanies in The Elephant in the Room. Over the course of Shetty’s 90-minute solo…
Where the Mountain Meets the Sea: Signature Theatre Does It Again
Where the Mountain Meets the Sea is in many respects the opposite of Signature Theatre’s other ongoing show, Hair. Hair is maximalist in costuming, number of cast members, set design, and in the number and volume of songs. Where the Mountain Meets the Sea, described in the program as a “play with music” rather than…
All Songs and Games: Shakespeare Theatre Presents a Fabulously Reimagined Magic Flute
Translated literally from German, the word singspiel means “song play” or “song games.” That’s how Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) is listed in the Köchel Catalog, the official list of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s works: as a singspiel. Some of Mozart’s peers in late 18th-century Vienna thought he was slumming around by writing singspiels, a genre…
Long Way Down Doesn’t Have to Preach to Pack a Punch
A hero’s descent to the underworld, katabasis in Greek mythology, is a trope common to many mythologies around the world. But Long Way Down, the hip-hop musical making its world premiere at Olney Theatre, puts a new spin on katabasis. Based on local author Jason Reynolds’ 2017 YA novel of the same title, the Ken-Matt…
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