All stories by Robert Michael Oliver on BroadwayStars

Monday, July 18, 2016

Review: '8 Stops' at Unexpected Stage Company by Robert Michael Oliver

I’ll be frank: for much of 8 Stops, Deb Margolin’s newest solo performance piece, now at Unexpected Stage Company, I was bored. I didn’t necessarily want to commit suicide,…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:15AM[SHARE]
Thursday, July 14, 2016

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): 'The Wedding Gift' by Robert Michael Oliver

Chisa Hutchinson’ The Wedding Gift takes its audience into a fascinating world: an exotic “paradise” where matriarchy rules and the white / black power dynamic is turned on…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:30AM[SHARE]

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): 'The Second Girl' by Robert Michael Oliver

Ronan Noone's The Second Girl received its second chance opening at the Contemporary American Theater Festival last weekend and, like its hardscrabble characters, it's a well-deserved second…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:19AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): 'Not Medea' by Robert Michael Oliver

Bags and umbrella in hands, a young woman arrives late for the theater, apologizing profusely and comically all the while. She notices the "live" caged bird on stage while proclaiming what a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:15AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): '20th Century Blues' by Robert Michael Oliver

Susan Miller's 20th Century Blues, which opened last weekend at Shepherdstown's Contemporary American Festival, speaks right from the heart of successful, east coast boomer women. F…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:53PM[SHARE]

Review: Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF): 'pen/man/ship' by Robert Michael Oliver

The Contemporary American Theater Festival opened Friday, July 8, 2016, for the 26th time: five new plays with five new stories to tell. In Chistina Anderson's pen/man/ship at…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:30AM[SHARE]
Friday, July 8, 2016

2016 Capital Fringe Review: 'Glacier: a climate change ballet' by Robert Michael Oliver

Midway through Glacier: a climate change ballet, a lone dancer, Therese Gahl, glided onto the stage. Costumed in a vibrant blue tutu, her long legs and arms and their deep earth tones,…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:24AM[SHARE]
Sunday, July 3, 2016

Spine: The 26th Contemporary American Theater Festival: Ed Herendeen's 26th Snapshot of America's Theatrical Culture by Robert Michael Oliver

The Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is approaching its second quarter of a century of new American plays. This year’s rot…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:21AM[SHARE]
Saturday, June 25, 2016

Review: 'Clybourne Park' at Silver Spring Stage by Robert Michael Oliver

At the center of Bruce Norris’ tragicomic exploration of American “community” hangs Kenneth (Win Britt), the Korean War Vet who returns home only to commit suicide in his f…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:09PM[SHARE]
Saturday, June 11, 2016

Spine: Love, Greed, and Bigotry in The Folger's 'District Merchants' by Robert Michael Oliver

There’s no question that Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a problem play, fraught with old hates that were once considered justified and old beliefs that have long lost their …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:31PM[SHARE]
Sunday, June 5, 2016

Review: 'Midlife' at Single Carrot Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

Ben Hoover’s Midlife explores that most difficult of theatrical terrains, human subjectivity. Not that subjectivity expressed by human babble, i.e., talking, of which America’s l…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:35PM[SHARE]
Saturday, June 4, 2016

Spine: 'An Octoroon,' 'The Octoroon' at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

An Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ re-imagining of Dion Boucicault’s pre-Civil War classic The Octoroon, opened last night at Woolly Mammoth. Postmodern, hip, sardonic, farcica…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:59PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Review: Ireland 100: 'Tiny Plays for Ireland and America' by Fishamble: The New Play Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Fishamble: The New Play Company opened its “Tiny Plays for Ireland and America” last night as part of Ireland 100. Act I consisted of 20 short, Irish plays in 90 minutes, and eac…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:58PM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 19, 2016

Review: 'The Plough and the Stars' at the Kennedy Center by Robert Michael Oliver

Make no mistake about it. World War I kicked the crap out of patriotic idealism. Just ask Wilfred Owens. His “Dulce et Decorum et” is one of the most powerful denunciations of th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:10PM[SHARE]
Monday, May 16, 2016

Review: 'Hedda Gabler' at Studio Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

Hedda Tesman, aka., Hedda Gabler, has it all: beauty, grace, status, ambition, wit, and feminine mystique. And, per usual, it’s the mystique that does her in. Studio Theatre’s He…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:46PM[SHARE]
Sunday, May 8, 2016

Review: 'Phaeton' at Taffety Punk Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Phaeton, now on stage at Taffety Punk’s Capital Hill Arts Workshop, is a world premiere. Inspired by the Greek myth, the man-god Phaeton is granted one wish by his Helios father: he de…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:25PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Spine: Becoming Leila Buck's 'Hkeelee' at Mosaic Theater Company by Robert Michael Oliver

In The Protean Self, Robert Jay Lifton explores the wonders of human resilience in times of profound disturbance and change. In Hkeelee (Talk to Me), a theatrical memoir of sorts…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:29PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Review: 'Journey to the West' at Constellation Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Mary Zimmerman has mastered the stage adaptation, particularly of the classic tale, freely blending cultural forms and styles with hypnotic brilliance. Her Metamorphoses and Arabian Nights a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:39PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Review: 'The Mystery of Love & Sex' at Signature Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

Do you want to feel good? Do you want to forget for a couple of hours the political hate speech that’s currently filling the airways, or the vast economic inequality and the rise of a …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:00PM[SHARE]
Saturday, April 9, 2016

Spine: 'The Nether' and its Virtual Revolution at Woolly Mammoth Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

In the middle of Jennifer Haley’s beautifully poetic The Nether, now playing at The Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the detective quotes Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time:…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:13PM[SHARE]
Monday, April 4, 2016

Review: 'The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord' at Washington Stage Guild by Robert Michael Oliver

In the beginning was the Word–In the beginning was Reason–In the beginning was the Spirit. In the beginning was… Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy (he renou…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:03PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Review: 'After the War' at Mosaic Theater Company of DC by Robert Michael Oliver

When you decide to be a dissident artist–think Paul Robeson–you’d better be willing to suffer the consequences. When you challenge a nation’s founding mythology, an e…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:22PM[SHARE]
Monday, March 21, 2016

Review: 'Moment' at The Studio Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

Family dramas are not rare; in fact, they are abundant; in fact, they dominate the theatrical landscape. Quality family dramas are rare, however: those that resound beyond their domesticity …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:46PM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 17, 2016

Spine: One 'American Idiot' to Another, at The Keegan Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

Let me admit this right from the start. I’m 60 years old. I don’t go to concerts much. I had heard of Green Day (I’ve worked with teenagers for decades), but had not listen…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:04PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Review: '1984' at the Shakespeare Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Prepare to be assaulted! Head-on by Headlong Theatre’s 1984, now on stage at STC’s Lansburgh Theatre. George Orwell’s novel has become the iconic symbol of the totalitarian…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:52PM[SHARE]
Sunday, March 13, 2016

Review: Vân-Ánh Võ's 'The Odyssey: From Vietnam to America' at The Kennedy Center by Robert Michael Oliver

Vân-Ánh Võ’s The Odyssey: from Vietnam to America conjures, to a Western audience, images of Odysseus, returning from victory at Troy, being punished by the gods, losing his a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:48AM[SHARE]
Saturday, March 5, 2016

Review: Laurie Anderson's 'Language of the Future: Letters to Jack' at The Kennedy Center by Robert Michael Oliver

Cellist Rubin Kodheli joins the legendary performance artist Laurie Anderson on stage at The Terrace Theater for a presentation of her new multimedia work, the memory-haunting Language of th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:28PM[SHARE]
Sunday, February 28, 2016

Review: 'Crimes of the Heart' at NextStop Theatre Company by Robert Michael Oliver

Before there was Desperate Housewives, before there was Sex in the City, before there was Thelma and Louise, there was the play, Crimes of the Heart. Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize winni…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:37AM[SHARE]
Friday, February 19, 2016

Review: 'Promised Land' at Mosaic Theater Company of DC by Robert Michael Oliver

On rare occasions the world of theatre and the world in which we live converge: the subject of the theatre we witness on the stage and the subjects we hear on the streets and on the news har…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:12PM[SHARE]
Monday, February 15, 2016

Review: 'Constellations' at The Studio Theatre by Robert Michael Oliver

Nick Payne’s Constellations embraces String Theory and its multiverses as it takes its intimate, in-the-round, Stage 4 audience on an emotional rollercoaster ride through the courtship…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:40PM[SHARE]
Saturday, February 13, 2016

Review: 'Legacy Street' at The Catholic University's Department of Drama by Robert Michael Oliver

Legacy Street, a new play by Lauren Jane Redmond, an MFA Playwriting candidate at The Catholic University of America, premiered last night at the Callan Theatre. A gritty look at violence in…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:38PM[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