Erin Mundahl is a writer and journalist who contributed to The Weekly Standard from 2015 to 2017. She wrote on a wide range of topics for the magazine, including Russian history and politics, cultural criticism, and domestic policy issues such as Washington, D.C. transit. Her work spanned both arts and book reviews and reported pieces on current affairs.
In the traditions and superstitions of the theater, Macbeth is known simply as "the Scottish play." To refer to it by name would be, for some never-explained reason, bad luck. Yet, as far as oblique references, this one provides a fairly apt summary of the sense of the play. At its heart, it is a…
Many theater buildings in Washington house more than one stage. Generally they are at opposite ends of a long hall, or one is tucked away in a spare corner. It is far more unusual for the stages to be stacked on top of one another, as they are in Studio Theatre, where the two stages are connected…
In Shakespeare's plays, the forest is always a magical place, where identity itself becomes more fluid. The idea of casting off one's clothes to don an altogether new identity is a theme in several of the comedies, but perhaps never to the same degree as in As You Like It, which is currently…
How do you write about a world you have never seen? It's a strange question for a writer of science fiction to ask, yet this was the spark that led a young Ursula K. Le Guin to Orsinia. Orsinia, "an unimportant country of middle Europe," was where, as a young writer in the early 1950s, she began to…
How do you write about a world you have never seen? It’s a strange question for a writer of science fiction to ask, yet this was the spark that led a young Ursula K. Le Guin to Orsinia. Orsinia, "an unimportant country of middle Europe," was where, as a young writer in the early 1950s, she began to…
For weeks, protesters in the thousands have been have been playing a tense waiting game with police on the banks of the Missouri River an hour south of Bismarck, North Dakota. The protesters gained a partial victory on Sunday, when Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army's assistant secretary for civil works,…
Cannon Ball, N.D.
Are these the droids I'm looking for?
Sometimes a play's popularity becomes its greatest weakness. When the audience knows—or even thinks it knows—what will happen, and how, and who the characters are, and what to think about their motives and flaws and failings, the performance itself risks being buried under the weight of…
It's hard to fall from "somewhat safe" and "questionably reliable," but the beleaguered Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has managed that feat. Having started an aggressive, long-overdue maintenance program in June, WMATA found that summer only added to its woes, as train delays left…
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) pledged early this year that it was a new day in Washington, D.C. The transit agency pledged that the metro system would put safety and customer service first. D.C. commuters were largely skeptical that much would change besides rhetoric.…
After the breakup, who gets to keep the gold medals? That's the question some sports fans are asking themselves after a European Union website included British medals in a table that boasted of the EU besting both the United States and China in the Olympics medal count.
Perhaps not since Louis Réard introduced the first bikini to Paris in 1946 has beachwear been such a heated topic in France. The controversy began last week, when a women's group from Marseilles advertised a "burkini day" at a local waterpark. The event, which would have banned men over the age of…
Burkini day is off. The announcement on Wednesday brought a halt to what would have been France's most controversial pool party ever.
France, struggling to regain a sense of normalcy after the Bastille Day atrocity in Nice, was stunned again by the murder of a priest in Normandy. It's just the latest in a string of attacks over the course of the last several years, which have left the French government struggling to find new…
What’s it like to be in the heart of a jihadist? He called her his "baby." Each morning she awoke to a string of missed Skype calls asking where she was. They talked for hours each night. "He" was Abu Bilel, the French right-hand man of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and she was an undercover reporter he…
“La Marseillaise," the French national anthem, was originally sung by the Revolutionary Army as it marched forth to defend "la république" against European monarchies who wished to quash the revolution as soon as it began. It's a song of war, calling Frenchmen to take up arms against "foreign…
New legislation signed into law last week by Vladimir Putin strengthens anti-terrorism efforts at the price of civil liberties. The new law allows adolescents as young as 14 to be tried as adults, as well as criminalizes the failure to report a crime, "inducing, recruiting, or otherwise involving"…
"Putin umer?" Is Putin dead?
It was a British-born American patriot, Thomas Paine, who first proposed a "basic income" plan in 1797. The idea has been recycled every few decades since the 19th century by various utopian communes and left-wing economists. Now, it seems, the idea's close to becoming a reality in Utrecht.
Sometimes sports are more than just . . . well, sports. After all, American hockey fans will never forget the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and the famous "Miracle on Ice." It was great hockey, to be sure, but it's remembered more as a moment when the U.S. was able to reach past a series of…
I’ve never liked feeling stereotypical. Which is why I would like you to know that this story does not involve a vanilla latte. As bland, generic—dare I say, basic?—as my tale might otherwise be, some lines cannot be crossed. Despite being the premier Starbucks drink of choice for women in their…
Hedda Gabler is a play largely trapped inside its protagonist's head. It's a sense preserved by Studio Theatre's production. Staged with Scandinavian simplicity, the production allows the characters and their emotions to come to the fore. The stage shows only the Hedda's tastefully decorated living…
Workers and retirees in Russia will likely need to tighten their belts given recent news on the state of the country's economy.
Why, how now, Kate! I hope thou art not mad: This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is. When Petruchio says this to his headstrong wife Katherina, it marks a moment of truce in the full-scale marital warfare that has marked their relationship from the…
Norse and Germanic mythology is often described as a series of cycles—each a collection of stories about a particular character, object, or event. In the case of Wagner's operas, the series depicts the Götterdämmerung, or the fall of the gods. It begins with the construction of Wotan's hall,…
It's time for the Great Leap Forward—Version 2. Or at least MetroForward 2, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) plan to fix the smoke-filled platforms, electrical fires, broken trains, and service outrages that have become alarmingly frequent commuting occurrences.…
Business schools are like sanatoriums for the English language—places where words go to languish and softly fade, easing towards a coughing, clichéd death.
The Washington Metro Transit Authority (WMATA) may provide the subway that Washington, D.C. deserves, but not the one it needs.
Technology has made the world run faster, increased productivity, and given us more stuff. Governments have organized themselves into massive institutions built to run more and more programs on behalf of citizens. And yet, for all this creation, our brave new world often seems cold,…
The word tsar derives from "Caesar." Ivan IV first adopted the title in 1547, when he elevated himself from "Duke of Moscow" to "Tsar of All Rus." He adopted the Latinite name, but retained the Slavic state. Now, nearly 100 years after the death of the last tsar, President Vladimir Putin seems to…
"As we and our coalition partners take the fight to ISIL both where it began as a tumor and where it has metastasized," said Secretary of Defense Ash Carter at a speech in Washington on Tuesday, "we have to coordinate efforts more than ever before."
A production of George Orwell's 1984 comes with its own set of questions. How do you perform a very political story without making a political play? Or rather, how does a production handle Orwell's critiques of the totalitarian state without hammering (and sickling?) the audience over the head with…
"Do these things start on time?” These were not the words I was hoping to hear when I answered the phone, particularly not en route to the ballet, running late, and trying to catch a Metro train. I should pause to specify that I was boarding the train alone, which is why I took my friend Yakov's…
The play may bear Othello’s name, but the new production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is Iago's. From the moment Jonno Roberts first appears on the nearly empty stage, the audience's entire attention is his. Menacing, manipulative, and at times raging, he controls the stage, keeping an entire…
Free speech and the tax code are two topics not generally associated with each other. When it comes to university speech codes, however, the two are more related than one might think. That's why the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee held its first 2016 hearing on…
Ballet is a curious genre. Its bones are French; the pliées and relevées, and pas. But the ballets of the popular imagination are Russian: Swan Lake, the Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty. While Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre has better name recognition in the States, St. Petersburg boasts the Mariinsky…
It's raining in Washington. While inconvenient, you wouldn't think this would affect metro users very much, because, after all, the majority of the lines run underground. Which is why commuters taking the train from Virginia into D.C. got a surprise when they discovered that it was raining inside…
It's dangerous to be an opposition leader in Russia. That's the sense many observers had after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted a short video on his Instagram page that showed political opposition figures Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. (The video…
On Wednesday night, hundreds of protestors broke through police lines and flooded into the Moldovan parliamentary building after the announcement that Pavel Filip, deputy chairman of the ruling Democratic Party and the minister of technology and communication, had been voted prime minister.
On Monday, the Kremlin reported the death of Colonel General Igor Sergun, who has served as head of the GRU, the main intelligence branch of the Russian general staff since late 2011. A short statement posted in Russian on the Kremlin’s website said that Sergun died suddenly on Sunday evening, but…
"London property has become the bitcoin of the global kleptocracy," says British journalist Ben Judah. Indeed, 37,000 properties in the British capital are owned by offshore companies. That's about 10 percent of all property in central London. And much of this property was purchased using money…
The Paris Climate Conference closes on Friday. All the set pieces of the expected drama have played out: an Obama speech, hand-wringing by Western Europe, pleas of poverty by China and India, and a draft agreement coming in just before the deadline closes.
Russian truck drivers angry about a new road tax moved their protest into Moscow on Friday. Traffic around the city was snarled by both truckers and police, who had set up temporary roadblocks to interrogate drivers they suspected might be on their way to join the revolt.
All roads lead to Moscow. That's the message being given by hundreds of truck drivers across Russia who are staging massive protests against a new transport tax, called the platon. The platon took effect on November 15 and charges drivers a fee of 1.53 rubles (about $0.02) for each kilometer they…
It's a little hard to find underneath the bright banners advertising football conference schedules, field hockey scores, and special video clips from recent games in a half-dozen different sports, but at the bottom of NCAA.com is a small menu entitled “About the NCAA,” which takes you to NCAA.org…
Vladimir Putin is tough. That's the message conveyed by the pictures showing him shirtless on horseback, cuddling leopard cubs, and throwing his judo opponents to the floor that flood media sites in both Russia and the west.
In 1968, Jerry Angiulo, a Boston mafiosi, dodged a murder conviction.
Last week, the Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States. Don’t worry if you missed it. So did the Wall Street Journal, which noted several days later that the White House had failed to comment on the rather grim numbers. On Friday, the…
The buzz around Sir Elton John's purported phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin has many of the trappings of a high school rumor mill.
The latest salvo in a bizarre exchange of international sanctions has been fired. Russia has already taken its boycott of Western foodstuffs to theatrical extremes, bulldozing piles of cheese and destroying apples whose sole fault was their Polish origin. Now the government of Vladimir Putin seems…
Rarely do international sanctions look so, well, cheesy.
Americans have long been skeptical of the liberal arts. Frequently this takes the form of a discussion of whether a degree in history or literature is “worth it” in a purely economic sense. Annual reports highlight the top-earning college majors, subtly encouraging students to forgo a class in…
At first glance, the two make an odd couple: Rep. Paul Ryan, the campaign-polished Wisconsin representative, and Deion Sanders, the two-time Super Bowl champion. But they aren’t here to talk politics. And, despite their very different backgrounds, they share the same goal: finding a more effective…
The Atlantic dubbed July 8, 2015 “the day the computers betrayed us” as systems supporting the NYSE, United Airlines, and the Wall Street Journal all suffered crashes. Those events served as a fitting backdrop to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson's remarks on cybersecurity at…
The Atlantic dubbed July 8, 2015 “the day the computers betrayed us” as systems supporting the NYSE, United Airlines, and the Wall Street Journal all suffered crashes. Those events served as a fitting backdrop to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson's remarks on cybersecurity at…
On June 15, 1215, a band of frustrated and rebellious nobles forced King John to sign a “Great Charter” at Runnymede, a swampy field twenty miles west of London. At the time, few would have suspected the importance of the document, which was annulled by the Pope a mere nine days later.
Move for a job, they said. It’s the only way to advance your career, they said. Move out of your childhood bedroom, they said.
Has NATO become a paper tiger, trying (and failing) to stand up to a resurgent Russian bear? A speech by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday addressed this issue, discussing both the challenges facing the 66-year-old alliance,…