Reviews

‘Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash’ at Infinity Theatre Company

Infinity Theatre Company has launched their Annapolis summer season with the production of Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash by Richard Maltby, Jr. and William Meade. Though the cast play...

Source Theatre Festival 2015: ‘Love & Botany: 10-Minute Plays’

Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire (later turned into a PBS documentary of the same name) explored the world from the point of view of four plants: apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. If you ever...

BSO: Beethoven’s 5th Symphony at Strathmore

Playing what has perhaps become the four most famous chords in the western canon, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra tackled Beethoven’s 5th last night at Strathmore, along with Shostakovich and...

‘Dirty Blonde’ at the Little Theatre of Alexandria

Dirty Blonde, written by Claudia Shear and directed by Jennifer Lyman, follows two stories: the rise to fame of star Mae West and the blossoming love affair of her two most obsessive fans after her...

‘Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’ at Spotlighters Theatre

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead is the penultimate show of Spotlighters’ 53rd season and boy does it pack a punch. This unauthorized parody, written by Burt V. Royal, imagines the...

Source Theatre Festival 2015: ‘Mistakes & Media: 10-Minute Plays’

Youthful energy is bursting out all over at Source Theatre Festival 2015, which began last night with its first round of six 10-minute plays, roaring in under the banner Mistakes & Media. This opening...

‘The Well of Horniness’ at Iron Crow Theatre

Go ahead. It’s okay to scream with laughter and stomp your feet. Though short by Shakespearean standards, this play is howlingly funny as it exploits every lesbian stereotype and cliché known to...

‘Born Yesterday’ at The Vagabond Players

There is so much to see in historic Fells Point in Baltimore that it would be easy to pass by the tucked away home of The Vagabond Players. However, this little theatre is about to celebrate a big...

‘Latino Music Fever’ at the In Series

The In Series takes on the music of our Southern neighbors in a concert full of classic hits from Mexico and Cuba, many of which made a climb up the U.S. pop charts. If the tunes feel particularly...

‘An Act of God’ at Studio 54 in New York City

Jim Parsons was put together with pieces of PeeWee Herman, Jerry Lewis, and James Stewart and the result is a most appealing actor who’s found himself a character very close to the real Jim Parsons....

In the Moment: Creative Cauldron’s Summer Cabaret

Ah, the enduring popularity of sophisticated, stylish cabaret entertainment. Now add-in musical artists who easily mix the known American Songbook standards with the less often heard to bring a...

‘Blithe Spirit’ at Everyman Theatre

Word has it that English playwright Noël Coward took only five days to write Blithe Spirit during the full fury of World War II, which premiered just six weeks later in June 1941, creating a new...

‘NSFW’ at Round House Theatre Company

Round House Theatre just opened a stunningly good production of NSFW directed by Meredith McDonough. The script by British playwright Lucy Kirkwood is a marvel in itself, because it is a scathingly...

UPDATED 6/1/15: Magic Time!: ‘I’m an Improviser by Trade’: A Q&A With Matthew R. Wilson, Director of Faction of Fools’ ‘Our Town’

Updated 6/1/5: Before seeing Faction of Fools’ Commedia dell’arte interpretation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in full production (I’d previously seen it in a workshop), I was skeptical whether the...

‘happiness (and other reasons to die)’ at The Welders

You might think a suicide pact among losers who meet on line would not be a terribly good premise for a warmhearted comedy—much less a noir one à la Martin McDonaugh. You might assume there’s not a...

‘Adriana Lecouvreur’ at Riverbend Opera Company at the Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center

Big things do come in small packages. This old adage was proven correctly with the Riverbend Opera Company’s performance of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center. The opera,...

Kool & the Gang and Chaka Khan at Wolf Trap

Oh what a night – there’s a party goin’ on! Chaka Khan, Queen of Funk Soul, and the funkedelic Kool and the Gang were a red-hot double-hitter that rocked a sold-out house and packed lawn in a concert...

‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ at Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre

When many people think of Charles Dickens, they think of the assigned readings from their high school English classes. If Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre presented all of Dickens’ works in the same...

‘Jarry Inside Out’ at Spooky Action Theater

The author of the infamous Ubu Roi, the play which proudly proclaims high culture as but “pshit” sculpted into attractive façades, Alfred Jarry is now the subject of a new script playing at Spooky...

Mark Nadler: ‘Runnin’ Wild: Songs and Scandals of the Roaring ’20s’ at Starthmore’s AMP

Raconteur. A word seldom used nowadays. In the era of Twitter and short attention spans, good luck finding “a person who excels in telling anecdotes.” But flip open the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to...

‘Kiss Me, Kate’ at 2nd Star Productions

As the weather turns sultry, Baltimore theater goers with an appreciation for irony should make it a point not to miss 2nd Star Productions current show, Kiss Me, Kate, the Tony Award-winning musical...

‘Our Town’ at Faction of Fools

Faction of Fools does it again with an innovative production of Thornton Wilder’s revolutionary and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town, which originally debuted in 1938 about a New Hampshire town at...

‘The Trap’ at Ambassador Theater

The gaunt and haunted figure of Franz Kafka obsessed the renowned Polish poet, novelist, and dramatist Tadeusz Różewicz (1921-2014). His two-act play The Trap—part expressionistic, part...

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: ‘A Tribute to John Williams’ at The Music Center at Strathmore

At the atmospheric Strathmore complex in North Bethesda on a hot Thursday evening, on May 28, 2015, the musical presentation entitled The Music of John Williams was a modest delight with many...

‘The Glass Mendacity” at Providence Players of Fairfax

For a good time, call (703) 425-6782. That gets you the Providence Players of Fairfax’s reservations line, and this bedrock company of major-league players never disappoints. The Glass Mendacity,...

‘Zombie: The American’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Review #2)

Last night, I found myself transported to 2063, a world in which Africa is one large united nation, the United States is welcoming the first gay president to the oval office, and the White House, now...

SPINE: ‘Zombie: The American’ — the Citizen, the Government Official, the Theatre-goer — at Woolly Mammoth (Review)

“Only dead men tell the truth,” said Mark Twain. And Zombies. Robert O’Hara’s Zombie: The American opened last night at Woolly Mammoth and, save for one errant scene–saved perhaps for a love of sex...

‘On the Razzle’ at Silver Spring Stage

In Tom Stoppard‘s wonderful farce, On the Razzle, the humor relies on mistaken identities, lots of puns and malapropos, pratfalls, sex, and pomposity. Silver Spring Stage’s hilarious production, which...

Ardani Artists Presents: Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg: ‘Rodin’ at The Kennedy Center

Boris Eifman is a choreographer critics love to hate and audiences simply love. In fact, in his 2011 opus, Rodin, detailing the loves of the great French sculptor who chiseled the art form into the...

‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

What’s not to like about Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s presentation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona? The playwright has had some good reviews. So, too, has the show’s director/choreographer Sally...

‘The Shipment’ at Forum Theatre

If there were a Richter Scale for risk-taking in theater, Forum Theatre’s production ofThe Shipment would register right up at the top. In brazenly challenging assumptions about how we perceive race...

Win a Pair of Tickets to WSC Avant Bard’s ‘The Madwoman of Chaillot’ for Performances The Weekend of June 11th-14th

WSC Avant Bard is giving away two tickets to The Madwoman of Chaillot for performances the weekend of June 11th-14th. TO ENTER: FILL OUT THIS FORM AND Tell us: What worries you about the world? Then...

Recap of ‘The GI Film Festival’ – May 18-24, 2015

The GI Film Festival is in its ninth year and has grown so big. It ended yesterday at the huge and swanky Angelika Film Center in the Mosaic District in Fairfax, VA. They showed a record number of...

Magic Time! ‘Good Hope Road’ (Staged Reading)

For decades theatergoers have warmed to plays set in rooming houses. Playwrights have been fond of the form too, because it permits an otherwise random mix of boarders to become an engrossing cast of...

‘The Business End’ at Yellow Sign Theatre

You have only one more weekend to catch one of the most interesting pieces of theatre in Baltimore, a tragic parody of the plight of the B-horror screenwriter longing to create art. Mike Jancz penned...

‘dry bones rising’ at Venus Theatre Company

In her program note, director (and founder of Venus Theatre Company) Deborah Randall has this to say about her company’s newest play, dry bones rising: “The style… could be described as ee cummings...

‘La Boheme’ at Hub Opera Ensemble

Starving artists, jealous relationships, chronic illnesses….. as brilliantly used in their marketing campaign, “the struggle is real” for the characters in Puccini’s La Boheme, currently running at...

‘A Prairie Home Companion’ with Garrison Keillor and Special Guests Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan at the Filene Center at Wolf Trap

The Filene Center launched the summer season at Wolf Trap with another visit by Garrison Keillor and the news from . The United States Navy Band joined Keillor and the usual suspects onstage along...

‘Macbeth’ at The BOOM Theatre Company

When William Shakespeare’s plays first made their appearances at the Globe Theatre, men played all of the roles. No one questioned a male Juliet performing the famous balcony scene in Romeo and...

‘If All the Sky Were Paper’ at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater

Fitting that If All the Sky Were Paper — a dramatization of war correspondence lovingly presented by archivist Andrew Carroll — would unfold at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a...

Michal Urbaniak at Bethesda Jazz and Blues Supper Club

What does a jazz lover expect from a concert of one of the world’s greatest jazz stars? To be moved by the magic of jazz and loving its sound? This was my exact experience last night, when the stage...

‘The Servant of Two Masters’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

There is nothing more enjoyable than a pleasant summer evening, unless, you happen to be at Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s ‘Comedy in the Courtyard’ at Reynold’s Tavern. The patio behind Reynold’s...

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ at Folger Theatre (Review)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Folger Theatre is a sumptuously original production of the breakthrough play of one of England’s greatest living playwrights. “I write plays” Tom Stoppard...

Spine: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ at Folger Theatre (Article)

I first read Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead back in 1974. It was but one of many plays I devoured as part of my thirst for the absurdist perspective. It’s now playing at Folger...

‘A Tale of Two Cities’ at Synetic Theater

If only Alex Mills was available to tell stories to my now 31 year old daughter when she was a baby. While I read to her aplenty, she would have marveled and communicating happily through gurgles at...

Magic Time! ‘Cabaret’ at Signature Theatre

By the end of Act One, I was stunned and shaken. By the end of Act Two, I was speechless, not wanting to move. And I had seen this show before. The movie too. I already knew that it has a dark...

‘The Letters’ at MetroStage

MetroStage’s Producing Artistic Director Carolyn Griffin, has found yet another extraordinary ‘gem of play’ – The Letters by John W. Lowell – and gave it a setting worthy of a diamond. Expertly...

‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ at The Studio Theatre

There have been some great plays set in locker rooms that lay bare the anxieties underlying men’s lives. After all, the sports locker room is the archetypical site of respite from the male-male combat...

‘Last of the Boys’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

As Memorial Day weekend approaches, we prepare for barbecues and trips to the beach, but some of us forget about the true reason for the three-day weekend: acknowledging the accomplishments of those...

‘Cabaret’ at Signature Theatre

Signature Theatre’s Cabaret is a formidable musical that abundantly succeeds in taking the audience by its collective throat and jolting it into alertness to the rise of evil and terror. Under Matthew...