Personal Is Geopolitical: Chimerica and Women Laughing Alone with Salad, reviewed.

My review of the U.S. debut of Lucy Kirkwood's sprawling, ambitious drama Chimerica at the Studio Theatre is in today's Washington City Paper. Also reviewed: Women Laughing Alone with Salad, a surreal feminist comedy from Sheila Callaghan making its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. For those keeping score, that's one great play by a woman that's not officially part of the Women's Voices Theatre Festival, and one pretty good play that is. Read those pieces here, or pick up a dead-tree WCP, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away gratis — and you don't even need to have an Amazon Prime subscription!

Each of these shows contain very specific plot and/or production elements I expect their playwrights and directors would prefer for audiences to discover for themselves, but if you abhor surprises and would like to have these things spoiled for you, by all means, go find their Washington Post reviews instead.

I've Got You Under My Skin: Silence! The Musical, reviewed.

Tally Sessions and Laura Jordan as Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in the musical parody The Silence of the Lambs demanded. (Igor Dmitry)

Studio Theatre served fava beans as snacks on press night of Silence! The Musical. Tasteful! fuhfuhfuhfuhfuhfuhfuh.

I review the show in today's Washington City Paper.

The Play's the Thing, the Thing, and the Other Thing: The Blood Quilt, Jumpers for Goalposts, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, reviewed.

Adam Wesley Brown, Ian Merrill Peakes, and Romell Witherspoon in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. (Teresa Wood)

Liam Forde, Kimberly Gilbert, Zdenko Martin, and Michael Glenn in Jumpers for Goalposts. (Igor Dmitry)

Meeya Davis, Nikiya Mathis, Caroline Clay, Afi Bijou. and Tonye Patano in The Blood Quilt. (C. Stanley Photography)

My reviews of — in alphabetical order — the new play The Blood Quilt, the debuting-in-the-U.S. play Jumpers for Goalposts, and the postmodern chestnut Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, are all in this week's Washington City Paper. Except for the latter two of the three, which are online-only. Find them via the links above.

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/

An Imperative, Not a Noun: Beth Henley's Laugh, reviewed.

Jacob Ming-Trent, Creed Garnick, Helen Cespedes, and Evan Zes in Laugh. (Igor Dmitry/Studio)

Pulitzer Prize-winner Beth Henley's new play Laugh is not like her other plays. It's wacky. How you feel about wacky will be a better predictor of your experience than you feel about Henley. 

My Washington City Paper review is here.

Do You Want to Blow a Secret? Washington Stage Guild's In Praise of Love and Studio Theatre's Choir Boy, reviewed.

Julie-Ann Elliott & Conrad Feininger in In Praise of Love.

Jonathan Burke, Eric Lockley, Jelani Alladin, and Jaysen Wright in Choir Boy at Studio Theatre. (Igor Dmitry)

My reviews of Washington Stage Guild's sturdy revival of Terence Rattigan's In Praise of Love and Studio Theatre's gospel song-inflected production of Tarell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy are in this week's Washington City Paper. Go find a copy; they're free! Or read them here.

Drone Unknowns: Grounded, reviewed.

Lucy Ellinson in the Gate Theatre production of George Brant's Grounded.

My review of Grounded, a George Brant's solo play about a drone pilot, is in today's Washington City Paper.