“Do you know why it’s impossible to lick the tips of your elbows?” You’d never guess that such an innocent question could kick off a dizzying 80-minute metaphysical probe into the precarious miracle of human love. But in Nick Payne’s Constellations, playing at Source Theatre in a production by Constellation Theatre Company, lovers Roland and Marianne are a cosmic case study in just that, weaving their love story through a repetitive series of self-variations that tracks the course of a relationship through topics as wide-ranging as quantum mechanics, the utilitarian social structures of beehives, and free will.

There’s something a little slithery about the way Drew Sharpe maneuvers his sleeve-and-stick orange puppet Tyrone in the first moments of Hand to God at Keegan Theatre, even before it opens its toothless mouth. It looks innocent enough, with side-facing eyes and tuft of red hair. But as Sharpe’s hand spreads and a vulgar diatribe on the origins of the society and evil comes spewing out, one can’t help but look instead at the snakelike arm that’s enlivening the possessed puppet. You half expect, in the midst of this slick sleight of hand, for Tyrone to offer you an irresistible apple.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has long been fertile ground for reinvention: from adaptations including West Side Story and Gnomeo & Juliet to modernized productions like Broadway’s current Sam Gold–Jack Antonoff collaboration and Folger Theater’s extrapolitical take earlier this season. But what if those star-crossed lovers hadn’t died? And what if Juliet was given the chance to begin anew as a young woman free of her warring family? And, as an added bonus, what if the soundtrack of her life happened to be curated by one of the most successful pop producers of all time Those are the central questions of & Juliet, a jukebox musical featuring more than two dozen of music producer Max Martin’s greatest hits and playing at Kennedy Center through January 5.

“I hate the name Holly.” Delivered in deadpan by Kate Eastwood Norris in the opening moments of David Auburn’s Summer, 1976, the otherwise innocuous line elicits a disproportionately large laugh, like an inside joke. And it is, in a way, as prolific Washington actress Holly Twyford sits just a few feet away, utterly unfazed by the line or the laugh, and remains dutifully in character. So it goes for the duration of the play’s 90-minute run in Studio’s Milton Theatre, where the pervading sense is that one is settled among friends.

There’s something a little spooky (but not scary) about the 1700 stretch of Church Street NW. Maybe it’s the closed-in nature of the block, bounded by 18th Street on one side and Stead Park on the other. Or its narrowness exacerbated by the old trees that loom overhead. Or the last stone vestige of the original St. Thomas Church, scorched by arson in 1970 and finally rebuilt in 2019. But as dusk turns to dark, it just feels a little … uncanny. 

That eeriness makes it the perfect location for The Woman in Black, the late Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s gothic horror novel, running at Keegan Theatre through Nov. 17. In a dual role as director and scenic designer, Josh Sticklin thrillingly brings what was once London’s second-longest-running play to new life.

“This R&J is not a love story.”

That’s a bold declaration for what is arguably the world’s most famous romantic tale, and likely sacrilege to the very William Shakespeare traditionalists who gleefully trot into the recently (and stunningly) renovated Folger Shakespeare Library for a date with the Bard. But in his program note for Romeo and Juliet, playing at Folger Theatre through Nov. 10, director Raymond O. Caldwell makes clear that his production will buck traditional treatment of the famed star-crossed lovers, and focus on the societal forces that lead to their—400-year spoiler alert ahead—untimely death.

By the time the lights come down on Christopher T. Hampton’s Cracking Zeus, playing at Spooky Action Theater through October 13, what was once a tiny white pebble has grown into the equivalent of a tennis ball-size moon rock. As it passes through the community’s hands, this embodiment of crack cocaine glows brighter as it grows in correlation to the destruction it serves to catalyze.

When “Hillary Clinton” steps onto the catwalk in a white floor-length coat to address her adoring fans in Signature Theatre’s Soft Power, one half expects to hear the unmistakable first chords of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” It’s an iconic image, after all, especially for those Washingtonians whose interests exist firmly at the nexus of both musical and political theater. But this is no post-election celebration, our venue is no Casa Rosada, and our diva is no Eva Perón. Rather, Hillary is stumping for votes in a glitzed-up McDonalds, preparing to (she is certain) defeat the other guy