“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.