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1776, Ford's Theatre, Washington, DC

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  Jonathan Atkinson as John Adams and the cast of the 2026 Ford's Theatre production of 1776 , directed by Luis Salgado. Photo credit: Scott Sachman. I first encountered the Tony Award-winning musical 1776 more than 50 years ago as a high school student, thanks to a bus-and-truck tour sponsored by the Broadway Theatre League in Huntsville, Alabama. It was after school in a high school auditorium, but it was a big deal and made quite an impression on me, in the realms of both history and theatre. It became one of my favorites – I can remember most of the lyrics and at the beginning of every July, I find the time to sit down and watch the film version on DVD. Sherman Edwards, a high school teacher of American history, came up with the idea of a musical based on the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was roundly rejected by many for a number of reasons. For one, he was a history teacher, who had been a moderately successful songwriter in the 1950s and early 1960s bu...
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As You Like It, Folger Theatre, Washington, DC

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  The cast of As You Like It at the Folger Theatre. Photo credit: Brittany Diliberto. Since I began writing this blog I have seen eight productions of Shakespeare’s plays: three staged by Folger Theatre and five by the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC), as well as two adaptations/updates, one at each venue. What they have in common is this: none of them have been presented in a traditional, classical form. As much as I respect and admire directorial creativity, I have to wonder if it might be a good thing to see a Shakespeare play performed primarily in the way the original productions were staged. Two of the seven productions were of the same play, the pastoral comedy As You Like It . STC produced it in late 2023, set in the “flower power” days of the 1960s, with a soundtrack of Beatles songs. The current production at Folger Theatre purportedly sets the play in contemporary Washington, DC. The play’s program features articles by Folger artistic director Karen Ann Daniels (the ...
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Hamnet, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC

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  Rory Alexander as William Shakespeare and Kami-Jo Jacobs as Agnes in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamnet , currently at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Harman Hall.  Photo credit: Kyle Flubacker. Many years ago in elementary school, I discovered a series of books that purported to be biographies of famous people, including their experiences as children. I think that one of the first was about Elias Howe (who invented the sewing machine) and another was about Robert Fulton (who is credited with the steamboat). Other inventors were included, but so were figures from American history like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (who I suppose also counts as an inventor). The only female I can remember from that series was Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii, though I hope there were others, as well as diverse representatives of other nations and cultures. Certainly I hope that a similar series today would be inclusive of underrepresented groups. What I did not know ...
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Inherit the Wind, Arena Stage, Washington, DC

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  The company of Inherit the Wind , playing at Arena Stage through April 5. Photo credit: Daniel Rader. I am an artificial intelligence (AI) skeptic. But, just out of curiosity, and because so many things are described as superlatives of the century, I asked Google for the most significant trials of the 20 th century. You may (or may not) be surprised at the four that Google’s AI gave me: three murder trials (Sacco and Vanzetti, 1921; the Lindbergh Kidnapping case, 1932; and O. J. Simpson, 1994), as well as the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” from 1925. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee dramatized the Scopes trial in their 1955 play, Inherit the Wind . Like many current “ripped from the headlines” dramatizations, the playwrights changed some details in reimagining true events, but the essence of that trial and its central ideas remained. First produced during the McCarthy Era, when attempts were made to limit expressions of free thought, the play resonated with its audiences....
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Chez Joey, Kreeger Theatre, Arena Stage, Washington, DC

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  Myles Frost as Joey Evans and the Company in Chez Joey at Arena Stage. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy. In my review of Arena Stage’s production of Damn Yankees (which has just been nominated for 13 Helen Hayes Awards), I quoted Sergio Trujillo, its director/choreographer, who called this re-working of the musical a “revisal.” Not “just” a revival of a classic musical, but with numerous revisions to bring it “up to date,” in a way that it would be more relatable to a contemporary audience. I was somewhat familiar with the source material and therefore aware of obvious changes, though I am sure I missed some of the more subtle ones. Arena’s current production is Chez Joey , which I would also classify as a “revisal.” In this instance, the source material is Pal Joey , a 1940 musical that was the last collaboration between composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart. Hart is having something of a re-discovery, as the central character in the current film “Blue Moon,” featuri...
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On Beckett, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Klein Theatre, Washington, DC

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  Bill Irwin in On Beckett at Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo credit: Craig Schulman. Bill Irwin may well be the ultimate “man of many talents.” According to his cast biography for the current Shakespeare Theatre Company offering, On Beckett , an Irish Repertory Theatre production, he is “a Tony Award-winning actor, director, writer, and clown.” His Wikipedia profile adds choreographer, comedian, creator, and adapter. He is also a true genius, as evidenced by his selection as the first performance artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, often colloquially referred to as “the Genius Grant.” He may well be the actor with the highest identity as an interpreter of the work of Samuel Beckett, the enigmatic, Nobel Prize-winning Irish writer, who wrote in French and later translated his work to English. Theatre artists and scholars sometimes revel in their classifications, though Beckett defies simple classification. As a student, I was taught Beckett’s plays as “theatre of the ab...
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The World to Come, Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Theater J, Washington, DC

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  Claudia J. Arenas (Ruth), Brigid Cleary (Barbara), Naomi Jacobson (Fanny), and Michael Russotto (Hal) in Ali Viterbi's  The World to Come , co-produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Theater J. Photo credit: Cameron Whitman. Because I read (and write) about plays, it is not often that I find myself at a play I have never read (perhaps because it is a world premiere) and about which I have not read much. It is an experience I enjoy, one that puts me in the place of a more casual theatregoer. This was the case when I had the opportunity to attend The World to Come , the world premiere of a new play by Ali Viterbi, co-produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theater J. Because of the way that the play unfolds, part of me would like to skip any discussion of the plot, but I will, because so many of the press items about the play include it. If you would like to have that “first look” experience, please skip ahead to the last paragraph. Part of Viterbi’s strength as a pl...
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