Roger Catlin - Page 11

Half the fun of going to see plays at Spooky Action Theatre is seeing how they've transformed the basement of the Universalist National Memorial Church for each production. Sometimes they completely obscure its identity; other times they embrace very nook.

Ian Merrill Peakes begins and ends his role as 'Timon of Athens' standing in the center of Folger Shakespeare Theatre's stage. At the start, he's basking in his glory as a prosperous master of the universe, happily dispersing his gold; in the end he's alone, torn down, penniless emotionally, at the mercy of gods, or fate, or something quite different than the riches that once defined him.

Lisa Hodsoll emerges as fully First Lady in The Klunch world premiere 'Laura Bush Killed a Guy.' She's got that soft West Texas accent, the omnipresent smile as shiny as her pearls, a cream colored ensemble, and poise to burn.

As investigations into Russian influence on U.S. elections continue, here's a development that has so far eluded Rachel Maddow: They may have also been behind the witches in 'Macbeth.'

Randy Baker drew from his own upbringing in Asia to craft his play 'Forgotten Kingdoms,' getting a world premiere at Rorschach Theatre, where he is co-artistic director.

The riveting, ready-made drama of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings animate a new production at the Mosaic Theater Company of DC.

Nilaja Sun sits in the chair, absorbed in herself as the audience at Woolly Mammoth takes its seats for her electrifying one-woman 'Pike St.'

It's a long way from a cramped second-floor loft in lower Manhattan to the splendors of the Kennedy Center Opera House with a full orchestra.

What would have happened if Jay Leno were still hosting 'The Tonight Show' today?

As part of the the Kennedy Center's springtime spotlight on international directors, the first of three works by Palestinian playwrights opened at its Terrace Theatre Wednesday.

Bad singers make interesting stories. After Meryl Streep got an Oscar nomination for her role as the classical world's Florence Foster Jenkins, last year, here comes Broadway's Debra Monk, warbling the pop repertoire of a mid-1960s musical misfit in a new musical full of Great White Way pedigree.

Let's say you want to think deeply about the origins of menstruation. Perhaps you would go to a lecture on evolutionary biology.

Living in Connecticut eight years ago when a chimp being kept as a pet ripped the face off a neighbor, I found it tough to see anything but stark horror in the attack.

The theater space at the Spooky Action Theatre is so intimate you immediately feel you're in the tiny cabin where all its action in Jez Butterworth's play The River takes place.

If the current state of U.S. relations with Russia seems dark and murky, it's opposite that in the Mariinsky Ballet's current offering at the Kennedy Center. The Little Humpbacked Horse is sunny and simple, light-hearted and soaring.

Of the variations of Tchaikovsky's classics that take over the holiday season, Duke Ellington's 'The Nutcracker Suite' is one that's had staying power. The 1960 arrangement with Billy Strayhorn showed an irreverent, relaxed, cool jazz approach, with a sense of humor.

Leave it to the venerable In Series to mark the 100th anniversary of Enrique Granados' rarely heard and even more rarely seen opera 'Goyescas.'

Falstaff had the girth and beard to make for a decent Santa, but Shakespeare never wrote anything close to a Christmas play.

When every theater company feels compelled to do something Christmas-themed come December, it can lead to either overusing certain titles or creating fluffy trifles.