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author: Charles Boyington & Steven Kirkpatrick
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How is it possible that a show which revels in profane shock words and satirical (even blasphemous) humor, is simultaneously one of the sweetest, most life-affirming and faith-affirming shows you will ever see? How is it possible that every jab of satire is matched with such lovely, uplifting charm that you’ll be cheering and swaying along with Elder Price, ready to affirm too,
author: Charles Boyington & Steven KirkpatrickÂ
“Success, fame, and fortune, they’re all illusions. All there is that is real is the friendship that two can share.”- The Scarecrow
If your favorite evening is one where you attend the theatre and just have a really good time, then you’ll be lucky enough to have that experience at The Wiz at National Theatre in DC. If you can,
author: Charles Boyington & Steven Kirkpatrick
A tale as old as time… almost. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has enchanted audiences for over 35 years, from the 1991 animated film to Broadway, international productions, and now a new 2026 National Tour directed and choreographed by Matt West. Playing at the National Theatre, this production successfully recaptures the magic that longtime fans remember while delighting new generations.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story: A wealthy young man is cursed after refusing shelter to an elderly beggar,
author: Charles Boyington & Steven Kirkpatrick
The Questions: If in Shakespearean times, all the roles in his dramas were played by men, should we not have dramas today where all the roles are played by women? If Hamlet is arguably the best character Shakespeare has ever written, should not every woman want desperately to play him? Should you spend your money to see this community production? Yes.
In Women Playing Hamlet,
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles Boyington
At its heart, theatre is story telling. So, a potential definition of “good” theatre might be of a good story told reasonably well. Or, perhaps, of a decent story told terrifically well. What then, of a great story told terrifically well: is it great theatre? If so, then Water for Elephants always stays within the contours of good theatre, and yet veers, at moments, towards great theatre.
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles Boyington
Shimmying at the National Theatre through Dec 7th, Some Like it Hot! is a new stage musical version of the classic 1959 Billy Wilder movie. Thankfully, it offers most of what one would hope for in a musical theatre experience. To start with, there’s dancing— so much splashy, flashy, exquisite dancing— amid convoluted love plots and chase numbers with gangsters, guns, sparkling gowns, bellhops and revolving-doors,
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles Boyington
Ex-Pats Theatre is serving up Cold Country, a Swiss fable for the culture wars, at the Atlas Center for the Performing Arts from September 27-October 19, 2025. If you enjoy brooding riffs on the zeitgeists of oppressive conformity and the need for resistance to tradition of any sort, this might serve as an allegorical primer.
The play takes place in an isolated Swiss mountain village,
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles Boyington
Nu Sass Productions’ production of Sharai Bohannon’s Craigslisted is best described as a dramedy even as early smiles lead toward fear and possible disaster. The play presents an engaging, though psychologically murky, narrative and is well-suited to younger adult audiences, as its protagonist utilizes social media while searching for straightforward solutions to a prevalent concern among today’s students. This production is well acted and deftly produced in an intimate setting.
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles BoyingtonÂ
Occasionally a show comes along that is difficult to explain: on paper it sounds as if it shouldn’t work, and you can’t imagine why someone would come up with this idea, but in the end, you are really dang happy that they did. I would recommend this show for anyone ages 12 and up, as there is something in it for everyone.
Kimberly Akimbo,
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles Boyington
Running at the Keegan Theatre from May 10 to June 15, Falsettos is a clever, emotionally resonant musical whose themes center on Jewish family and gay life in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At its center is the conflicted Marvin (John Loughney), a gay man who introduces us in an early sequence to his lover, Whizzer (Kaylen Morgan), and his ex-wife, Trina (Katie McManus),
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles Boyington
The ExPats Theatre company (“a small theater that grapples with big ideas”) presents a “satirical tale on toxic masculinity”, Testosterone, at a time in which a political revival of masculinist ideals seems to be on the horizon.
Yet Testosterone is equally a satirical take on gated communities, smug elites bemoaning the violence they see on their televisions,
author: Steven Kirkpatrick & Charles BoyingtonÂ
“Can we begin to imagine a world where we put care for one another at the center?”
Running from October 31 to November 24, Mosaic Theater Company is presenting the world premiere of The Art of Care, a theatrical event interweaving storytelling, music, movement and personal memoir to explore how we care for, and are cared for by, others. As part of Mosaic’s 10th anniversary season,
author: Charles Boyington & Steven Kirkpatrick
Round House Theatre launches the premiere of Inda Craig-Galván’s play A Jumping-Off Point. It is a great launch and worth seeing! The new piece focuses on Leslie Wallace (Nikkole Salter), an African American writer newly hired to develop a series for HBO, whose personal victory is compromised by the return of Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a white man from her graduate school days, who accuses her of plagiarism.
Little Shop of Horrors returns to Ford’s Theatre from March 15 through May 18 after a previous mounting in 2010. From its origin as a low budget 1960 sci-fi dark comedy by Roger Corman, to its initial adaptation as an off-Broadway musical in 1982, to subsequent high-budget film versions and worldwide stage success, Little Shop of Horrors has become one of the most treasured pieces of American musical theatre.
If you have never seen this American staple of musical theatre then you should run and see this production.
Currently playing at the Kennedy Center through Jan. 21st, 2024, Disney’s musical Frozen, a wintry fairytale loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, is a fabulous theatrical spectacle for all ages, a celebration of love, family, and self-acceptance that is visually spellbinding (if a little light on characterization).
Based on the phenomenally successful 2013 animated Disney film, the stage version is delivered by the same artistic team,
Beth Kander’s play opens in present century Chicago, circa 2015, when the death of an elderly hoarder brings two county employees, Cassie and Hal, to her (rent-free) apartment to help verify her actual identity. As the employees search through documents and belongings to find clues to her identity, the play offers flashbacks to 1955, where we meet two war widows: Esther, the Jewish inhabitant of the once-pristine apartment and Lynley, her Black neighbor from Alabama,
Moulin Rouge! The Musical (Based on the 20th Century Studios Motion Picture by Baz Luhrmann) runs through September 24, 2023 in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Tickets are currently available via the Kennedy Center website at the box office, or by calling 202-467-4600.
The real purpose of a review is to discern whether one should shell out one’s hard-earned money to see the show. The answer with Moulin Rouge!
Judy (Dani Stoller) and Jeff (Mike Millan) are the musical-theater-obsessed protagonists of Ana Nogueira’s new comedy Which Way to the Stage? at Signature Theatre’s ARK: a playful, yet thought-provoking comedy about friendship, ambition, and what happens when dreams fall just out of reach.
 The 30-something best friends, and hopeful actors, are struggling to gain any sort of foothold in an industry into which they don’t really fit. Jeff has resigned himself to the fact that the only parts out there for a femme gay man like him are the ones he creates for himself as a drag queen.
Let’s start by saying that Into the Woods is one of the most accessible and beloved musicals of Stephen Sondheim. The book by James Lapine and the music and lyrics by Sondheim offer everything we want from a musical. It has catchy tunes, fascinating subplots, cleverness, magic, love stories of all sorts and a call for the audience to use their imaginations. The current incarnation of this play at Signature Theatre, directed and choreographed by Artistic Director Matthew Gardiner,
We love a good night at the theatre, especially when time flies. With a running time of over 2.5 hours with intermission this musical, Tina, still just flew by and had the audience on their feet, at the end. To be honest, the audience would have been just as happy if the lead, Naomi Rodgers playing Tina Turner, had simply recreated a Tina Turner concert. The book for this musical by Katori Hall isn’t bad,
By conventional expectations of what constitutes a smash musical, The Band’s Visit shouldn’t be a success, and yet it is. It has, of course, won numerous Tony awards in the 2017-18 Season, and after seeing the production at the Kennedy Center, we can understand why it is well loved.Â
The musical begins with the same words that opened the 2007 Isreali movie that inspired it: “Not so long ago, a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt.
If we needed a fresh take on this American classic, then playwright Aaron Sorkin has delivered it. Don’t get us wrong, this is still the Harper Lee story that most of us know and love, but it has been adapted in a 21st century manner, with some characterizations that are a bit more nuanced and, arguably, real. To summarize up front, this is a production we think everyone should see. Unfortunately, like so much entertainment with a powerful message,
“Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
It is hard to describe the experience that is A Monster Calls now playing at The Kennedy Center in the Eisenhower Theater. Is it theater for Children? Is it dance? Is it a play for adults?
If you want your entertainment both naughty and nice for the holidays, then the Kinsey Sicks in Oy Vey in A Manger, currently playing at Theater J through December 25, might very well be your holiday treat.
For those who not know, the Kinsey Sicks are a group of acapella singers and drag divas (or as they call themselves, “dragapella” performers) who have been around (with differing cast members) since 1993.
“I still believe that everyone is beautiful in some way and by seeing the beauty in others we make ourselves more beautiful…”
Long before she was Carole King, chart-topping music legend, she was Carol Klein, a shy Brooklyn girl with both talent and inner chutzpah. She fought her way into the record business as a teenager and, by the time she reached her twenties, had the husband of her dreams and a flourishing career writing hits for the biggest acts in rock ‘n’
The touring production of Tootsie, a musical spin on the classic 1982 film comedy, plays at the National Theatre from Dec 7 through 12th, delivering old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing antics.
The plot concerns Michael Dorsey (Drew Becker), an NYC actor desperate to be cast in anything, who eventually auditions for a play disguised as a woman he names Dorothy Michaels. Not only is he cast but becoming “Dorothy” allows him to “access his inner female” in a way that creates both emotional growth and increasingly comic complications. Â
“Learn how to live and you’ll know how to die; learn how to die, and you’ll know how to live.”–Morrie Schwartz
In Tuesdays with Morrie, which opened last night with Theater J at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, the two greatest mysteries and challenges humans deal with —how to live and how to die— are explored as the central themes. Based on the best-selling memoir by Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie is the powerful and moving story of Mitch Albom,
Seeing an interactive murder mystery can be a treat. With Do or Die Productions currently in residence at Hellas Restaurant and Lounge, it is often more than that. You arrive and are escorted to your table and given an option of entrees, beverages, and the option to order alcoholic drinks, as well. Our food came out very quickly and we were able to chat with the table next to us about theatre and other murder mystery groups we have seen.
“Interviewer: Did you ever think
maybe you were no good?
Nevelson: …No, I don’t think I ever thought that, but I did think I’d maybe never get where I knew I could–to that space I knew was supposed to stand in… To occupy.”
The compulsions that drive an artist to fame, and the nebulous line between truth and created persona, animate Edward Albee’s Occupant, directed by Aaron Posner, which opened last night in a sharply mounted production at the Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center (Theater J).