Aniello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

Vaughn Irving, Doug Wilder, Farrell Parker, and Suzanne Edgar perform their musical "You, or Whatever I Can Get" in the 2014 Capital Fringe Festival. 2015 Aniello Award winner Flying V will remount the show starting next week. (Paul Gillis)

After covering theater in DC on a regular basis for seven or eight years, it's clear to me that what I like and what Helen Hayes Awards judges like sometimes overlap but more often do not. But I very much appreciate that the Haysies created a new award eight years ago in the name of longtime DC theatre patron John Laurentzen Aniello Jr. to recognize outstanding start-up theatre companies, because making good art is difficult, difficult, lemon difficult and keeping a theatre company afloat ain't so easy, either.

I wrote a feature about the Aniello Award and its recent winners for the Washington City Paper. My sincere, red-faced apologies to The Welders and for Flying V Theatre Company for a couple of boneheaded reporting errors that I allowed to slip into the print version. (They've been corrected online.) Also, apologies to Matt Reckeweg, co-founder of Pointless Theatre Company, which won the Aniello in 2014. He gave me some helpful insights but his comments were regrettably cut from the story for space.

Hey, what happened to my 2014 FringeCasting Couch interview with the cast of Flying V's You, or Whatever I Can Get?

A Horse of a Different Color: Between Riverside and Crazy and Equus, reviewed.

Frankie R. Faison, Emily K. Townley, and David Bishins in Between Riverside and Crazy. (Allie Dearie/Studio Theatre)

Among my other inspired headline ideas was the immortal "Race, Horse." Washington City Paper editor-in-chief Steve Cavendish came up with the winning entry: "Crime Doesn't Neigh." Bravo, Steve. Herewith, my reviews of Studio's Between Riverside and Crazy, the 2015 Pulitzer winner from Stephen Adly Guirgis, and Constellation's new production of Peter Shaffer's Equus.

Heal Thyself: The Critic and The Real Inspector Hound, reviewed.

The cast of The Real Inspector Hound (Scott Suchman/Shakespeare Theatre Co.)

I couldn't make the Monday-night press premiere of Shakespeare Theatre Company's twofer of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Critic and Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound last week, as I am teaching the Sweet Science on Monday nights this season. But I caught up with the show later in the week and my Washington City Paper review went up this afternoon. Stoppard's play, especially, makes the pain of hackery burn more than usual.

When You're a Jet Something Something: West Side Story, reviewed.

(Signature Theatre/Christopher Mueller)

I brought my folks to Signature Theatre's reverent, rapturous production of the Broadway classic West Side Story the week before Christmas, but due to vagaries related to two issues falling on holidays between then and now, my Washington City Paper review is only now surfacing. I filed on time, dammit. At least I think I did. Who can remember anything from before Christmas now? Holiday-time usually brings a conventional but deeply satisfying revival of a proven crowd favorite, and this winter, West Side Story is the one to beat.

For what it's worth, the first time I heard "America" was when Bono was singing a snippet of it during "Bullet the Blue Sky" on U2's PopMart Tour in 1997.

Faking and Baking: Stage Kiss and Holiday Memories, reviewed.

They can't all be winners, not even shows from playwrights, directors, and actors whose work you often love. Round House Theatre's new production of Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss was a bigger disappointment to me given its pedigree than was WSC Avant Bard's Holiday Memories, but I can't say either one blew my Christmas stockings off. As ever, your mileage may vary.

No More: Oliver!, reviewed.

Jake Heston Miller is Oliver! (Margot Schulman)

It's already been three weeks since I saw Arena Stage's new production of Oliver! — Lionel Bart's beloved 1960 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist — but for various page-cutting reasons, my review did not run in the Washington City Paper until this week's issue. Somehow I got through it without mentioning that Jeff McCarthy, who plays Fagan, was in RoboCop 2.

How You Like Them Apples? Sorry and Regular Singing, reviewed.

Sarah Marshall, Elizabeth Pierotti, Rick Foucheux, and Kimberly Schraf in The Apple Family Cycle, part the second, at Studio Theatre. (Allie Dearie)

My review of Sorry and Regular Singing, the latter two entries in Richard Nelson's Apple Family quartet, is in today's Washington City Paper. I reviewed the first pair, That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad, when the same director and cast staged them here in Washington two years ago; see here. If I've little more to say now than I said then, it's only because the magnificent strengths of the whole are also the strengths of its magnificent component parts.

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.