Too Much Is Not Enough: Bad Dog and Alice in Wondlerland, reviewed.

My reviews of Bad Dog, a tough new comedy about alcoholism from prestige-TV writer Jennifer Hoppe-House, and Alice in Wonderland, Synetic Theatre's watery take on the Lewis Carroll classic as reinterpreted by former Washington Post film & theatre critic Lloyd Rose, are in today's Washington City Paper. I got paid to write them but you can read them for free. Everybody wins.

Loose Fur: Synetic Theater's Beauty and the Beast, reviewed.

Renata Veberyte Loman narrates Synetic Theater's new adaptation. (Johnny Shryock)

My review of Synetic Theater’s fresh and frightening new adaptation of the 275-year-old French fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is in today's Washington City Paper. Grrrrrr.

Where the Wild Things Are: Synetic's The Island of Dr. Moreau, reviewed.

ICE to see you! The inhabitants of The Island of Dr. Moreau (Johnny Shryock)

This acrobatic Moreau is a rich sensual experience, one that deflates at the end but not before it has vividly dramatized Wells’s big question: Is physical suffering at best irrelevant and at worst necessary? Can we evolve by teaching ourselves to ignore it? By way of demonstrating his answer, Moreau takes a glinting blade and slices a red trail through his own forearm, ignoring the pain like he’s Peter O’Toole playing Lawrence of Arabia, or Gordon Liddy playing himself, or Gary Busey playing Mr. Joshua. (In Lethal Weapon, duh. Read a book, why don't you.) We always hurt the ones we’re forcibly trying to improve.

My review of Synetic Theater's new adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau is in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free.

Its cover feature is "The DC Manual of Style and Usage," the handy and hilarious brainchild of my editor, Jonathan L. Fischer, who announced this week that he's leaving his post as the Washington City Paper's managing editor to become a senior editor at Slate. He's a meticulous, imaginative, patient editor who always smartened-up my copy, and a genius at punny headlines and captions. (Here's just one example.) I look forward to working for him again.

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.

You Gotta Move: Synetic's A Trip to the Moon and A Commedia Christmas Carol, reviewed

A Trip to the Moon, 1902

I was a big admirer of writer/director/illustrator Natsu Onoda Power's Astro Boy and the God of Comics at Studio Theatre earlier this year, and also of Martin Scorcese's 2011 film Hugo, which was in part about pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. So I was excited to see Power's new stage adaptation of Méliès’ most famous film, A Trip to the Moon -- which I found promising but underdeveloped.

I review it in today's Washington City Paper, along with a Faction of Fools' A Commedia Christmas Carol.