As theater season winds down, there’s still plenty to choose from for the stage-goer seeking dramatic intensity (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), harrowing, intellectual depth (1984), outright ribaldry (Hand to God) or insanely good musical fun with a drag queen at the center (Kinky Boots). It’s almost a cliche by now to call Washington the country’s best theater town, but, in fact, that we are, with a diversity of stages harboring an even greater diversity of missions. Whether you like your Shakespeare spoken or silent, whether you take joy in theater for the entire family or solely for adults, whether you want to spend your evening in a cramped space with a singularly unique performance artist or revel in complexities of in-the-round, if you love theater, Washington is the only place to be.
James and the Giant Peach — A musical by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, based on Roald Dahl’s disproportionately peachy tale (Now to 4/4)
Emperor’s Nightingale — A re-imagining of the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale about an aimless prince who ultimately becomes king by, you might say, putting a bird on it (4/22-5/30)
Jumanji — When you’re bored, you play board games and then magic will happen, according to this world premiere adaptation (6/17-8/28)
The Lion — A rock and roll journey from boyhood to manhood as written and performed by singer Benjamin Scheuer (Now to 4/10, Kogod Cradle)
All The Way — Robert Schenkkan’s 2014 Tony-winning drama examines the red, white and blue-blooded leadership of LBJ (4/1-5/8, Fichandler)
Disgraced — Avad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning incendiary examination of one’s self and one’s beliefs — of American identity and South Asian culture. Timothy Douglas directs (4/22-5/29, Kreeger)
Detroit ’67 — The music and politics of the Motown-era sizzle in the background of this sharp-eyed drama about racial and generational differences from Dominique Morisseau (4/8-5/8)
Journey to the West — Alison Arkell Stockman directs a fanciful global tale from Mary Zimmerman, with live musical accompaniment by Tom Teasley (4/21-5/22)
The Reduced Shakespeare Company: William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) — Two of the world’s most famous Shakespearean comedians, Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin, throw themselves into a funny, punny physical frenzy (4/21-5/8)
District Merchants — Aaron Posner offers a D.C.-informed variation on Shakespeare’s The Merchants of Venice intended to be both timely and timeless (5/31-7/3)
110 in the Shade — Marcia Milgrom Dodge directs and choreographs a new production of this 50-year-old musical about cowboys, confidence and courtship and featuring a lively score from the creators of The Fantasticks (3/11-5/14)
The Pillowman — Authorities in an unnamed totalitarian state are unsettled by a writer in Martin McDonagh’s piercing play, cutting to the heart of art (Now to 4/2)
Blackberry Winter — Michael Dove directs Holly Twyford in a National New Play Network rolling world premiere about the struggles of a daughter to cope with her mother’s advancing dementia (5/19-6/11-16)
Kinky Boots — Cyndi Lauper mined Tony gold with songs about a showgirl named Lola, in a story about the power of drag queens and shoes (6/14-7/10, Eisenhower)
The Bridges of Madison County — The story of an Iowa housewife and her life-changing, whirlwind romance with a traveling photographer gets the musical treatment (6/28-7/17, Eisenhower)
The Phantom of the Opera — A cast and orchestra of 52 will fill the Opera House to the brim in Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classic (7/13-8/20, Opera House)
Black Pearl Sings! — Over 20 American folk and spiritual songs factor into Frank Higgins’s story inspired by the real-life discovery of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter by folklorist John Lomax (4/21-5/29)
After The War — A new play from the author of The Admission about a middle-aged Israeli ex-patriot who returns to Tel Aviv after nearly two decades away (3/24-4/17)
Hkeelee (Talk to Me) — Leila Buck offers an interactive exploration of what it means to be(come) American in this probing portrait of a young American’s Lebanese grandmother (4/30-5/1)
When January Feels Like Summer — Serge Seiden transports this Off-Broadway romantic urban comedy to the Anacostia and H Street neighborhoods (5/19-6/12)
Annie — The world’s most nauseating musical returns. Let’s hope Arena never decides to stage it — it’ll be the decline of Western Civilization (3/15-3/20)
Jersey Boys — Those boys just keep working their way back to us (4/6-4/24)
The Wizard of Oz — We’re off to see the wizard in a re-conceived fairyland (5/3-5/15)
Marjorie Prime — A tender and provocative story of an elderly woman who’s using technology to reinvent her memories (Now to 4/10, Theatre Lab)
Dial ‘M’ For Murder — Frederick Knott’s deliriously spine-tingling play that would go on to inspire the Alfred Hitchcock thriller (4/6-5/1, Mainstage)
Bakersfield Mist — Donna Miglaccio is a poor, down-and-out woman and Michael Russotto an “East Coast Elite” art curator, and the two collide over class and culture and a potentially lost Jackson Pollock painting (5/12-6/12, Theatre Lab)
Evita — An intimate staging in Casa Olney of the musical about Argentina’s Eva Peron (6/23-7/24, Mainstage)
The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado — These two supremely silly Gilbert & Sullivan comic operettas are staged in rotating repertory and in promenade style for ultimate audience attentiveness (7/14-8/21, Theatre Lab)
Ugo Ball: A Super Spectacular Dada Adventure — A one-of-a-kind performance loosely based on the life of one of the founders of the Dada anti-art movement (4/15-5/14)
Hunting and Gathering — Love, life and real estate is the focus of Brooke Berman’s smart and sexy comedy, directed by Kasi Campbell in a regional premiere (4/6-4/24)
Good Kids — The 14th Annual Sarah Metzger Memorial Play, presented by the Round House Teen Performance Company, is Naomi Iizuka’s provocative story loosely based on the Steubenville High School rape case (3/11-3/13)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — Mitchell Hebert directs a cast including local heavyweights Rick Foucheaux and Nancy Robinette in a Round House look at the Tennessee Williams classic (3/30-4/24)
The Who & The What — A fierce and funny new play from Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced) about identity, religion and inherent human contradictions (5/25-6/19)
Road Show — Signature offers the D.C. premiere of this rarely produced Sondheim show about a traveling duo of brothers (Now to 3/12, Max)
The Flick — Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy focuses on three employees at an increasingly out-of-date movie theater struggling to find their place in the world (Now to 4/17, Ark)
The Mystery of Love & Sex — From the writer of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Showtime’s Masters of Sex comes this unexpected story of an evolving friendship between not-quite-straight best friends (4/5-5/8, Max)
La Cage aux Folles — The perennial Helen Hayes Award winner Bobby Smith leads the cast in this drag-centered, gay-affirming musical (5/31-7/10, Max)
Moment — Director Ethan McSweeny makes his Studio debut with an Irish tale about a family reunion and long-simmering sibling resentment (3/16-4/24)
Hedda Gabler — Mark O’Rowe’s contemporary adaptation intends to provide a nuanced portrait of one of the most fascinating figures in modern drama (5/11-6/19)
The Object Lesson — Physical theatre artist Geoff Sobelle transforms Studio’s Stage 4 into an epic storage facility in this immersive, one-of-a-kind performance-installation (5/20-6/5)
Hand to God — The Broadway musical that brought wickedly fun life to “sex, sinners and sock puppets” (7/7-8/7)
Falling out of Time — A new adaptation of acclaimed Israeli author David Grossman’s novel about enduring loss and accepting death in a way that is moving and beautiful (3/17-4/17)
The Body of an American — A breathtakingly provocative drama, based on a true story, about the friendship that develops between a playwright and a photographer that spans from Rwanda to Afghanistan to the Canadian Artic (4/27-5/29)
Another Way Home — Anna Ziegler’s insightful, sardonic drama about the strangers we all live with — our family (6/23-7/24)
The Nether — A modern crime drama exploring themes of desire, technology and morality in a futuristic Earth wasteland (4/4-5/1)
An Octoroon — Billed as “part period satire, part meta-theatrical middle finger,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play explores America’s lasting legacy of slavery and of racial pigeonholing (5/30-6/26)
A super-cute, tech-savvy update of William Shakespeare's most famous lovers' tragedy, The Folger's Romeo + Juliet has a nice wow-factor. Not only is it literally just the ticket for a Shakespeare-curious Gen Z'er, but it still largely delivers for the diehards in need of a classical fix.
In fact, setting the star-crossed teenagers in the very thick of the present day is multi-level inspired. It's exceedingly fun to watch director Raymond O. Caldwell and his team so creatively integrate all manner of modern life and its attendant frenzies into the story, but it also brings a much-needed logic.
"This printing press," says Greg Prickman of the Folger Shakespeare Library. "We had it built for the space, so it's not an artifact. People can handle it, and it helps us tell the story of the book."
That functioning replica of an early printing press is just one of the more novel and unexpected items currently on display at the recently reopened and renovated Folger.
"It absolutely works," continues Prickman, the institution's director of collections and exhibitions, who took me on a recent tour of the space. "And we're able to show people very tangibly what creating a book actually looked like physically -- the tiny little pieces of type, all of these lines, and individual letters. And it's backwards. So you have to learn how to create lines of text backwards."
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