All stories by Leslie Weisman on BroadwayStars

Monday, November 25, 2019

‘Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!’ is delightfully clever family fun at the Kennedy Center by Leslie Weisman

What is your “heart dog?” How do you know it, find it—and deal with the disappointment of maybe not being able to have it? Or even . . . losing it? Heavy questions for the school-age (…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:15PM
Thursday, April 18, 2019

Review: ‘The Mighty Five and Friends’ by the Russian Chamber Art Society at the French Embassy by Leslie Weisman

With the concept of nationalism hovering uneasily in the political air, it was as edifying as it was gratifying to hear four first-rate musicians celebrate in song some of the masterworks of…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:01PM
Monday, October 15, 2018

Review: ‘TSVETAEVA’ by the Russian Chamber Art Society by Leslie Weisman

The Russian Chamber Art Society (RCAS) has been bringing Russian chamber music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Washington audiences for more than a decade, so its decision…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:10PM
Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Review: ‘Viva V.E.R.D.I. – The Promised End’ by the In Series by Leslie Weisman

Theater can be many things: challenging and then restoring; transcendent, and yet—fundamental. A platform for the cutting-edge and a welcoming home-fire for the familiar. Rarely does a sin…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:10PM
Sunday, June 10, 2018

‘A Night at the Gaming Tables’ at The Russian Chamber Art Society by Leslie Weisman

Love and money: when fated to compete, can the fight ever be fair? Or is it—and are the parties caught between them—invariably, if not inevitably, doomed? The Russian Romantic poet, play…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:08PM
Sunday, April 29, 2018

Review: ‘THE RESTLESS HEART: A program of Old Russian, Gypsy (Romani) and Folk Songs of Passion, Longing and Love’ at The Embassy of France by Leslie Weisman

“This concert series is dedicated to Russian chamber vocal music, which is rarely heard in America,” states the program; a regrettably true state of affairs. The Russian Chamber Art Soci…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:08PM
Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Review: ‘SOON’ at The Highwood Theatre by Leslie Weisman

Depending on whom you ask, climate change is either ongoing, its devastating progression towards the inevitable oblivion of life on Earth all but inarguable, or a hoax perpetrated by the ign…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:30AM
Saturday, March 24, 2018

Review: Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ by The National Symphony Orchestra by Leslie Weisman

A nominally ecclesiastical work written by an essentially non-religious man, the Verdi Requiem has come, in the nearly century and a half since its completion, to be beloved by church-goers …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:36AM
Monday, January 29, 2018

Review: ‘The Dog Must Die’ at The Highwood Theatre by Leslie Weisman

What is a life worth? What is the Earth worth? And what are we doing – what can we do, what should we do – to sustain and preserve them? These provocative questions, and other questions …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:16PM
Sunday, October 15, 2017

Review: National Symphony Orchestra with Guest Conductor Juanjo Mena and Pianist Garrick Ohlsson at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall (Final Performance by Leslie Weisman

It’s not unusual for concertgoers to be greeted by the sounds of orchestra members tuning their instruments, so commencing Thursday night’s concert with Kennedy Center Composer-in-Reside…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:28AM
Monday, June 19, 2017

Review: ‘Oberon, or The Elf King’s Oath’ at The In Series by Leslie Weisman

“I’m stuck with writer’s block!” Who among us—be we beginners, practitioners or professionals, list makers, blog posters, PhD thesis or diary writers—has not been visited by that…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:37PM
Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Review: ‘Barnaby Rudge’ at Lumina Studio Theatre by Leslie Weisman

Of Charles Dickens’s fifteen novels, there are few, if any, that are less well-known than his first historical, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty—and few, with its forty-plus …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:14AM
Monday, January 23, 2017

Review: ‘LEAR’ at Lumina Studio Theatre by Leslie Weisman

On the night of the J20 Art Strike, a protest movement asking that “business . . . not proceed as usual in any realm” of the creative arts on Inauguration Day, I felt a little guilty att…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:21PM
Sunday, December 11, 2016

Review: ‘Masterpieces of Russian Vocal Music: Enchanted Evening of Vocal & Piano Duets’ at Russian Chamber Art Society by Leslie Weisman

If there is one thing that those of us in the DC metropolitan area can be sure of when it comes to classical music, it is that finding great examples of it on virtually any night of the week…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:55AM
Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Review # 2: ‘The Comedy of Errors . . . at Colonus’ at Lumina Studio Theatre (Green Cast) by Leslie Weisman

If you’re a lover of impossible opposites, or have ever wondered what it would be like to wander into a mirthful merge—or, in the company’s assuredly less elegant, but admittedly (and …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:37AM
Monday, October 24, 2016

Review: The Romantics III: ‘Schumann & Heine’ at The In series at Source by Leslie Weisman

Close your eyes for just a moment. Imagine that you are comfortably seated in an elegant, yet commodious room, filled with people who have come to share—no, not the latest election scuttle…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:43PM
Sunday, July 17, 2016

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Romanov’ by Leslie Weisman

Romanov, at Flashpoint Mead Theatre Lab, is a show that will pull you in different directions, musically (electro-pop opera?) and emotionally (did wrong or done wrong?)—and leave you sitti…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:05AM
Sunday, July 10, 2016

2016 Capital Fringe Review: ‘In a Nutshell’ by Leslie Weisman

If you’re intrigued by In a Nutshell because you read the promo and you like your play-watching sprinkled with meta, this adroitly selected, astutely seasoned (by Director, Producer and �…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:31AM
Sunday, May 1, 2016

Review: ‘Tender Tears and Love and Life: Songs by Anton Rubinstein, Anton Arensky, Alexander Glazunov, and Mark Minkov’ at the Russian Chamber Art by Leslie Weisman

In a concert that rang the rafters and tugged at the heartstrings, the Russian Chamber Art Society bade a thrilling farewell to its longtime home at the Austrian embassy, which, after hostin…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:15AM
Tuesday, April 5, 2016

‘After Life’ | ‘Josephine’ by UrbanArias by Leslie Weisman

Say “operatic double bill” and two duos spring to mind, for aficionados and amateurs alike. From the mid-20th century, Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium and The Telephone; from the late…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:14PM
Sunday, January 31, 2016

Review: ‘Leave it to Psmith!’ at Lumina Studio Theatre by Leslie Weisman

Clomping into the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre, shivering from Snowzilla’s persistent chill and shaking caked snow and ice from our boots, we are greeted by the pleasant, ear-warming so…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:37AM
Wednesday, December 9, 2015

‘As You Like It’ at Lumina Studio Theatre by Leslie Weisman

What’s in a name? Taking the title of Shakespeare’s character-rich, eminently quotable pastoral comedy literally, is rare—and has rarely been done with the gender-bending, genre-mashi…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:36AM
Monday, October 12, 2015

Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘The Long Way Around’ at The Highwood Theatre by Leslie Weisman

What happens when you realize that the person everyone thinks you are is not the person you really are, and the cost becomes too great to bear? When you’re young, to be sure, your future …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:09PM
Monday, September 21, 2015

The Women’s Voices Theatre Festival: ‘The Requiem’ at The Highwood Theatre by Leslie Weisman

Think the promise, even the future of American theater lies in the hands of those imaginative, impassioned, gutsy young Millennials who for the last several years have musically and dramatic…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:20PM
Monday, August 3, 2015

‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged! Revised!)’ at Off the Quill by Leslie Weisman

With our calendars getting increasingly crowded and revisiting the plays we read (were supposed to read/wanted to read/never thought of reading) in high school probably not high on our to-do…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:41PM
Tuesday, July 14, 2015

‘This Lime Tree Bower’ at Quotidian Theatre Company by Leslie Weisman

The Irish are legendary storytellers, and Conor McPherson’s play, one of his earliest, is a rollicking but thought-provoking tale of adventurous misadventure, told as a rotating round (and…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:34AM
Friday, July 10, 2015

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Family Reunion’ by Leslie Weisman

The words “family reunion” are bound to evoke mixed memories, no matter whose family it is. That said, I’d wager there are few whose mixture is as experientially eclectic—and as psyc…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:27PM
Tuesday, May 5, 2015

‘Hamlet’ at Lumina Studio Theatre by Leslie Weisman

If Hamlet as a character is historically—and enduringly—shrouded in fog, the scene that greets us as we enter Lumina Studio Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s eponymous play is mo…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:15PM
Tuesday, April 21, 2015

‘The Lady’s Not For Burning’ at Lumina Studio Theatre by Leslie Weisman

No, she is not. But in the year “1400, either more or less exactly,” per playwright Christopher Fry’s prefiguratively imprecise formulation, written in the aftermath of the, for many, …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:22PM
Sunday, April 19, 2015

‘From Moscow to Hollywood: Songs from the Movies” at Russian Chamber Art Society by Leslie Weisman

Even today, a trip from Moscow to Hollywood is not one to be taken on the spur of the moment. What must it have meant for those in the early years of the last century, artists and musicians …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:29PM
Monday, March 2, 2015

Russian Chamber Art Society: ‘Ballades, Fantasies, & Satires’ by Leslie Weisman

The Russian Chamber Art Society (RCAS) has become the go-to organization for those in the know in the DC area when it comes to rarely heard—and rewardingly performed—works from the Russi…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:57PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards