Honey, Believe Me: Girlfriend, reviewed.

James Lukas Miller (standing) and Jimmy Mavrikes sing Sweetly to one another in Signature's Girlfriend.

My review of Signature Theatre's production of Girlfriend, wherein book writer (and songwriter, though not here) David Almond takes a (then) 20-year-old album Matthew Sweet wrote about his divorce and retcons it into a minimalist musical about two boys falling in love in Nebraska the summer after high school, is in this week's Washington City Paper. A fine little show. Nothing wrong with that sort of appropriation. But everyone I've heard from who really loves it has never heard the album from which Almond borrowed its music.

All that (Inventor of) Jazz: Jelly's Last Jam and The Lonesome West, reviewed.

Jelly's Last Jam, a celebrated but rarely-revived musical biography of seminal jazz artist Jelly Roll Morton.

My reviews of Signature Theatre's new production of George C. Wolfe and Susan Brikenhead's early-90s Jelly Roll Morton bio-musical Jelly's Last Jam, and Keegan Theatre's production of Martin McDonagh's late-90s black comedy The Lonesome West, are in today's Washington City Paper.  Notice is served.

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.

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.

Tête-à-Tête Offensive: Tender Napalm and The Carolina Layaway Grail, reviewed.

View fullsize

Laura C. Harris and Elan Zafir in Tender Napalm (Teresa Wood)

In one of the the shows at Signature Theatre right now, a woman (named "Woman") tells a man ("Man") in precise, step-by-step detail how she plans to sever his penis and scrotum.

In the theater next door, Beaches: The Musical is playing. Six of one...

I review Philip Ridley's Tender Napalm in this week's Washington City Paper. Plus Allyson Currin's The Carolina Layaway Grail, the inaugural production from DC playwriting collective The Welders.

Why yes, I am fairly pleased with the hed, thanks. It's one of the very few times I've ever managed to top my editor (and Heds Will Roll Tumblr proprietr) Jon Fischer's suggestion, which is on Heds Will Roll now though it's far more tasteful than mine. Then he came back and nailed the photo caption, so.