Archive for the ‘We Love Arts’ Category

We Love Arts: Imagining Madoff

Photo: C. Stanley Photography
If you want to learn about one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history, this show isn’t for you. If you want to learn more about the man that ran off with the savings of individuals, charitable organizations, and others- this show may not be for you.
Try one of the documentaries out [...]

Theater last-chances and possible cancellations

Just a quick pre-weekend roundup on what’s going away and what may or may not be threatened by the weather.
We’re not aware of anyone officially cancelling anything as of yet; several places have made affirmative statements they’re going on with the show.

Shakespeare Theater Company’s Free-for-All is still on. They’ve promised to update via Twitter and [...]

Greetings from DC!

For fifteen years, the West-facing wall of Mama Ayesha’s restaurant on Calvert Street stood bricked and barren, save for a narrow painted banner of Middle Eastern desert. In 2007 it was time for a tune up, decided manager Mohammed Abu-El-Hawa, whose family has owned and operated the Adams Morgan icon since 1960.
Originally founded as Calvert Café [...]

We Love Arts: Reggie Watts at Woolly Mammoth

Reggie Watts, photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern
Andy Kaufman would have loved Reggie Watts.
Be careful how you take that bit of praise. If you’re of my generation and largely remember Kaufman solely as loveable goofball Latka on TAXI you’re not getting the right picture. Watts’ stage performance is reminiscent of Kaufman – a wandering path that [...]

The Winning Ticket: Cherry Red’s THE ARISTOCRATS

We’re changing it up a little this week from the usual concert ticket giveaway. This week we’re happy to be sending you and a victim friend to see the very last Cherry Red show ever on the 27th: The Aristocrats.
Yes, those are wangs. This should tell you something about what to expect here.
2 people like [...]

We Love Arts: The Ramayana (2011)

If you were one of the many potential audience members turned away at the doors of Source last summer for The Ramayana’s sold-out run, you’re in luck. Constellation Theatre Company has remounted its production for a limited three week engagement now through August 21, and in many ways it’s a superior show than before. Subtle [...]

We Love Arts: Clybourne Park

Photo Stan Barouh
Before this weekend, I rarely used the word gentrify except when describing neighborhoods like Columbia Heights or H-Street NE.
“Yes I know it looks a little rough- but hey it’s gentrifying! Now let’s go hit up Wonderland Ballroom!”
This weekend brought two events that have given new meaning and significance to the word, first Washington Post [...]

We Love Arts: Oklahoma! at Arena Stage

Arena Stage’s 2010 production of Oklahoma! has been revived for another run. Don reviewed the original production in November of last year. Here’s Rachel’s take on the current remount.
Modern America is riddled with stress. This stress is self-inflicted. 40-hour work weeks, a 24-hour news cycle, social media overload – these are all characteristics that [...]

Fringe 2011: hookups

I’m reviewing seven plays over the course of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene. Get your Fringe button and join me!
hookups is about as naked as it can get at Fringe. A quintet of engaging actors make use of an air mattress and the barest essentials to create a series [...]

A True Adams Morgan Original

All photos by the author.
From a lofty brick throne, a voluptuous redhead rules over Adams Morgan, watching and goading all manner of revelry like a contemporary Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. Her territory spans the 18th Street strip; her image an iconic symbol of throbbing crowds, vodka cranberries, and Jumbo Slice pizza.
But just two blocks away from [...]

We Love Arts: POP!

What to expect from a musical about Andy Warhol, the late 20th century pop art genius who smashed convention and provided a nest for self-proclaimed misfits to help him create wild non-conformist art? His shooting by self-proclaimed revolutionary feminist Valerie Solanas seems like it would make excellent fodder – after all, when Warhol Superstar Viva [...]

Fringe 2011: Patrick and Me

Part of our continuing coverage of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene.
Avenue Q asked the question, “What Do You Do With A B.A. In English?”
Historian Anthony Cohen asks the audience a similar question, “What do you do with a history degree?” In his one-man Fringe show Patrick and Me he [...]

Fringe 2011: Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Fantastical Capital Balloon Ride

I’m reviewing seven plays over the course of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene. Get your Fringe button and join me!
True experimental theater breaks down the divide of expectations between performer and audience. Extroverts usually love this. Introverts, not so much. No surprise then that the long-form improvisation Cecily and [...]

Fringe 2011: Crave

I’m reviewing seven plays over the course of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene. Get your Fringe button and join me!
Every heartbreaker eventually gets their heart broken. Cosmic justice, karma, the wheel of fortune – whatever you call it, the seesaw of relationships will always go from up to down [...]

Fringe 2011: Sanyasi

I’m reviewing seven plays over the course of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene. Get your Fringe button and join me!
Can you ever truly detach from the world? From emotions, like heartache, greed, love? From the mundane, the pettiness of every day existence? Is this truly liberation, or is renunciation [...]

We Love Arts: Rock of Ages

‘Times Square 4′
courtesy of ‘photographerglen’
If you’re looking for a typical night out to the theater then Chris D’Arienzo’s Rock of Ages is not for you. The musical isn’t your standard Broadway affair. The characters aren’t complex. There’s little emotional depth. If there were original songs then I missed that memo.
What’s great about Rock of Ages [...]

Fringe 2011: The Malachite Palace

I’m reviewing seven plays over the course of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene. Get your Fringe button and join me!
Though there’s definitely an element of raunchy radicalism about Fringe, it’s important to remember that there are performances suitable for all. If you have a small child in your life, [...]

Fringe 2011: Tactile Dinner Car

I’m reviewing seven plays over the course of the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival, in collaboration with DC Theatre Scene. Get your Fringe button and join me!
For a crash course on what to expect from Fringe, you can’t do better than banished? productions mad avant-garde experience, Tactile Dinner Car. It’s a crazy sociological experiment playing by [...]

2011 Capital Fringe Festival

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courtesy of ‘erin m’
Last night I got tied up to two people. We were force fed food through a syringe. Several people ate bugs. A couple needed the Heimlich. It blew all our minds.
Welcome to Fringe!
Judging by the happy crowd buzzing through the heat at the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent last night, the 2011 Capital Fringe [...]

We Love Arts: The Merchant of Venice

We come to a performance of The Merchant of Venice with a lot of preconceptions. One of them has to do with the title itself. It doesn’t refer to its most famous character, I remember a brilliant English professor beating into my brain. “Shylock isn’t the merchant,” he said repeatedly, “Antonio is.”
Antonio? Wait, who? That [...]