Roger Catlin - Page 8

xWashington Stage Guild in its time has accomplished a number of serialized works over the years, including just about all of Shaw. But few have been so optimally presented as the Arlene Hutton trilogy that ends with the current 'Gulf View Drive.'

By 1931, technology had advanced enough to allow Charlie Chaplin to make his latest film, 'City Lights,' as a talkie. But why would he? By then, he had mastered his singularly poetic choreography that universally communicated comedy without need for language. Further, he could use advancements in sound to take control of the musical accompaniment. If individual theaters had erratic success in accompanying his films music, now they were not only uniform, but using a full score he composed himself - another Chaplin talent that flowered.

They pipe street noise onto the stage as the latest production of InSeries opera company begins.

Humbug's my usual reaction when there's yet another variation of 'A Christmas Carol' on local stages this time of year. Can't someone come up with an original idea for a Christmas play?

For his fifth and final work with Shakespeare Theatre Company director Michael Khan, the playwright David Ives has not returned to rhyming couplet adaptations of French classics, as he did in 'The Liar,' 'The Heir Apparent,' 'The Metromaniacs' and 'the School for Lies.'

Until director Stephen Daldry rediscovered J.B. Priestley's 'An Inspector Calls,' it had been relegated to dull British backwaters as ho-hum sub-Agatha Christie drawing room fare.

'All Save One' is Greg Jones Ellis' world premiere play about a 1950s Hollywood in which a Oscar Wilde-type playwright is ensconced in Hollywood, with a front marriage to a film star, a longtime relationship with a man who has become his secretary, and temptations right outside the window of his beachside home.

What was it like 21 years ago when Paula Vogel's 'How I Learned to Drive' premiered off-Broadway?

In April 1945, the war in Europe had all but wrapped up, but it would be another month before the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender. As such, new immigration policies had yet to be drawn up for refugees in other countries, such as Brazil, where a lot of former Nazis were said to be heading.

The new 'How to Win a Race War,' at the DC Arts Center, is awful. The new 'How to Start a Race War,' at the DC Arts Center, is awful.

The GALA Hispanic Theatre is opening its 43rd season with a new adaptation of Laura Esquivel's popular 1989 novel 'Like Water for Chocolate' that had previously been made into a hit Mexican film of the same name in 1992.

In Kathleen Akerley's 'Interstellar Ghost Hour,' the latest fanciful play from Longacre Lea, an astronaut travels back through time and space to arrive in her deceased parents home to get some answers.

Sarah Ruhl is one of the most produced contemporary playwrights today, with provocative works like 'Dead Man's Cell Phone' and 'In the Room: The Vibrator Play.' Less often produced is one of her earliest plays, the 2002 'Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce,' especially since she reworked it in recent years as a chamber musical.

The admirable goal of the All About the Drama theater group is to reproduce classics of African-American theater. Its second production currently at the Anacostia Playhouse is from Douglas Turner Ward, co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company.

'Seinfeld' might have been a TV show about nothing, but shows by the Upright Citizens Brigade at Woolly Mammoth literally begin with nothing.

Ally Theatre's '#poolparty' is a prime example of discovering a little known chapter of local history, fashioning it into art and creating a more universal statement.