Rebirth Until Birth: Mosaic Theater's "Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine," reviewed.

William T. Newman, Jr. and Felicia Curry in Fabulation. (Christopher Banks)

Lynn Nottage has won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama in the 15 years since her play Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine was first performed; there is no Pulitzer Prize for Comedy. Mosaic Theater's production of Undine gets its weakest scenes out of the way early, though even in its most heart-rending moments I yearned for a little more variation in the rhythm of star Felicia Curry's speech. I've loved her in many other shows. My Washington City Paper review is here.

My colleague Jane Horwitz liked Fabulation more than I did, as you can hear her say in our brief Around Town discussion.

Two Dope Queens: "Mary Stuart," reviewed.

Megan Anderson and Eleasha Gamble in Jason Loewith’s update of Mary Stuart for Olney Theatre Center.

There's been no shortage of opportunities to see Mary Stuart, Friedrich Schiller's early 19th century play about mid-16th century skullduggery among queens, in the DMV over the last decade. But Olney Theatre Center honcho Jason Loewith's stripped-down update is good. I reviewed it in last week's Washington City Paper, and discussed it briefly on Around Town, which you can see below.

Depth and Deprivation: "The Children" and "Love's Labor's Lost," reviewed.

I didn't write about Ella Hickson's Oil, the best play I've seen this year. But I did review Lucy Kirkwood's The Children, the second-best. I'm struck by how different two plays with ecological themes written by British women born in the 80s that premiered in 2016 can be. I also wrote about Folger's new production of the seldom-staged Shakespeare comedy, Love's Labor's Lost, and discussed it on Around Town, below.

No Jacket Required, Apparently: Talking Death of a Salesman, In the Heights, and The Wild Party on Around Town

You can see for yourself what a business-casual mood I was in the day Robert Aubry Davis, Jane Horwitz, and I convened at WETA to shoot a fresh batch of Around Town segments. Perhaps you are correct that I should have chosen a shirt that is not the same shade as our studio backdrop. Hey, I don't tell you how to do your part-time job.

I reviewed Ford's Death of a Salesman and Constellation's The Wild Party for the Washington City Paper. For In the Heights, the musical I herein refer to as "Lin-Manuel Miranda's THX-1138," I didn't write about it. I just bought four more tickets the morning after to take my folks.

On Around Town, talking Laugh, Man of La Mancha, The Originalist, and Soon.

My regimen of smiling and sentence-speaking practice continues as I join host Robert Aubry Davis and Washington Post arts writer Jane Horwitz for another Around Town panel discussion of what's happening on stage here in Our Nation's Capitol and its close suburbs. In this batch of videos, which have also been airing irregularly on your public television, we discuss three shows I reviewed for the Washington City Paper and one I didn't: Beth Henley's homage to silent film comedies Laugh, the Shakespeare Theatre's new production of the classic musical Man of La Mancha, Arena Stage's world premiere play about divisive Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, The Originalist, and Soon, a new musical about the end of the world, kind of, at Signature Theatre.

These links no longer play nice with my blogging platform, so they're not embeddable.

Laugh

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462454/

Soon

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462413/

Man of La Mancha

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462437/

The Originalist

http://watch.weta.org/video/2365462393/

The Hard Sells: Back to Methuselah, Part 2 and Kid Victory, reviewed.

Jake Winn and Jeffry Denman are prey & predator in Kid Victory (Margot Schulman/Signature).

In today's snow-day edition of the Washington City Paper, I review the second installment in Washington Stage Guild's three-part, three-year presentation of George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah and of the world-premiere John Kander-Greg Pierce musical Kid Victory. Around Town videos wherein Robert Aubry Davis, Jane Horwitz, the gigantic lapels of my shirt, and I dissect these differently taxing shows are here and here.