The Squeaky Gun Gets the Grease: "Assassins" at Signature Theatre, reviewed.

Signature Theatre’s 2019 Assassins is its third since 1993. (Christopher Mueller)

Whether a production of Assassins uses period-accurate prop guns doesn’t matter. Whether the director of a 2019 Assassins has thought about how our relationship to gun violence, mental illness, & presidential politics has changed since 1990 matters a lot. My review of Signature Theatre's second, and weaker, 21st-c. take on Stephen Sondheim's scandalous late-20th century musical is in this week's Washington City Paper.

Here’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 Washington Post series about DC’s raft of police shootings in the 1990s that informed my long lede graf.

And here I am with my pal Trey Graham, still failing miserably at smiling on command before we briefly discuss this production—which I still liked more than he did!—on WETA's Around Town.

Unsinkable? Unthinkable! Signature Theatre's all-singing, all-dancing Titanic, reviewed.

Christopher Bloch, Nick Lehan, Lawrence Redmond, and Bobby Smith in Signature's Titanic. (Christopher Mueller) 

Signature Theatre has revived Titanic, a multi-Tony Award-winning musical from 1997 that almost no one remembers. Apparently it was upstaged by some movie? My Washington City Paper review is here.

Gay for Play: La Cage Aux Folles, reviewed.

Brent Barrett surrounded by Les Cagelles (Signature).

My review of Signature Theatre's robust revival of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's beloved Reagan-era musical farce La Cage Aux Folles is in this week's Washington City Paper. I like the show, but I don't like my review as much as the one I wrote of the Goodspeed Opera House's production about a year ago, as part of my coursework for the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Critics Institute. Which is odd, because I remember thinking I was producing mostly unpublishable copy while I was there. I've never been a fast writer. Most days we had copy due at 8:30 or 9 a.m. about the show we'd seen the night before. Anyway, the Critic Class of 2016 starts their two-week term on Saturday. Good luck, you guys. I envy you, sort of — just not your early-a.m. deadlines or your accommodations or your on-campus meals. 

Actually, the coffee was pretty decent. I drank a lot of it, at any rate.

Petty Hurts: Girlstar and Avenue Q, reviewed.

In this week's Washington City Paper, I size up a pair of musicals: Signature Theatre's Girlstar is a confused mess borne aloft by a strong cast, and Constellation Theatre's revival of the hit Sesame Street parody Avenue Q is funnier and more soulful than The Muppets. (The dour 2015 version, not The Muppet Show.) More words, if not necessarily more insight, on these subjects here and here.

Hard Nineteen Twenty-Eight: The Threepenny Opera and Failure: A Love Story, reviewed.

And now, two plays with music, one from 1928 and one set in 1928. My reviews of Signature Theatre's new production of The Threepenny Opera as well as the hub theatre's local premiere of Philip Dawkins' Failure: A Love Story, are in today's Washington City Paper.