DCMetroTheaterArts
Your source for theater news, reviews, and interviews in DC, MD, Northern VA, and New York
Two staples of American drama have been the “kitchen-sink play,” which feature small casts and meticulously detailed, usually lower-middle class, settings, and what I’ll call “family reunion plays,” in which the return of a family member opens festering wounds. (The two styles of drama can easily overlap.) Usually these plays have focused on white, “mainstream,” […]
DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2016 #9: Best Performances in Musicals in Professional Theaters in DC, MD, and VA Are: Gassan Abbas in I Shall Not Hate at Mosaic Theater Company of DC. Lizzi Albert as Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. Megan Anderson as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire at Everyman Theatre. Megan Anderson […]
Here are the DCMetroTheaterArts Staff’s honorees for Best Plays in Professional Theaters in 2016 in Philadelphia, NYC, New Jersey, and Delaware. Congrats to all our honorees! A Moon for the Misbegotten at Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3. A View From the Bridge at The Lyceum Theatre. Birdie’s Pit Stop (and the tribe of […]
Playwright Young Jean Lee’s audacious title refers to the particular—the white widowed father (Ed) and his three grown sons (Drew, Jake, and Matt) who are on stage for most of this naturalistic comedy—as well as the generality of straight white men (as in Jake’s mention of “people like us…privileged white dickheads”). So one might reasonably […]
If your empathy for straight white men was strained by last week’s elections, go see Young Jean Lee’s 2014 play at The Studio Theatre. You’ll be privy to a rare, funny and poignant look under the fig leaf of male dominance, where men struggle uncomfortably with their privileged status and fear of failing. Straight White […]
Young Jean Lee’s theatre, entitled Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company (2003-2016), was dedicated to producing “shows written and directed by Young Jean Lee.” The company produced 12 of Ms. Lee’s productions. After watching Studio Theatre’s production of her 2014 Straight White Men, it’s easy to see why. Experimental, psychologically complex, this play comes right at […]
In these jagged days immediately after the election, Studio Theatre’s richly revealing production of Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee is bracing, to say the least. It deserves our attention no matter how we may self-identify, or be branded by others. In these times when many of our dearly held views are scrutiny, Young Jean […]
It’s Christmastime at the Norton house. The three Norton boys – well, they’re in their forties, but they sure act like boys most of the time – are spending the holiday with their widowed dad. They’ve had every advantage in life – the best home, the best suburban neighborhood, the best education – and on […]