John Harding

Review: ‘H20’ at Rep Stage

Not everyone who attends Jane Martin’s H20 at Rep Stage will necessarily agree, but the case could be made for its taking place in one of Dante’s outer circles of Hell. As the play opens, a cynical...

Review: ‘Beautiful: The Carole King Musical’ at The Hippodrome Theatre

Little Carol Klein of Brooklyn, New York, did herself proud when she blossomed into songwriter Carole King. In 2013 her hit-parade of a life came to Broadway as Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. A...

Review: ‘Show Boat’ at Toby’s The Dinner Theatre of Columbia

Can’t help lovin’ that Show Boat at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. Modern audiences are still likely to find the miscegenation drama that sets the story in motion more dramatically engaging than much of what...

Review: ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder’ at The Hippodrome Theatre

From time to time in the mock-Edwardian musical farce A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder you may be reminded of the inspired antics of an old “Carol Burnett Show.” When actor John Rapson cavorts on...

Review: ‘Titanic The Musical’ at Signature Theatre

There’s something fundamentally spiritual about the legend of RMS Titanic. Just as there are no atheists in a foxhole there are few to be found aboard an ocean liner going down fast in icy waters but...

Review: ‘The Happy Elf’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Red Branch Theatre in Columbia has an early present for young audiences this season. On opening night of Harry Connick Jr.’s The Happy Elf, many of those in the next generation of theater-lovers came...

Review: ‘A Christmas Carol’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

Ebenezer Scrooge would be a terror on Facebook. He’s just not your social media type of guy. Bahhumbug would be his Twitter log-on. And if he’s your boss, like poor Bob Cratchit, don’t even think...

Review: ‘A Christmas Story: The Musical’ at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

Humorist Jean Shepherd left us in 1999 but his folksy memories of being a child in Indiana at Christmas time live delightfully on in A Christmas Story: The Musical. Now making its Baltimore debut...

Review: ‘American Hero’ at Rep Stage

In its area premiere of American Hero, Rep Stage has sent out a likable little David to do battle with the soulless Goliath of modern corporate culture. While playwright Bess Wohl accomplishes no...

Review: ‘Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella’ at the Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

It’s anyone’s guess what the late Oscar Hammerstein would make of it, but we are now getting our first close look at Oscar’s modest Eisenhower-era TV musical Cinderella all buffed up and retooled for...

Review: ‘Evil Dead The Musical’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Evil Dead: The Musical is ideal for those theatergoers who always found The Rocky Horror Show just too darned serious. No need to give this show a big hand — it already has one as a recurring...

Review: ‘Jersey Boys’ at The Hippodrome Theatre

In the bright and tuneful world of jukebox musicals there are your basic pizza joints that sell by the slice and the hot-diggity neighborhood kitchens that dish up the whole pie. Jersey Boys belongs...

Review: ‘Sister Act’ at Toby’s The Dinner Theatre of Columbia

Nuns are more fun in the round. That’s a catechism we learned at Toby’s Dinner Theatre via Nunsense and other shows so many times it became an article of faith. Now Toby’s is up to its wimples in old...

Review: ‘The Other Place’ at Rep Stage

Today’s playgoers are used to solving puzzles in the theater. So perhaps Playwright Sharr White spends a bit longer than necessary to get us to The Other Place promised by the title of his 2011 drama....

Film Review: ‘Ben-Hur’

If ever our world needed a story of uplift, peace and redemption as told by a repentant old war general, it’s now. But this time around at the movies, sorry to say, General Lew Wallace’s classic tale...

Review: ‘Heathers’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

High school can be rough on anyone, but in Heathers it’s murder. The well-mounted area premiere at Red Branch Theatre Company shows that the 1989 movie, which poked fun at making the grade in grade...

Review: ‘Love Letters’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

Talk about age-appropriate casting: Love Letters, a play about the 50-year relationship between a man and a woman, is now at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore starring a man and a woman acclaimed...

Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal bring ‘Love Letters’ to Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

Love is breaking out in Baltimore. Or should we say the “second time around”? Nearly 50 years after starring together in Love Story, Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal have brought A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters...

Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

You might never guess that the Beauty and the Beast company now at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre has been on the road for well over a year. It is a musical of enchanted transformations, and that...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

Randy Harrison is raising a bit of hell as the Emcee for Cabaret in midtown Baltimore. I mean, just take a look at that demented, Chucky doll leer. He knows the Devil has his back, and before doing a...

Review: ‘Peter Pan’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

Toby’s Dinner Theatre has every right to crow about its new staging of Peter Pan. The classic Broadway musical based on James M. Barrie’s 1904 evergreen is deceptively simple — after all, at heart...

Review: ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Red Branch Theatre Company has dubbed its new season “Paint It Red” with an eye toward the blood and mayhem in its selected slate of musicals. Up and running now is Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of...

Review: ‘Hunting and Gathering’ at Rep Stage

Nostalgia for the rigors of big-city apartment hopping is the last thing one expects to find out in the suburbs of Howard County. But Rep Stage offers up that and more with its D.C.-area premiere of...

Review: ‘The Illusionists’ at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre has reassurance for anyone out there asking where the magic went. Its “direct from Broadway” engagement of The Illusionists is packed full of caped conjurers,...

Review: ‘Motown: The Musical’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

The music of Motown is a gift that keeps on giving. In 2013, Motown: The Musical wrapped up big chunks of that songbook and armfuls of personal charisma in rainbows of light tied with wide swaths of...

Review: ‘Antigone Project : A Play in 5 Parts’ at Rep Stage

The fabulously theatrical set for Rep Stage’s Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts is so overwhelming you might not realize for a time that the play itself belongs to a more recent tradition — the...

Review: ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

The Phantom of the Opera is an entertainment phenomenon. Can we all just agree about that and move on? It’s still going strong after 30 years in London and 27 years on Broadway. As a reminder of its...

Review: ‘South Pacific’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

The South Pacific of your dreams was just sighted at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia. Never mind the current debate over “New York values” versus “Iowa values” — here you will find Rodgers &...

‘Peter Rabbit’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

The world premiere of the new musical Peter Rabbit at Red Branch Theatre Company in Columbia finally puts to rest one of life’s great riddles: Why are bunny tails so short? Answer: To keep tiny young...

‘The Sound of Music’ at The Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

The Sound of Music strikes a slightly different tone but its hills are still full of life in the new national touring show at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre. Season ticket-holders should brace...

‘The Book of Mormon’ at Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

The Book of Mormon is like a short, bracing vacation from political correctness. Between now and November 15th, taking a seat in Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre signals your willingness to stifle the...

‘Technicolor Life’ at Rep Stage

Three generations of women in one contemporary American family prove “ready for their close-up” in Technicolor Life, a world premiere at Rep Stage in Howard County. Don’t make a mistake thinking...

‘Kinky Boots’ at The Hippodrome Theatre

Kinky Boots is getting Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre year off on the, er, right foot. Here’s a show so full of energy and charm that it doesn’t care a fig whether you think of it as chic or trashy....

‘Dogfight’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Dogfight is a drama that deals almost entirely with surfaces — surface beauty, surface values, surface concerns and surface victories. Taken on that level, the fine new mounting of the musical by the...

‘Ragtime: The Musical’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

The emotionally stirring historical patchwork known as Ragtime: The Musical is back at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in a wonderful new professional mounting. It was twelve years ago that Toby Orenstein first...

‘The Baltimore Waltz’ at Rep Stage

Something is undeniably right about a play that keeps you chuckling all evening then sends you off with a lump in your throat. That, in a nutshell, is Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz, now opening...

‘Avenue Q’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Good news, theatergoers. Your favorite sassy surrogate love puppets are back at Red Branch Theatre Company performing at Columbia’s Drama Learning Center. Now through August 8th the neighborhood...

‘Into the Woods’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

Are you ready to veer from the path and take another tumultuous journey Into the Woods? Go ahead, throw caution to the wind. You’ll find yourself in amusing company at Toby’s—The Dinner Theatre of...

‘Pippin’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

Pippin is one glorious flashback to a time when musicals were happenings, Broadway casts called themselves “tribes,” and playwrights broke through the fourth wall to make profound statements on life,...

‘Bring It On’ at Drama Learning Center

The wonderful young talents at the Drama Learning Center in Columbia are pushing youth theater ahead by leaps and bounds — literally. There are so many back flips required by their newest TYA...

‘Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story On Stage’ at The Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

If you absolutely adored the movie Dirty Dancing and wouldn’t change a thing about it, Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre has just the show for you. Dirty Dancing — The Classic Story on Stage is easily...

‘Sunset Baby’ at Rep Stage

Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby is social realism with snap. It knows how to “unlock all that attitude,” as one of the play’s three characters puts it, and audiences attending the regional premiere...

‘Spring Awakening’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Spring Awakening always makes a strong impression on audiences. But it is a particularly bold choice for the season-opener at Red Branch Theatre Company. The 2007 Tony-winning musical, adapted from a...

‘Blithe Spirit’ at The National Theatre

No matter how low your spirits these days, Angela Lansbury will raise them. That’s the professional promise now drawing people into Washington, D.C. from all over the Mid-Atlantic region to catch one...

‘Circle Mirror Transformation’ at Rep Stage

The 2009 Obie-winning play Circle Mirror Transformation is like a five-finger exercise minus a digit or two. In its well-mounted area debut at Rep Stage in Howard County, it makes for a pleasant night...

‘Hot Mikado’ at Glenelg Country School

For a show with more moving parts than a clock museum, it’s surprising how often Glenelg Country School’s Hot Mikado is in the groove. Revivals of this 1986 Ford’s Theatre staging are very hard to...

‘Chicago’ at Hippodrome Theatre at France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre is having its hottest season ever. Indeed, if you shovel out of your snow and ice fast enough, you will find its current offering of Chicago making things even hotter...

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Baltimore’s vibrant and growing Chesapeake Shakespeare Company looks comfortable indeed inside its gorgeous new digs on South Calvert Street. If only it looked as comfortable inhabiting the world of...

‘The Addams Family’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

If there is any theater role that Lawrence B. Munsey cannot master, he certainly keeps it hidden. The musical star drew huge laughs playing a cross-dressing ham in La Cage aux Folles then swerved into...

‘Annie’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

Forget about “Tomorrow.” In Baltimore the sun came out the minute the latest road tour of Annie unpacked its bags. From its elaborate sets by Beowulf Boritt, Suzy Benzinger’s costumes, and Ken...