Prude Mechanicals, or Pore Newland Is Daid: Arena's "The Age of Innocence," reviewed.

An Archer misses the target. Shereen Ahmed and A.J. Shively in The Age of Innocence. (Daniel Rader)

Another Gilded Age, another pandemic. The time is right for another look at The Age of Innocence, more now than in 1993, when Martin Scorsese made his marvelous film of Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel. Turning in into a movie made sense. And putting it on stage? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might’ve worked better as a musical.

My full Washington Post review is here.

Cop Show: Studio's "The Scenarios," reviewed.

Joel Ashur and Sarin Monae West in Matthew Capodicasa’s The Scenarios. (Margot Schulman)

My review of The Scenarios, a compact and brilliant new play by Matthew Capodicasa, is in the Washington Post.

"Guac," reviewed.

I struggled with Guac, anti-gun-violence activist Manuel Oliver’s tribute to his son Joaquin “Guac” Oliver, who was one of seventeen people murdered in Parkland school shooting on Feb. 14, 2018. My Washington City Paper review is here.

Ninety-Six Puppeteers: "Life of Pi," reviewed.

Understandably the Paper of Record did not use my suggesed hed, —Ninety-Six Puppeteers — but my review of the touring production of the stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning 2001 novel Life of Pi at the Kennedy Center through the holidays is in The Washington Post.

The Resilience of Laughter: "Dance Like There's Black People Watching," reviewed.

Jillian Ebanks, Breon Arzell, Max Thomas, Tamieka Chavis, and Arlietta Hall. (Teresa Castracane)

The Second City’s first show at Woolly Mammoth, Barack Stars, from those heady first months of the Obama Administration, was the subject of one of my first reviews for the Washington City Paper. My Washington Post review of their latest, offered in more dire times, is here.

The Conscience of a Coder: "Data," reviewed.

Isabel Van Natta and Karan Brar in the tech thriller Data. (T. Charles Erickson Photography)

Imagine, if your capacity for speculative, blue-sky doomsday pessimism can possibly conceive of such a scenario, the union of a morally flexible tech oligarch and a U.S. government hostile to immigration and intolerant of dissent.

My Washington Post review of Data, playwright Matthew Libby’s world-premiere thriller at Arena Stage, is here.

R & J, IRL: Folger's "Romeo and Juliet," reviewed.

Cole Taylor and Caro Reyes Rivera as those star-cross’d young lovers. (Erika Nizborski)

You know that game where you try to think of old movies or plays where the introduction of cell phones would spoil the plot? Romeo and Juliet has always seemed like an obvious one, but Raymond O. Caldwell, director of the Folger’s season-opening update of the tragedy, begs to differ. My Washington Post review is here.

Mid by Midwest: "Babbitt," reviewed.

Matthew Broderick in Babbitt. (Teresa Castracane)

My Washington City Paper review of Babbitt, a Matthew Broderick-anchored adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis novel that premiered at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse last year ahead of its current STC engagement, is here.