Druid presents The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh - Kennedy Center Feb 8-12

Famed Irish theater company DRUID and New York's Atlantic Theatre present The Cripple of Inishmaan, written by Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh and directed by Tony Award winner Garry Hynes, the first woman to win a Tony Award for Best Direction. Set in rural Ireland in 1934, this dark comedy depicts the impact that a Hollywood film crew has over the local residents when it shows up to document the tiny island of Inishmore. When a young, orphaned "cripple" named Billy Claven is selected for a part in the film, his dreams of escape take flight.

McDonagh's plays are usually hilarious, violent, and bizarre--often described as classical Irish theater as updated by Quentin Tarrantino. He wrote and directed the great, underrated Colin Farrell vehicle, In Bruges.

One of Bernard's Best Bets for Spring 2011 theater.

Black Watch at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Theatre

From the Washington Post article by Lavanya Ramanathan, Thursday, January 20, 2011

A docu-play of sorts, Black Watch was inspired by Scotland's famed Black Watch military regiment, which lost three men in a roadside bombing in Iraq in 2004, a defeat soon followed by news that the elite unit, which had fought since the 18th century, was being disbanded. ... The play flits between scenes from the pub in Scotland (where an interviewer has come to talk with the soldiers, just as Burke did) and flashbacks to Camp Dogwood, an outpost in a particularly dangerous region of Iraq. (A warning: The play, written in the voices of young military men, is peppered with crude language and cruder jokes.)

The show's first performance was at the Edinburgh Fringe. Before the three-week stint was up, the company had decided to tour, taking the show to New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Los Angeles, among other big cities. In New York, every ticket for the first run in 2007 was snapped up, and the second run was extended by nearly a month. The performances in Washington - which for Shakespeare Theatre follow last summer's successful production of another war drama, The Great Game - will kick off a longer U.S. tour of Black Watch.

Read the full article here.