The musical revue is a durable genre—and why shouldn’t it be? A link of sorts between a standard cabaret show and a musical play, the revue is a straightforward way of showcasing the work of emerging songwriters as well as of performers. The careers …Read more

Any time Carson Elrod is onstage audience members are assured the ultimate kind of comedic performance: the one that engages with their brains, while tickling their funny bone. As the servant Cliton in David Ives’ adaptation of The Liar, Elrod delive …Read more

Director Roger Simon brings to life a story of hidden pasts, secrets, and hope for a better future through acceptance of that which we cannot change, and the strength we find to change what we must. Now playing at 59E59 Theaters, The Dressmaker’s Sec …Read more

History is being rewritten from the point of view of the slaves who shaped it. The Department of Fools presents A History of Servitude, a series of vignettes performed in the style of commedia dell’arte, a type of street theatre developed during the …Read more

A decade or so from now—if books still exist—some publisher may release an anthology: Essential Plays from the Trump Era. God knows what the future’s passionate and witty playwrights will create from whatever slouches its way out of D.C. in the next …Read more

Those looking for clear narrative arcs and thematic structures will find the impressionistic Tell Hector I Miss Him, playing at Atlantic Theatre Company’s Second Stage, difficult. The meandering work tracks the lives of several Puerto Ricans, using b …Read more

It’s strange to think that the more time moves forward and society advances, the more prudish our culture becomes. Watching the world premiere production of Yours Unfaithfully at the Mint Theater’s home in Theatre Row feels surreal because the play i …Read more

“Maybe given my brains and disposition, I’ll immigrate and be a politician.” So says Dorante, the titular fabulist at the center of David Ives’ adaptation of Corneille’s The Liar now playing at Classic Stage Company. I saw it on a drizzly Inauguratio …Read more

In Funeral Doom Spiritual, composer M. Lamar elevates the insurmountable grief of the systemic oppression of Black America into music. Lamar’s work draws from opera, metal, and Negro spirituals to condemn the recent police executions of Black men whi …Read more

The compilers of Shakespeare’s First Folio wrote in their introduction that the Bard hardly ever blotted a line. The claim received a famous rejoinder from Ben Johnson: “Would that he had blotted a thousand.” Nu-Ance Theatre’s production of Hamlet, r …Read more