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.

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.

Don't Fly With Me: Arena's "Catch Me If You Can," reviewed.

Hayley Podschun, Alexandra Frohlinger, Christian Thompson and Rhett Guter in Arena’s revised-but-still unsatisfying Catch Me If You Can. (Margot Schulman)

Catch Me If You Can, the Hairspray songwriters’ attempt to musicalize Steven Spielberg’s beloved 2002 film, didn’t take off on Broadway 11 years ago. The revised version now at Arena Stage doesn’t work, either. For the Washington City Paper.

527 Dog Years: Mike Daisey Tells "A People's History"

Class is in session. (Darrow Montgomery for the Washington City Paper)

Mike Daisey is an artist I've written about more often and in greater detail than only anyone else. He's certainly the artist with to whom I've spent the most time speaking directly. The reviews I've written of his monologues and the features I've reported about how he creates them and editorial I was once moved to write in his defense all reflect my great admiration for his work.

That has not prevented me from condemning him when I think he's deserved it, and he did do something that warranted condemnation, years ago. I will say that in the third year of a Donald J. Trump administration, it seems awfully quaint that so many journalists who had never publicly discussed theatre at all before they lined up to express their outrage at Daisey in the spring of 2012 got so steamed over a guy who tells stories in theaters for a living taking some liberties with one of them.

Anyway, Daisey's wildly ambitious current show A People's History—an 18 part retelling of American history circa 1492-to-now, based heavily on the work of Howard Zinn but also on Daisey's own life—is the subject of my second Washington City Paper cover story about him, available today wherever finer Washington, DC alt-weeklies are given away for free. My 2012 WCP story detailing the problems he created for himself with his show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and his effort to remedy them, is here. In fact, all of my writings about Daisey are mere clicks away! How much time do you have?

The Rooms Where It Happened: "JQA," reviewed.

Joshua David Robinson and Jacqueline Correa in JQA.

Here's my Washington City Paper review of JQA, a new historical fiction from playwright-director Aaron Posner featuring two men and two women, all of whom play America's sixth president.

How Men Crumbled: Arena’s "Kleptocracy" and Ford’s "Twelve Angry Men," reviewed.

Christopher Geary is Vladimir Putin in Kenneth Lin’s world-premiere at Arena Stage. (C. Stanley Photography)

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something... something. In this week's Washington City Paper, I review Kleptocracy, an imperfect but intriguing Vladimir Putin origin story by Kenneth Lin at Arena Stage, starring the guy in the cast who looks the second-most Putinlike as Putin. Plus a puzzling new production of Twelve Angry Men at Ford's.

What's Past Is Prologue: The Great Society, reviewed.

All Occasions Do Inform Against him: Jack Willis as LBJ, with Elliott Bales, Brook Berry, Alana D. Sharp and Andrew Weems (C. Stanley Photography)

I wrote about Arena Stage's production of Robert Schenkkan's LBJ play The Great Society in this week's Washington City Paper.

FURTHER READING: My April 2016 review of All the Way.

Dry Goods: Hamlet and Sovereignty, reviewed.

I wish I could muster more enthusiasm for Michael Kahn's final Hamlet, starring Michael Urie, or for Sovereignty, an Arena Stage World Premiere entry in the Women's Voices Theater Festival written by Mary Kathryn Nagle, who knows whereof she speaks but not how to make it sing. Those reviews are in this week's Washington City Paper.