Faking and Baking: Stage Kiss and Holiday Memories, reviewed.

They can't all be winners, not even shows from playwrights, directors, and actors whose work you often love. Round House Theatre's new production of Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss was a bigger disappointment to me given its pedigree than was WSC Avant Bard's Holiday Memories, but I can't say either one blew my Christmas stockings off. As ever, your mileage may vary.

Deliberations of the Cross: Passion Play and The Originalist, reviewed.

Edward Gero as Antonin Scalia and Kerry Warren as Cat in The Originalist. (C. Stanley Photography/Arena Stage)

Jon Hudson Odom and Laura C. Harris in Passion Play. (C. Stanley Photography/Forum Theatre) 

It's a strong week for theatre here in our Nation's Capitol. My reviews of The Originalist, Arena Stage playwright-in-residence John Strand's much-awaited play about Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and United States v. Windsor, and Forum Theatre's magnificent production of Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play, are in today's Washington City Paper. Go read 'em. Please.

I did mention in my draft how similar The Originalist is to Red – the John Logan-penned Arena Stage show from 2012 wherein Originalist star Ed Gero played a different colossal American, the painter Mark Rothko, yelling at a young assistant haunted by a parental tragedy. But I only get one page in the paper, so something had to go.

FURTHER READING: My 2010 review of the prior play I saw about a Supreme Court Justice, wherein Laurence Fishburne played Thurgood Marshall, whose tenure on the court overlapped with Scalia's from Sept. 1986 to Oct. 1991. And United States v. Windsor, in its game-changing entirety.

Fear of a Dwarf Planet: Forum's Pluto and WSC's Orlando, reviewed.

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David Zimmerman, Jennifer Mendendall, and Kimberly Gilbert in Forum Theatre's Pluto.

NOTICE: My reviews of Steve Yockey's "rolling world premiere" Pluto for Forum Theatre and Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando at WSC Avant Bard are in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away yadda yadda yadda.