Reviews

IN Series’ ‘Stormy Weather’ provides an original take on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ with Billie Holiday as musical fuel

Ingenious. Shakespeare’s venerable, often un-provocatively produced The Tempest has been reconstructed into theater with an invigorating musical arc and an awakening narrative bite. It has been...

‘Mozart Celebration’ Opens Season at the National Chamber Ensemble

The National Chamber Ensemble’s 2019 – 2020 season launched this past Saturday with Mozart Celebration, which featured several of the composer’s beloved works. Mozart is one of those composers who was...

A Dispatch from Weekend Two of the Charm City Fringe Festival

The second weekend of the Charm City Fringe Festival is in full swing! There are still lots of performances happening Saturday and Sunday, plus Fringe After Dark fun, so go see something! Thanks to...

Free Range Humans concocts a transformative ‘Jekyll & Hyde’

This Halloween season, Free Range Humans treats audiences to a one-of-a-kind production of Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll & Hyde in Jekyll & Hyde: An Immersive Musical Experience at Frederick’s Centennial...

‘The Snow Queen’ Opens Ballet Theatre of Maryland’s 41st Season

Ballet Theatre of Maryland’s production of The Snow Queen at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts is a colorful feast of dance, lighting, and costumes. Based on the story of the same name by Hans...

Review: ‘Nat King Cole at 100’ at the Kennedy Center

A panoply of performers graced the stage last night to honor the extraordinary musician, composer, and civil rights activist Nat King Cole, who would have been 100 years old this past March 17....

Fixing World Crises: The Women of ‘SEVEN’ are Succeeding and Inspiring

SEVEN is a powerful documentary piece of theatre that brings the writing talents of seven award-winning playwrights to bear on the personal interviews of seven world-changing women from around the...

‘Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live: The Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour’ Makes One-Weekend Stop at The National Theatre

A cult favorite TV show created in the ’80s, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3) has left your screens and found its way to the DC stage for one weekend and one weekend only. The weird (I mean that as...

‘Thoughts of a Colored Man’ reveals universal truths at Baltimore Center Stage

Thoughts of a Colored Man is a poetic journey through the lives of seven Black men over the course of a day in Brooklyn, New York. Playwright Keenan Scott II has written, and Steve H. Broadnax III has...

The power of subversive design in ‘Day of Absence’ at Theater Alliance (Magic Time!)

To realize how much white America loved minstrelsy is a reckoning painful or shameful, depending on one’s ancestry. Minstrel shows were never meant for people of African descent to see; they were...

A Dramatic ‘Tosca’ Mesmerizes, Enchants at the Virginia Opera

The dawn of the 1800s saw a Rome in turmoil. Napoleon Bonaparte spun a soured campaign in Egypt into a public relations success story, securing his legacy as a folk hero and launching a coup d’etat...

Local kids learn to “Let it Go” onstage in Disney’s ‘Frozen Jr.’

Encore Stage & Studio has been working with local youth “to build lifelong appreciation for live theatre by involving young people in all aspects of theatre arts — onstage, backstage, in the...

An Afternoon With Clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the Harlem Quartet at the Phillips Collection

For decades, the Sunday afternoon concert series at the Phillips Collection has maintained primacy of place in Washington’s classical musical firmament. But like leaders in all fields who want to...

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...

Crashing the Party: Pink Martini Celebrates 25 Years With a Kennedy Center Blowout

If the invitation would have been to see the genre-bending Portland-based cabaret-style self-described ‘little orchestra,’ Pink Martini, featuring China Forbes with special guest star Meow Meow, that...

Prologue Theatre’s ‘Dog Sees God’ Guaranteed to Get You Talking

Now in its second season, Prologue Theatre’s mission is simple: They want to start conversations. They will undoubtedly accomplish this with their take on Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage...

‘Phantom of the Opera’ still thrills at the Hippodrome

Baltimore’s fussy old Hippodrome Theatre is the ideal setting for any show dealing with fin de siècle madmen acting out obsessive love fantasies. So consider it a reward to have a thrilling new...

Review: India.Arie at Strathmore Music Center

India.Arie is music therapy for the soul – part mindfulness meditation through song and part groove-funk to keep it real. Authenticity is her brand essence, but her performance is much more than a...

Review: Theater Alliance’s ‘Day of Absence’ by Douglas Turner Ward

Two clowns open a suitcase. In that suitcase lies a rope. A long rope. They start to play with it, tug-of-war stuff, with the loser pretending he’s winning. Lotsa yuks. Then the twist. And the painful...

A Dispatch from the Charm City Fringe Festival

The Charm City Fringe is on! Here’s what I got up to last night. Reviews Poly-Theist “Brett was a married, 21-year-old monogamous Evangelical. Then he became the opposite.” When real people talk about...

Review: ‘Broadway Center Stage: Footloose’ at The Kennedy Center

Footloose, the 1984 movie starring everybody’s friend, Kevin Bacon, was a hit for many reasons, but one stood out over the others: dancing means life, and dancing gives meaning to life. This...

Review: The Mariinsky Ballet’s ‘Paquita’ at the Kennedy Center

Ballet, like opera, has a love-hate relationship with its 19th-century repertoire. Contrived plots, truly embarrassing cultural stereotypes, crowd-pleasing but horribly dated choreography that simply...

Review: Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Escape to Margaritaville’ at The National Theatre

Four years ago, I walked into what was then the Barnes & Noble in downtown Bethesda and asked for a sales clerk’s assistance locating one of Jimmy Buffett’s greatest hits CDs. She was stymied. Would...

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...

A Personal View of the Coming Apocalypse: Caryl Churchill’s ‘Escaped Alone’

What a play! Escaped Alone is full of dramatic presentations announcing a coming apocalypse; an end of days. The production at Signature Theatre is receiving rightful praise (read my colleague Barbara...

Review: ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show’ at Imagination Stage

Shadow puppets, sock puppets, masked performances, large scale festival puppets, and marionettes appear in cultures around the world. Enduring over the centuries, puppetry is an art, in multiple...

Review: ‘Carrie, The Musical’ at Workhouse Arts Center

It’s that time of year again, when there’s a bit of Pumpkin Spice in everything and Halloween themes are taking over. The Workhouse Arts Center is doing its part to add a bit of horror into the air...

Review: ‘All That Jazz!’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

All That Jazz! at Annapolis Shakespeare Company is an original musical revue of classic songs from old Broadway shows, in collaboration with Unified Jazz Ensemble. Conceived and directed by Sally...

Review: ‘Disenchanted’ at Creative Cauldron

Snow White is bossy. Cinderella is a ditzy dim bulb. Sleeping Beauty not only sleeps a lot but snores. Belle is going nuts from talking to inanimate objects. Mulan likes girls. Just what kind of...

A Wild Tale Wags ‘My Barking Dog’ at Caos on F

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Review: ‘Escaped Alone’ at Signature Theatre

British playwright Caryl Churchill is a revolutionary playwright. In her career, she has upset theatrical expectations many times over. She plays with gender and fools with time. She invents unusual...

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Love is a game—or deadly serious—or both at once, depending on which character you ask in NextStop Theatre Company’s production of Pride and Prejudice. The game motif is evident early on, as the cast...

Review: ‘The Winter’s Tale’ by The Wheel Theatre Company

Suddenly and immovably convinced his wife has been unfaithful, a jealous king’s actions result in the death of his queen and son, the abandonment of his infant daughter, and a cheery start to The...

Magic Time!: A #MeToo Memory Animates ‘I Am Her’

Midway through this taut, fraught drama about sexual trauma, a woman named Ana, a wife and young mother, is suddenly triggered. We are not told exactly why. It might be the Kavanaugh hearings...

Review: ‘Merce Cunningham at 100, Beach Birds and BIPED’ at the Kennedy Center

What a pleasure to celebrate the centenary of modern dance master Merce Cunningham with a pair of works that demonstrates his formidable vision for dance, imbued with clarity of form and generosity of...

Review: ‘West by God’ at The Keegan Theatre

The economic and social plight of America’s white rural working class has been the subject of recent blockbuster books from J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to Educated, by Tara Westover. Now this...

Review: ‘Fences’ at Ford’s Theatre

As seen through the simple symbolism of a wooden fence, Ford’s Theatre’s season opener of August Wilson’s Fences is a brilliant and searing exploration of the tragi-conflicts and heroic triumphs of...

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet is a wonderful way to kick off their new season. Directed by Sally Boyett, the show sets Shakespeare’s classic play in modern dress, combining...

Review: ‘Annie’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Annie, the beloved Broadway darling that has enchanted audiences through generations! With its Book by Thomas Meehan, Music by Charles Strouse, and...

Review: ‘The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice,’ presented by the Taffety Punk Riot Grrrls

The all-female production of Othello at Taffety Punk, directed by Kelsey Mesa, is a breath of fresh air. Because all the characters are played by women, you forget that they are female after a few...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ at Synetic Theater

What an inspired creative jewel. What a brave new world. What a daring technical and artistic production. That is Synetic’s The Tempest; Shakespeare’s tale of shipwreck and magic, power grab and...

Washington Stage Guild Refreshes Shaw’s ‘Candida’

George Bernard Shaw published Candida in 1898. Though it was not performed in London until it was a hit in New York in 1903, where it inspired what Shaw called “Candidamania,” the play’s American...

Review: Audra McDonald Headlines George Mason’s University’s ‘ARTS by George!’

Audra McDonald’s concert Saturday night, September 28, was the culmination of a wonderful evening at George Mason University’s 14th annual ARTS by George! benefit. The concert hall at the Center for...

The Sorrow Beneath the Surface of ‘School Girls’ at Round House Theatre

Can one laugh heartily at a satirical comedy—be thoroughly engaged by the entertaining characters, story, and performances—and then after it’s over mourn what it was about? That was for me the...

A Last-Minute Program Change Helps Showcase NSO’s Evolving Signature Sound

The National Symphony Orchestra’s third season opener signaled a distinctively bright and cohesive sound is developing under Maestro Gianandrea Noseda. Noseda explained to the crowd that his...

Review: ‘Unexpected Turbulence’ at The Fridge DC

What a charmer is the fringy play Unexpected Turbulence. It’s an engaging, first-class “flight” with personable service provided by flight attendant Crystelle Desjardins (Alexander Burnett) who is on...

Review: ‘Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Wolf Pack Theatre Company gives audiences a reason to explore the darker depths of the human mind with season-opener Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical. With book and lyrics by Leslie Briscusse and music by...

Review: ‘Mike Birbiglia’s The New One’ at The National Theatre

Mike Birbiglia’s The New One is at The National Theatre in DC for just a few nights so let’s cut to the chase: go see it. Those not wildly familiar with Birbiglia’s work might be confused. Am I going...

Review: ‘The Bodyguard’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

Suspense-thrillers used to make up a sizable portion of every dinner theater menu, but the days of Death Trap and Agatha Christie yarns have given way to a nearly non-stop diet of musical...

Review: ‘School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play’ at Round House Theatre

Teenage girls can be mean – just ask Broadway’s Tina Fey. But if you ask Jocelyn Bioh, the award-winning playwright of off-Broadway’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, you’ll get an...