Eileen Rivera_Hubert Point Du-Jour photos by Paula Court by EUGENE PAUL There’s a grungy someone lying supine at the edge of the stage, nose in the air, ankles crossed, at ease in John McDermott’s vigorously suggestive, multileveled setting , suggestive of what, we are wondering until we are brought up short by the…
By Michall Jeffers Jan Maxwell is what’s known as “An Actor’s Actor;” there just doesn’t seem to be anything she can’t do. The City of Conversation revolves around her; she’s on stage nearly the whole time, and every scene concerns her character, Hester Ferris, in one way or another. Hester is the Hostess with the…
Carol Schultz as Mrs. Malaprop and Jessica Love as Lydia Languish photo by Al Foote III The Rivals by Eugene Paul There’s a persistent literary rumor that Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s perilously near fatuous hit play, The Rivals, was a particular favorite of George Washington’s. Yes, that George, “The Father of Our Country”. Doesn’t…
By Eugene Paul Audra McDonald Photos by Evgenia Eliseeva Beg. Borrow. Steal. In a breathtaking leap, famed Audra McDonald has vaulted past anything she’s ever done to this pinnacle of performance art, her portrait of Billie Holiday, the mesmerizing, tragic figure who haunts us still with the beauty and wreckage of her life, and…
04/13/2014 A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity & Clean By: Eugene Paul Gavin Jon Wright and Joanna Tope in a scene from A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity (Photo credit: Jeremy Abrahams) Please allow me to give you the full title of the first of the two plays of the evening: A Respectable Widow Takes…
03/23/2014 Satchmo at the Waldorf By: Deirdre Donovan John Douglas Thompson as Louis Armstrong in a scene from Satchmo at the Waldorf (Photo credit: T. Charles Erickson) Terry Teachout is changing hats from theater critic to playwright with his one-man play Satchmo at the Waldorf which stars John Douglas Thompson as the jazz legend. Both…