William Powell

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Who can resist entertaining theater on a warm, summer night? An outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is especially apropos for such nights, and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company...

Review: ‘The Promised Land’ by Dunvegan Productions

The Promised Land is entertaining, thought-provoking, unsettling, and at times disturbing. Director and Playwright Lane McLeod Jackson has written and directed a dystopian tale in which the fanatical...

Review: ‘Ragtime’ at 2nd Star Productions

The Golden Age of D.C. area shows this spring continues with the opening of Ragtime by 2nd Star Productions. Excellent performances by Carl Williams, Ashley Lyles, Stephen Yednock, Heather McMunigal,...

Review: ‘Deathtrap’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

The first thing you notice about Deathtrap is its busy and detailed set. The set contains posters of plays by the fictional playwright Sidney Bruhl on the wall; a skull with a pipe between its teeth;...

Review: ‘SOUL The Stax Musical’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Holy Mother of all that is funky! SOUL The Stax Musical is the most fun I’ve had as a reviewer. A musical this magnificent comes around once in many a shady blue moon. SOUL The Stax Musical has a...

Review: ‘Weird Romance’ at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s MAD Theater

There’s a powerful scene in MAD Theater’s Weird Romance in which a computer-simulated woman, who may or may not contain a reincarnated spirit, bemoans the precarious fate of her newly born child – in...

Interview: Actress Gayle Carney Discusses her Off-Broadway show ‘The Promised Land’

Gayle Carney has played a myriad of roles in her many years as an actress. She’s been seen most recently in The Dog Must Die at Highwood Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. That play is a dystopian...

Review: ‘1984’ by Scena Theatre

Big Brother. Newspeak. Thoughtcrime. Doublethink. Orwellian. Those words have floated around the public lexicon for years, and at a time when the political zeitgeist contains phrases like “alternative...

Review: ‘Snow Child’ at Arena Stage

The Russians have a folktale called Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden). Prominent in the 19th Century, many versions of the Snow Maiden folktale centered around the appearance of a young girl who served as...

Review: ‘10x10x10’: A Ten-Minute Play Festival at Fells Point Corner Theatre

In its sixth year, Fells Point Corner Theatre’s 10x10x10, a collection of 10-minute plays by Baltimore-DC area playwrights, is a feast for theater lovers. The setup of this must-see show is ten...

Review: ‘The Mountaintop’ by L.A. Theatre Works at George Mason University

On April 3, 1968, a rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee, in a dingy hotel, there was a man working on a speech. This man had missed birthdays and anniversaries in pursuit of his dream. He was a man who...

Review: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

How can you unpack a show with as many racial, sexual, and historical bombshells as Underground Railroad Game? The conceit of the play (2017 Obie Award Winner, Best New American Theatre Work) is an...

Review: ‘The Wiz’ at Ford’s Theatre

Ford Theatre’s The Wiz, the Tony-Award-winning musical based on L. Frank Baum’s novel, will leave you enthralled, amazed, and bedazzled. The show is a cornucopia of colors, dancing, singing, sizzle,...

Review: ‘Frankenstein’ by Bowie Community Theatre at Bowie Playhouse

Frankenstein by Bowie Community Theatre has blood, violence, and drama, all wrapped up in a Gothic shell. This version was adapted from Mary Shelley’s novel by Victor Gialanella and Director Brian...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at Compass Rose Theater

Race, religion, office politics, and fear of the “other” are just some of the issues that explode onto the stage in playwright/novelist Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, a 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner. Set in...

Review: ‘Othello’ at American University’s Studio Theatre

A play like Othello raises many questions in the minds of theater-lovers: Should art be recuperative? Should plays written long ago be redeemed to suit the tastes of modern-day audiences? Othello is a...

Review: ‘U-Street, The Musical’ at Momentum Collective

U-Street, The Musical, directed by Alexandria, Virginia-based playwright Jason A. Ellis, explores the tribulations of the homeless in an engaging story punctuated with humor, song, dance, and a touch...

Review: ‘George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic’ Funk Up the Howard Theatre

George Clinton, legendary songwriter, bandleader, and record producer, at 76 years young, put on a rapturous, stunning, extraterrestrial funk fest at the Howard Theatre on a warm February night in...

Review: ‘Stick Fly’ by ANKH Repertory at the Gaithersburg Art Barn

Stick Fly is a boiling stew of classism, colorism, parent-child dynamics, unspeakable secrets, and marital choices. With a cast every bit the equal of Lydia R. Diamond’s Broadway-produced script, you...

Review: ‘The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940’ at Bowie Playhouse

Complete with double identities, hidden passages, murders, and mystery, The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 is the type of comedy that blends the serious with the silly. Sharply directed by Jane B....

Review: ‘Almost, Maine’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

Almost, Maine, by John Cariani explores the upside and downside of love as experienced by the residents of its mythical, titular town. Playing as almost a comedic version of Our Town, the...

Review: ‘House.’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

Reality TV shows have been described with many different words since they have pervaded the airwaves over the past two decades – crass, stereotypical, unreality. Maryland-based playwright Daniel...

Review: ‘The First Christmas’ at the Music and Drama Ministry of Shiloh Baptist Church of Landover

Written and directed by Fay Brake, The First Christmas, performed recently at Shiloh Baptist Church of Landover, speaks to the essence of Christmas – inspiring its audience to remember that Jesus is...

Review: ‘The Gift of the Mad Guy’ at Building Better People Productions

Christmastime is promoted by many as a time to let go of, at least temporarily, the practice of excessive self-cherishing. It is a time to reflect on the wants and needs of others. Many...

Review: ‘A Christmas Carol’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Who isn’t familiar with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge? Wolf Pack Theatre has retold the familiar story of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in a different way each year, for the past four years....

Review: ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’ at Prince George’s Little Theatre

What can you say about a character who was on a first name basis with Walt Disney and Mahatma Ghandi? A character who dominated the radio airwaves, read plays, wrote books, who often slept until noon,...

Review: ‘The Wizard of OZ’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

Greenbelt Arts Center’s The Wizard of OZ, directed by Jon Gardner, is the epitome of joy, happiness, and sunshine; a theatrical ride to magic and wonder. With lyrics and music by Harold Arlen and E....

Review: ‘A Tuna Christmas’ at Bowie Playhouse

Satire can be both salve and mirror in tough times and in good. A Tuna Christmas, written by Tony-nominated Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard, satirizes small-town American life, leaving few...

Review: ‘19’ at Through The 4th Wall

The road to freedom is never easy. Often that road is fraught with several steps forward and several steps back. Marginalized groups must face pressures from without and within. The in-workshop,...

Review: ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ at Kensington Arts Theatre

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’,” wrote poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The themes of “what might have been” and “what if” were prominent in The Bridges...

Review: ‘The Sea Voyage’ at Baltimore Shakespeare Factory

Ask most theater lovers if they have heard of Jacobean-era playwrights such as John Fletcher and Philip Massinger and you would probably receive a confused “no.” Fletcher and Massinger, who wrote The...

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at Port City Playhouse

An actor of illustrious talent shone bright recently on the D.C. area stage of Port City Playhouse. Rebekah Raze, in a performance that progressed from great to astounding, not only enthralled her...

Review: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been…’ at MetroStage

In the current political zeitgeist, which includes Russian hackers manipulating opinion through Facebook ads, playwright Carlyle Brown’s Are you now, or have you ever been… is germane to the truism...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at The Highwood Theatre

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov believed the role of the artist was to ask questions, not answer them. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Christopher Durang’s 2013 Chekhov-inspired Tony Award...

Review: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ at Port Tobacco Players

Sherlock Holmes is an enduring character in the annals of detective fiction. A master of deduction, Holmes has been the subject of countless movies and plays, one of the most famous of which was The...

Review: ‘Midnight Cigarette’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Onto a landscape of food stamps, broken dreams, and Walmarts, director and playwright William Dean Leary has created an indelible portrait of life in rural America. Leary’s Midnight Cigarette, now in...

Review: ‘King Kirby’ at Off the Quill, Performing at Greenbelt Arts Center

Who could guess that a play about the life of the renowned comic book artist, Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), would be filled with so much humor, pathos and fact-dropping narrative?...

Review: ‘Chicago’ at ArtsCentric at Motor House

The city of Chicago is “Hog Butcher for the World… City of the Big Shoulders,” as poet Carl Sandburg wrote just over a 100 years ago. Much the same could be said of certain elements of the press,...

Review: ‘King John’ at 4615 Theatre Company

Scandals, sibling rivalry, adultery and divorces represented daily living for England’s royal Plantagenet family, which held the dynastic reigns of power from approximately 1120 to 1490. The...

Review: ‘Murder on the Nile’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

Imagine this scene. You’re on a paddle steamer on the Nile River in Egypt. It’s the mid-60s. You find yourself surrounded by an off-kilter cast of characters: Miss Ffoliot-ffoulkes on holiday with her...

Review: ‘Rebollar and Friends: 40 and Up!’

We’ve all heard the cliches about aging: Life begins at 40. You are not getting older, you are getting better. Age is just a number. Once a man, twice a child. The inspiring dance repertoire Rebollar...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Shakespeare in the park is a long-held American tradition. From venues in places such as New York City’s Central Park and Washington, DC’s Carter Barron Amphitheater, watching the Bard’s works under...

Review: ‘She Speaks’ at The Rude Mechanicals

William Shakespeare wrote memorable female characters, many of them laced within male-dominated plays. The Rude Mechanicals’ She Speaks came about when director Leanne G. Stump realized that “If you...

Review: ‘Something’s Afoot’ at The British Players

A musical murder-mystery who-done-it is a strange bird indeed. But it can work if expertly executed. Something’s Afoot, with book, music and lyrics by James McDonald, David Vos and Robert Gerlach—and...

Review: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ at 1st Stage

The late self-taught playwright and poet August Wilson’s ten-play Century Cycle has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, with movie star Denzel Washington committing to bringing that cycle to the...

Review: ‘A Chorus Line’ at Tantallon Community Players

Packed with pizazz, energy, and downright sizzle, A Chorus Line, as performed by Tantallon Community Players (TCP) and directed by Christopher Gerken, is the MVP of musicals on DC area stages this...

Review: ‘Fear Eats the Soul’ at Scena Theatre

As part of its 30th anniversary season, Scena Theatre has offered a stage adaptation of late German film auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 film Fear Eats the Soul, translated and adapted by...

Review: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at Parlor Room Theater

Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is an American theater classic. At its center a story about a shattered family, the show is timeless in its themes. Parlor Room Theater (PRT) Director Dillon...

Review: ‘Crowns: A Gospel Musical’ at Arena Players

Apropos to Mother’s Day, and a magnificent button to the end of its 63rd season, Arena Players’ Crowns: A Gospel Musical is, among many things, a celebration of Christian and African religious...

Review: ‘The Secret Garden’ at Memorial Players

If you’re looking for a musical of Broadway quality in the Baltimore area, look no further than some of the work being produced by Memorial Episcopal Church’s drama ministry, Memorial Players, now in...