Jennifer Georgia

Hexagon’s ‘One State Two State Red State Blue State’: A chuckle for a good cause

News got you nervous? Quaking over coronavirus? Morose about the stock market? Fed up with the Fed? Sick of the swamp? And yet, do you fear if you take your mind off it all for a second, things might...

Theatre@CBT’s Peter Pan: something to crow about

Filled to bursting with Warrior Girls, Lost Boys, dastardly Pirates from tiny to extra-large, and flying children, Theatre@CBT’s Peter Pan is a treat from start to finish. Director Kevin Sockwell,...

A fascinating rendering of ‘The King’s Speech’ at the National Theatre

Given that so many plays and films these days are based on, drawn from or inspired by each other, it is worth examining the differences between these media and the treatments they require. The King’s...

The British Players’ ‘Alice in Wonderland: A Traditional British Panto’ delivers sublime silliness

Ah, yes, it’s that most wonderful time of the year: The tingle of frozen breath on the air, the sparkle of lights on the trees, the warmth of spiced cider, and the sublime silliness of Panto. “Panto?...

Enjoy Your Stay at Flying V’s ‘Crystal Creek Motel’

Plaza Suite, this is not. In fact, it is about as different as a play can be that shares the same premise: short vignettes about the different people who occupy the same room in, as one character puts...

Storm Large Is in Charge at AMP by Strathmore

Ah, an evening of cabaret in an intimate venue in the swanky Pike and Rose complex. Elegant artists dressed to the nines singing and playing sophisticated classics from the Great American Songbook...

Review: ‘LadyM’ by The Welders

When the audience enters the performance space at Joe’s Movement Emporium, they are confronted by three women in period clothing (costumes designed by Julie Cray Leong, assisted by Kyla Carney). The...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ by Sandy Spring Theatre Group

Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2013, is a comedy about neurotic, middle-aged, well-off white people whining about their lives. In...

Review: ‘The Cat in the Hat’ at Adventure Theatre

To transmogrify Seuss, What a difficult task! Just how do they do it? And well might you ask! This master of mayhem Who leaps from the page, How could he be possibly Put on the stage? In drawings and...

Review: ‘Old Time Music Hall’ by The British Players

It’s June, a time for anniversaries, celebrations and commemorations. Where can you simultaneously look back with fond nostalgia at British pluck and cheek, and party for Pride month? How about at The...

Review: ‘Oliver!’ at Kensington Arts Theatre

The question when reviving a classic musical is always how much to preserve and how much to adapt. Audiences can often have fond memories of famous original productions, but times change, and...

Review: ‘The Great Commedia Hotel Murder Mystery’ by Faction of Fools

As much as modern culture claims to worship novelty, innovation and even disruption, there is a lot to be said for the tried and true. From an imaginative rendition of a beloved Shakespeare play to...

Review: ‘Appropriate’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage is known for producing professional-level community theater, garnering more WATCH nominations and awards than any other company in Maryland. The Obie-award winner Appropriate by...

Review: ‘Play Date’ at Best Medicine Rep

Farce is a classic form of comedy, based on ludicrous characters, silly situations, mistaken identities, sex, slapstick, and many slamming doors. After centuries of development (refinement would be...

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s Pride and Prejudice is an impeccable dance, an elegant minuet from start to finish. Every element works gracefully with every other, producing a pleasing, harmonious...

Review: ‘Noises Off’ by the British Players

Noises Off is the Mount Everest of farce. Numerous critics have called Michael Frayn’s 1982 masterwork the greatest farce ever written, and its second act may well be the most difficult to perform...

Review: ‘Heathers’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Heathers: the Musical is an intense roller-coaster of a show, careening from biting satire and dark comedy to touching and intense emotion to hope. In the 2013 Off-Broadway debut, based on the 1989...

Review: ‘Confection’ by Third Rail Projects at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Note before you begin: Confection is a unique, multimedia, multisensory, ambulatory, audience-interactive, site-specific theatrical experience — “a rollicking rumination on teeny-tiny desserts.” If...

Review: ‘Plaza Suite’ by Sandy Spring Theatre Group

Those who aspire to great heights of theatrical art tend to look down on comedy. They don’t take it seriously, which is understandable, since it is, by definition, not serious. Famed comic actors...

Review: ‘Philosophus’ at Best Medicine Rep

One of the things Best Medicine Rep does best is comedies about historical and literary figures, such as last year’s Engaging Shaw. They are now presenting another, Philosophus, by Colin Speer...

Review: ‘The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940’ by Rockville Little Theatre

When you go to see The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 at Rockville Little Theatre — and you should — prepare to be confused. This is not a bug, it’s a feature. The comedy takes your brain on a loopy...

Review: Olney Ballet Theatre’s ‘The Nutcracker’

There are certain things that start popping up everywhere to mark the Holiday season. Carols on the radio. Decorations on houses and main streets. (Objecting to the fact that both of these are...

Review: ‘Frosted: A Traditional British Panto’ at Kensington Town Hall

It is a truth universally acknowledged in the modern era that everything must be novel, revolutionary, and exciting. People will (apparently) stand in line for the newest iPhone (whether they need it...

Review: ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ by the National Players

It seems particularly appropriate that the National Players should be mounting a production about an imperturbable, peripatetic gambler who takes every mishap in stride while journeying as far as it...

Review: ‘Engaging Shaw’ at Best Medicine Rep

There is an engaging sub-genre of theater, that one might call the battle of wits or the comedy of intellect, that takes some of the greatest minds in history and brings them to life, with all their...

Review: Off the Quill’s ‘Frankenstein’

First, to avoid any confusion, let me state what this Frankenstein is not: It is not the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein, with “Abby Normal” brains and creator and creation donning top hat and...

Review: ‘Legally Blonde’ at Zemfira Stage

I came to Zemfira Stage’s production of Legally Blonde as a virtual newbie, having seen neither the musical nor the 2001 Reese Witherspoon comedy film on which it was based. I knew to expect some...

The 2018 Ruby Griffith Awards

As we know from the recent Royal Wedding, the British know how to throw a party. The most recent example was the top-notch afternoon when the British Players hosted the leading lights of Washington...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Marx in Soho’

Marx in Soho is a one-man show written in 1999 by the late historian Howard Zinn. It was re-mounted by Iron Age Theatre for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2004, produced and directed by John...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘MasterMimes: The Show’

MasterMimes: The Show, created and performed by Gabe Simms and Julianne Nogar, presents a series of … what to call them — vignettes? Scenes? Dances? — without words, accompanied by music. The...

Review: ‘A Swellegant, Elegant Party: An Original Musical Revue’ by Bethesda Little Theater

Why don’t community theater companies do more revues? They are entertaining for audiences, fun for actors, and although permissions to use the songs are needed, they don’t carry the hefty royalties of...

Review: ’53rd Annual Old Time Music Hall’ by the British Players

Sick of cynicism, vitriol, and vulgarity? The British Players has an antidote: their 53rd Old Time Music Hall (directed by Malcolm Edwards and produced by Sue Edwards). The latest installment of their...

Review: ‘Mary Poppins’ at Olney Theatre Center

How do you make a stage musical from a movie that was “Practically Perfect in Every Way”? A movie that won five Academy Awards, including Best Visual Effects for cinematic magic tricks and a sequence...

‘The Gypsy Baron’ at Victorian Lyric Opera Company

One might not be surprised to hear Johann Strauss Jr’s The Gypsy Baron described as delightful and charming, as that is what a late 19th century Viennese operetta aspires to be, but fresh and...

‘Les Misérables’ at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School by Jennifer Georgia

Our Lady of Good Counsel Theatre Company’s Les Misérables (the musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer, based on the classic Victor Hugo novel, that originally opened in...

Capital Fringe Review: ‘Arlen & Berlin Occupy the Fringe!” by Jennifer Georgia

Arlen & Berlin Occupy the Fringe! tries to gain Fringe-worthy edginess for its loving review of classic songs from the 30s and 40s by setting it in Freedom Plaza and linking it to the Occupy D.C....

Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Confines of Flattery’ by Jennifer Georgia

It is no mere flattery to say that Triptych Productions’ The Confines of Flattery provides a delightful and intriguing hour at the theater. A trio of short plays from three quite different eras, with...

Capital Fringe Review: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by Jennifer Georgia

The aptly named Infinite Jest presents an amusing, engaging and ultimately even touching production of Tom Stoppard’s absurdist peek behind the scenes of Hamlet – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are...