The Life Despotic with Drew Cortese

Cortese and Alyssa Wilmoth Keegan as Lady Anne (Jeff Malet/Folger)

Richard Sheridan Willis as Lord Stanley (Jeff Malet/Folger)

I didn't know Drew Cortese until I saw him in The Motherfucker with the Hat at Studio Theatre this time last year, but the performance made a powerful impression. He's in Richard III at the Folger Theatre now. We talked about roads not taken and being the bad guy for a piece in today's Washington City Paper.

All photos by Jeff Malet, courtesy Folger Theatre.

Devise and Conquer: We Are Proud to Present..., reviewed.

Peter Howard, Holly Twyford, and Dawn Ursula in We Are Proud to Present...

I can't think of another time I've had as visceral and angry a reaction to a play as I did to Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present. It takes a lot of gall to sit down with the intent of illuminating a little-known genocide and then decide, at some point during the writing process, to make it all about you. 

Profiles of the playwright in the New York Times and the Washington Post cover this. I still kind of want to see the zombie play mentioned in the Times piece, but its revelation that she puts emoticons in her stage directions is unsurprising in light of the clumsiness of We Are Proud, wherein Drury chooses a hacky, wrongheaded premise and then executes it in a way that devolves from merely dull to actually loathsome.

My review of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's production is in today's Washington City Paper, along with a review of Spooky Action Theatre's local premiere of Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues's surreal 1943 play The Wedding Dress.

The Motherfucker with the Limp: Folger's Richard III, reviewed.

Drew Cortese is a supervillain for the ages. (Jeff Malet)

No one was more excited than I was when the Folger Theatre announced that Drew Cortese -- a standout player from Studio's The Motherfucker with the Hat last year -- would play Richard III. The show is good, but not the radical reinvention I'd hoped it might be.  Read all about it in today’s Washington City Paper.

Mucho Mistrust, Love's Gone Behind: Rorschach's Glassheart, reviewed.

Megan Reichelt and Lynette Rathnam

That's a refrain from Blondie's "Heart of Glass," by the way. Who knew? Not me.

I'm of the opinion that Reina Hardy's spin on Beauty and the Beast, Glassheart, is an undercooked play, but the cast of Rorschach Theatre's production is doing admirable work. My review is in today's Washington City Paper.

Diamond Dawgs: Bang the Drum Slowly, reviewed.

Evan Crump as Author  Richie Montgomery as Bruce in Bang the Drum Slowly. (Johannes Markus) 

I've never been a big sports fan, but I'm weirdly susceptible to baseball stories. I found American Century Theatre's stage adaptation of Mark Harris' 1956 baseball novel Bang the Drum Slowly to be an anachronistic pleasure. My review is in today's Washington City Paper.

Quiet Act: Synetic's Twelfth Night and Forum's Meena's Dream, reviewed

"I have been and always shall be your... twin sibling." Alex Mills as Sebastian and Irina Tsikurishvili as Viola in Twelfth Night. (Koko Lanham)

My reviews of Synetic Theatre's silent, early-cinema-and-Jazz Age-inflected Twelfth Night and Anu Yadav's solo show Meena's Dream are in today's Washington City Paper.

Painted by Association: The Old Masters, reviewed.

The Adoration of the Shepherds, now attributed to the Renaissance master Giorgione, hangs in the National Gallery of Art.

The authorship of this painting is the ostensible subject of The Old Masters, one of Simon Gray's final plays. My review of Washington Stage Guild's production is in today's Washington City Paper.