Performing Arts Calendar

STILL HERE,?BUT NOT FOR LONG
Here are our selections of some eclectic, shouldn’t-miss offerings now at local theaters, which will be ending their runs in March.

Metamorphoses
I hear the word amazing all the time—but here’s something that’s truly amazing—the amazing writer-director and visionary interpreter of classic stories Mary Zimmerman’s take?on ancient myths and stories based on Ovid’s classic text. You’ll laugh, weep, be astounded and moved by this production, and maybe get wet as the production is set in and around the perimeter of a large pool full of churning, emotional water and terrific actors acting out scenes from ancient myths. No intermission, at Arena Stage’s Mead Center for American Theater through March 17.
Also at Arena Stage, and entirely different and contemporary is the applauded new play “Good People” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire which won Best Play honors from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle in its Broadway run. The production stars Johanna Day as a single mother in South Boston struggling to make ends meet, and includes Andrew Long as her long-lost boyfriend. Through March 10.

Spring Awakening
A Broadway hit musical about feverish young students in love and lust in 19th Century Germany has a rock beat, and its thumb on adolescence angst of both current and past kinds and seems a perfect play to start the Olney Theatre Center’s new 75th Anniversary season. Olney Theater artistic director Jason Loewith calls the play “effervescent, thrilling, artistically rigorous, emotionally charged and designed like nothing I’ve seen at Olney Theatre Center be- fore.” Steve Cosson directs through March 10.

The House of the Spirits
Based on the novel by famed Chilean writer Isabel Allende and directed by Jose Zayas is?a generational play in Spanish with English subtitles at the Gala Hispanic Theatre through March 10 at the National Center For the Latino Performing Arts in the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights.

The Convert
A powerful play about subjugation, colonialism and cultural identity and loss by the terrific young playwright Danai Gurira at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre is studied, emotionally and electrically charged, and features a powerhouse performance Nancy Moricette as a young woman struggling between competing cultures and religious beliefs. Through March 10.

Hughie
Eugene O’Neill’s late-life study of a man named “Erie” Smith searching for new meanings in his life stars Richard Schiff of “West Wing” fame in the title role and is directed?by Broadway veteran Doug Hughes through March 17 by the Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Lansburgh Theatre.

Henry V
William Shakespeare’s rip-roaring, grand play about power, war and politics in action as a young English king invades France. Star- ring Zach Appelman as Henry V and directed by Robert Richmond, it’s been extended at the Folger Theatre through March 10.

The ______ With the Hat
continues at the Studio Theatre, a red-hot production of Adly Guirgis’s profane, dangerous new play directed by Serge Seiden with?a top-notch cast of characters trying to make sense of their often rage-filled lives.
There’s still a chance to get a double-dose of David Mamet—the classic kind in the Round House Theatre production of “Glen- garry Glen Ross” through March 3, where you can soak up the lives of competing, desperate real estate agents, and in
“Race” at Theater J, the current controversy conscious incarnation of Mamet in a play about murder and race through 17.

Shakespeare’s R&J
In which four young students discover a forbidden copy of “Romeo and Juliet” and act it out is Signature Theatre’s first-ever in-the- round production. Directed by Joe Calarco, it runs through March 3.

Coming Up Later This Spring
Shakespeare at the Folger Theatre
Robert Richmond will direct the Folger Theatre’s production of “Twelfth Night”, one of the Bard’s most popular romantic comedies April 30-June 9. Notwithstanding the play, there’s also Shakespeare’s annual birthday celebration at the Folger Shakespeare Library April 21
The Return of “Fannie and Alexander”
“Fannie And Alexander” was probably the sunniest, most optimistic and warm movie ever made by the late and renowned director Ingmar Bergman (of “Persona”, “The Magician”,?“The Virgin Spring” and “Cries and Whispers” fame. Now it’s become a play and a part of the expansive multi-arts Nordic Cool Festival throughout the Kennedy Center through March 17. “Fannie and Alexander” reappears as a production of the Royal Dramatic Theater of Stockholm directed by Stefan Larsson in the Eisenhower Theatre March 7-9.
Hello Dolly!
We’re having a little Thorntown Wilder?run at Ford’s Theater. “Hello, Dolly”, the super-sized hit Broadway musical courtesy?of composer Jerry Herman—and based on Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker”—will appear as a co-production with Signature Theater, with Signature artistic director Eric Schaeffer, who staged a magnificent “Meet John Doe” here— taking the helm. Broadway veteran Nancy Opel stars as Dolly Levi, with Ed Gero as half-a-mil- lionaire Horace Vandergelder. March 15-May 18.?