All stories by Robert Michael Oliver on BroadwayStars

Saturday, March 21, 2015

'Ode Maritima' at The Iberian Suite Festival at The Kennedy Center by Robert Michael Oliver

Lovers of poetry! Lovers of the long line! From his deck on The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre, Diogo Infante calls, “Ahoy!” And the spirit of Alvaro de Campos, aka Ferna…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:21PM[SHARE]
Friday, March 20, 2015

'The Originalist' at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater by Robert Michael Oliver

Over 2500 years ago, Aristophanes put “living” contemporary power-brokers into his comic masterpieces and then skewered them with their own foibles. The results were scandalous a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:58PM[SHARE]
Monday, March 16, 2015

'Laugh' at The Studio Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

To be sure, name a play Laugh and the gauntlet is thrown. Laugh or die trying. The Studio Theatre’s world premiere production of Beth Henley’s new play, based on the antics of si…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:27PM[SHARE]
Sunday, March 15, 2015

'The Revelation of Bobby Pritchard ' at Iron Crow Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Sex. Love. God. Truth.  People risk everything for them. They are eaten by lions. They are burned at the stake. They die on crosses. And did I mention politics, the arena where such…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:35PM[SHARE]
Monday, March 9, 2015

IBERIAN SUITE: Concha Buika with Iván "Melon" Lewis & Continuum Quartet at The Kennedy Center by Robert Michael Oliver

Last night the audience at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall was blessed with Buika. If being blessed by Buika wasn’t more than enough for a single evening, the audience at the Concert H…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:23PM[SHARE]
Sunday, March 8, 2015

'The Mundo Perfeito' (Perfect World) As part of the Iberian Suite at the Kennedy Center. by Robert Michael Oliver

The Mundo Perfeito (Perfect World) has arrived in DC’s America. As part of the Iberian Suite. At The Kennedy Center. Presenting a full evening of theatre, Mundo Perfeito offers two pro…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:54PM[SHARE]
Sunday, March 1, 2015

Spine: '33 Variations' at Silver Spring Stage by Robert Michael Oliver

The Creation of Art. The Wrestle with Death. 33 Variations, Moisés Kauffman’s Tony nominated play, juxtaposes those two turbulences. In one — circa 1820 in Vienna, Austria…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:38PM[SHARE]
Friday, February 27, 2015

'Back to Methuselah' at Washington Stage Guild by Robert Michael Oliver

George Bernard Shaw wrote Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) during World War I, with its assassination, its trench warfare, its chemical attacks, its all-too-human brutality u…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:07PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Imago Theatre: Frogz at Presented by The Music Center at Strathmore by Robert Michael Oliver

Strathmore brings a wide variety of performances to its spacious Music Center each month, from the Tango Buenos Aires: Song of Eva Perón, which performs there tomorrow, to the Annapolis S…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:45AM[SHARE]
Saturday, February 14, 2015

'Cherokee' at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Review) by Robert Michael Oliver

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about t' expound this dream.” Bottom, A Midsummer Ni…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:20PM[SHARE]
Friday, February 13, 2015

'King Hedley II' at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater by Robert Michael Oliver

Make no mistake about it. August Wilson is one of America’s greatest dramatists. Authentic, historically rich, and dramatically insightful — few playwrights have the gifts and th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:49PM[SHARE]
Sunday, February 8, 2015

'Frozen' at Anacostia Playhouse by Robert Michael Oliver

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell writes: "The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light." And, to be sur…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:45PM[SHARE]
Saturday, February 7, 2015

Arlo Guthrie: Alice's Restaurant 50th Anniversary Tour at the Hylton Performing Arts Center by Robert Michael Oliver

Fifty years ago this coming Thanksgiving, Arlo Guthrie and company take a truck load of garbage out of a friend’s house near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Finding the local dump closed f…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:13PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, February 4, 2015

'Dunsinane' at Shakespeare Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

As the guerilla war in Dunsinane intensifies, Siward, the English commander sent to Scotland to bring peace to the warring clans, admits to burning to death a village’s captured adult …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:37PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Spine: The Enlightened World of Folger's 'Mary Stuart' by Robert Michael Oliver

Frederic Schiller’s historical drama, Mary Stuart (1800), gives us two potent, yet vulnerable women, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It gives us religious fanaticism — no, n…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:14PM[SHARE]
Saturday, January 24, 2015

'Dizzy Gillespieâ„¢ Afro-Cuban Experience' at The Kennedy Center by Robert Michael Oliver

I write about theatre because I know theatre, intimately and over many years. I’m writing about Jazz because I love Jazz, the way a man might love a goddess, fleetingly and in hot purs…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:33PM[SHARE]
Monday, January 12, 2015

Spine: 'In Love and Warcraft' and all the Mythologies in Between by Robert Michael Oliver

In the hit TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon, Howard, Leonard, and Rajesh regularly play the on-line fantasy role playing game World of Warcraft. They also like to play dress up in the…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:47AM[SHARE]
Saturday, January 10, 2015

'References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot' at Single Carrot Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

The great Chinese poet-philosopher ZhÅ«angzi (370-287 BC) wrote: “Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:17PM[SHARE]
Sunday, January 4, 2015

'In Praise of Love' at Washington Stage Guild by Robert Michael Oliver

You may not have heard of Terence Rattigan, British playwright whose heyday soared in the late 1940s and early 1950s; but whose more conventional fare was then swamped by the British bad boy…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:06PM[SHARE]
Sunday, December 28, 2014

Spine: 'Diner' at Signature Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver by Robert Michael Oliver

In 1982, when Barry Levinson’s Diner (the film) opened nationwide to positive reviews, the Reagan Revolution had just begun, the Vietnam Syndrome was about to be dispelled with the inv…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:03PM[SHARE]
Monday, December 15, 2014

'Terminus' at The Studio Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

No one should ever accuse The Studio Theatre of bowing to the pressure of getting into the holiday spirit. In this time of Islamic State and relentless “drones,” torture repor…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:51PM[SHARE]
Friday, December 12, 2014

Spine: 'Famous Puppet Death Scenes' by Robert Michael Oliver

Gordon Craig, one of the early giants of modern theatre, provocatively wrote: “There is only one actor " nay one man " who has the soul of the dramatic poet, and who has ever served as…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:18PM[SHARE]
Thursday, December 4, 2014

'A Very Pointless Holiday Spectacular' at Pointless Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Are you tired of Christmas shows that urge you to give turkeys to the poor, or lumps of coal to bad children, or sweets to your beloved nutcracker? Are you tired of listening to news about t…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:43PM[SHARE]
Sunday, November 23, 2014

Spine: Feeling Blue? Escape to 'Five Guys Named Moe' by Robert Michael Oliver

A man staggers onto the stage at Arena’s Kreeger Theater. Nomax, played with deep loss by Kevin McAllister, has offended his girl with yet another drunken night. He sings “Early …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:54PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Spine: What Happens when Porno, Isabella Rossellini, and Bio-Diversity Collide? Who Can Say "STEAM"? Who Can Say Green Porno Live? by Robert Michael Oliver

To be sure, some of Lisner’s audience came for the sex–explicit, diverse, and environmentally conscious. Some came for the celebrity–a noted model and film actress (Blue…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:22PM[SHARE]
Monday, November 10, 2014

'Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe' at Molotov Theatre Group by Robert Michael Oliver

Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe is an adaptation of four of Poe’s better known tales of horror: The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Tell-Tale He…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:51PM[SHARE]
Friday, November 7, 2014

Spine: Hip-Hop, Flow, and 'How We Got On' by Robert Michael Oliver

When I think of Hip-Hop my imagination immediately flies to urban America, to a gritty, “tougher than leather” New York City filled with N.W.A, LL Cool J, and of course Public En…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:44PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Spine: 'Julius Caesar, "et tu Brute?" and You' by Robert Michael Oliver

Shakespeare, the humanist; Shakespeare, the poet; Shakespeare, the political playwright; Shakespeare, the fatalist. Before he passed away, my 87-year-old father used to quiz members of the y…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:42AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, October 28, 2014

'Visble Language' at WSC Avant Bard by Robert Michael Oliver

This weekend at Gallaudet’s Eastman Studio Theatre WSC Avant Bard and Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program opened their world premiere, historically based musical, Visible La…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:22PM[SHARE]

Spine: 'Whose War? Our War? Their War?' by Robert Michael Oliver

The National Civil War Project presents the work of “a multi-city, multi-year collaboration between four universities and five performing arts organizations to commemorate the 150th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:13AM[SHARE]
Sunday, October 26, 2014

'Rage' at Ambassador Theater by Robert Michael Oliver

Michele Rimi’s Rage made its US premiere this week at Flashpoint’s Mead Theatre Lab. A production of Ambassador Theater, directed by Joe Banno, Rage explores the dynamics of adol…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:00PM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off