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Macbeth, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC

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  Indira Varna and Ralph Fiennes in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Macbeth . Photo by Marc Brenner. Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has extended its space for its current production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth , as adapted by Emily Burns, to the former studios of Black Entertainment Television at 1301 W St. in Northeast DC. The former soundstage takes on the feel of an industrial warehouse for this “environmental production.” Somehow losing the “trappings” of the fine Sidney Harman Hall, where one might have expected to find this performance, focuses us more clearly on the reality of each unfolding moment. Conceived by STC artistic director Simon Godwin and acclaimed English actor Ralph Fiennes, who stars as Macbeth, the production was staged in similar “found” spaces in Liverpool, Edinburgh, and London, before coming to Washington. It is fitting that a play about a man with an unquenchable thirst for power, spurred on by a wife who shares (and perhaps even exceeds) his
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Unknown Soldier, Kreeger Theatre, Arena Stage, Washington, DC

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  Lora Lee Gayer and Adam Chanler-Berat in Unknown Soldier . Photo credit: Teresa Castracane. I first saw Judy Kuhn on the Broadway stage in August 1986, when she co-starred in the far-too-abbreviated run of the Stephen Schwarz musical Rags . Later that season, she originated the role of Cosette in Les Mis érables , which had a decidedly longer run and brought her the first of her four Tony nominations. Now, more than 37 years later, she is playing a grandmother, Lucy Anderson, nee Lemay, in the current offering at Arena Stage, a new musical titled  Unknown Soldier. Her voice retains the same beautifully crystalline quality I remember so clearly from those two long-ago performances. Unknown Soldier , with book by Daniel Goldstein, music by Michael Friedman, and lyrics by both, tells the story of Ellen Rabinowitz, a 40-something physician preparing to sell her grandmother’s home where she grew up in Troy, New York. As she goes through endless old papers and photographs, she comes acr
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Suffs, Music Box Theatre, New York, NY

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  The cast of Suffs . Photo credit: Jenny Anderson. Two of my favorite musicals, 1776 and Hamilton , find their inspiration in the characters and events of early American history but, like much of history, what we’ve seen is the men doing “the work,” while the women labor in the background. In 1776 , for example, we see only two women (Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson) who are seen only because of their relationships with their husbands. In Hamilton , we see four (the Schuyler sisters: Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy, as well as Maria Reynolds, with whom Hamilton has an affair that almost destroys his marriage and political future), who exist as characters only because of their relationship to Alexander Hamilton. A new Broadway musical, Suffs (short for “suffragists,” not “suffragettes,” which suggests a diminutive status), tells the story of the years-long fight for women’s suffrage through fascinating characters who are not appendages of husbands or fathers and whose role as mother
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Lempicka, Longacre Theatre, New York, NY

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  Eden Espinoza in  Lempicka . Photo credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. It is partly my fault – a lifetime of experience creating theatre or seeing it has left me with an almost-unquenchable thirst for information. Because of this lifelong habit, it is a rare event for me to see a new play or musical about which I know almost nothing. Especially since my dear friend Beth Leavel is in the cast, you could not have kept me from seeing Lempicka , now in previews at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre. Purposely, I kept my pre-show knowledge to a minimum: I had read a synopsis, a Wikipedia article about its subject (a Polish painter named Tamara de Lempicka), and saw a very brief clip that included a snippet of one song. Although you may never have heard of Lempicka, you may well have seen some of her work along with that of other icons of the Art Deco era. There is a magical sense of discovery when something like Lempicka comes along, bringing to life a significant but little-known pers
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Company, Opera House, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC

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  Britney Coleman as Bobbie (center) and the North American Tour of Company . Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade. Director Marianne Elliott’s “gender swapped” production of Company was in previews on Broadway in March 2020, scheduled for an official opening on the 90 th birthday of its composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, when the pandemic caused the closure of all theatres. Previews resumed in November 2021, just a few days before Sondheim’s death. The production was acclaimed, winning five 2022 Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival and Best Director of a Musical. Sondheim had worked on (and approved of) Elliott’s production in London when it opened in 2018. In truth, though, I would argue that this production, the national company of which is currently playing in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, is not, in fact, a revival, but a significant revision. It shares the score and most of the libretto with the original, but it is a total re-conception, updating the 1
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Little Shop of Horrors, Ford's Theatre, Washington, DC

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  Derrick D. Truby Jr. (Seymour) in the 2024 Ford's Theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors , directed by Kevin S. McAllister, choreographed by Ashleigh King, and music directed by William Yanesh. Photo by Scott Suchman. Little Shop of Horrors had its origin as a cheaply made B-movie, a comedy/sci-fi/horror film, by Roger Corman, filmed on the leftover set of another film, on a budget of less than $30,000. The original 1960 film became a camp cult classic, known for its wicked humor and outlandish premise, as well as helping introduce a young Jack Nicholson, appearing in his third film. As if comedy/sci-fi/horror was not enough of a genre collision or mash-up, librettist/lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken decided it should be a musical, too, which was originally produced off-Broadway in 1982. Why not? Its success introduced its creators to the Disney Animation Studios, where it inspired a Renaissance of animated musical films (“The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty a
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The Lehman Trilogy, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC

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  Edward Gero, Mark Nelson, and Rene Thornton Jr. in The Lehman Trilogy , produced by Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo credit: Teresa Castracane Photography. “Epic” is a word I mostly think of as something episodic, giant, sweeping, and larger than life, so to use it to describe the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s current three-actor play, The Lehman Trilogy , may seem an odd choice. But despite the small number of actors involved, the play is sweeping in terms of the events and personalities involved. Its length (a bit more than three and one-half hours, including two intermissions) and the density of its often-poetic language, does, in fact, take on epic proportions, portraying events from the 1840s to the early 21 st century. “Lehman Brothers” as a financial entity attained its greatest prominence by its failure, becoming synonymous with the 2008 financial crisis due to its bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history. But “Lehman Brothers” was more than just a name on a giant corpora
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