Reviews

‘Something Rotten!’ at The St. James Theatre in New York City

It doesn’t sound like much of an epitaph for a Broadway season, but Something Rotten is indeed the title of the last show to open before the deadline for a 2015 Tony nomination. Happily, the title is...

Israeli Tea at the Strathmore Mansion

What a glorious day to go to tea at a beautiful mansion. The Israeli Tea at the Strathmore Mansion was a special as the beautiful Spring Afternoon. If you get there early, you can browse the Artwork...

‘The Odd Couple’ (Female Version) at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

What is not fun about a good ol’ fashioned gender swap? Well, that is exactly what you will be in for at the Little Theatre of Alexandria this month with their production of The Odd Couple (Female...

Watch the 69th Annual Tony Award Nominations Being Announced: ‘An American in Paris’ and ‘Fun Home’ Lead Musicals with 12; ‘Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2’ Leads Plays with 8

HERE ARE THE 2015 TONY AWARD NOMINEES Best Play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Author: Simon Stephens Producers: Stuart Thompson, Tim Levy for NT America, Warner Bros. Theatre...

‘Wolf Hall’ at The Winter Garden Theatre in New York City

Hillary Mantel is a novelist, dramatist and critic whose best known works are her two novels about the Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell. The play Wolf Hall is the collective title of two long plays...

‘The Addams Family’ at West Potomac High School

Feeling Trapped? Move Towards the Darkness and go out to see The Addams Family at West Potomac High School. Entering the theater, the audience is greeted by the gate to the Addams Family estate – a...

‘Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival’ at Wolf Trap

There was a lovefest last night at Wolf Trap with the traveling Hawaiian Slack Guitar performance in front of a full-house of aficionados many of whom could sing along in Hawaiian due to their...

The Reel Deal: Watch Kyle Osborne’s Movie Review Video of ‘The Water Diviner’

DC AREA SHOWTIMES. LINKS Kyle Osborne’s website entertainmentordie.com Watch Kyle Osborne’s other movie review videos here.

Magic Time! ‘Closet Land’ at Factory 449 by John Stoltenberg

When we are ushered into the tiny dimly lit theater, constructed as a claustrophobic black box with only two rows of chairs on all sides, we enter a nightmare more harrowing and disquieting than any...

Spine: ‘Closet Land’: “A Lie Told Often Enough Becomes the Truth (Lenin, Vladamir)” by Robert Michael Oliver

Radha Bharadwaj’s Closet Land is not for the faint of heart. At least, not how it is done by Rick Hammerly of Factory 449 at the Anacostia Arts Center, where audience members walk into a closet, hear...

‘Closet Land’ at Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center (Review) by David Siegel

Closet Land is certainly haunting. There was no shelter from this play’s unremitting psychological ferocity and physical fierceness of political D/s (Dominance and submission). Over time it became far...

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ at Rockville Little Theatre

Rockville Little Theatre’s To Kill a Mockingbird ends their 2014-15 season on a smooth note. The play, based on the award-winning book by Harper Lee and adapted by Christopher Sergel, is set in...

‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

Little Shop of Horrors opened last night at the Laurel Mill Play House directed by Michael Hartsfield and produced by Maureen Rogers. This quirky satirical farce has become an American classic. It is...

‘Finding Neverland’ at The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City

I suggest that producers, composers, writers, stars and others with lots of money earned from their work other than in theatre, those who have done no apprenticeship in theatre, who have never trained...

‘The Fox on the Fairway’ at Reston Community Players

“Golf is not a game, but a way of life. A religion, if you will,” intones Henry Bingham, president of the Quail Valley Country Club, in Ken Ludwig’s The Fox on the Fairway, playing now at Reston’...

Keith Lockhart Conducting The BBC Concert Orchestra at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts

The DC Metro area is blessed with a plethora of very good orchestras and symphonies, all very close by, and all worthwhile. Yet hearing the BBC Concert Orchestra, under the direction of Keith...

Freda Payne at Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club

Freda Payne, singer “extraordinaire” who was especially prolific during the 1970s, delivered a powerhouse performance Thursday night at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club. Embodying a style that...

‘The King and I’ at The Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City

When all the elements fuse, when a director is clearly in charge and on the right track, it is such a pleasure to be out front watching everything come together, to make magic from first light to...

‘The Revolutionists’ at The Catholic University Department of Drama (Review)

The Revolutionists, an ambitious and promising new play by Lauren Gunderson, is getting a spiffy first full production courtesy of The Catholic University Department of Drama prior to its professional...

‘The Visit’ at The Lyceum in New York City

Full disclosure: I have known and loved Chita Rivera and her talent since we were virtually toddlers. I was then (we’re talking the early 1950s) a baby agent and she had just emerged from the choruses...

‘Living on Love’ at The Longacre Theatre in New York City

In the 1940s and ’50s summer theatres popped up all over the place, particularly in New England, where every other town boasted of one. Westport, Ct. had two; Hyannis, Falmouth, Dennis, all on Cape...

The Reel Deal: Watch Kyle Osborne’s Movie Review Video of ‘Ex_Machina’

https://youtu.be/XYGzRB4Pnq8 DC AREA SHOWTIMES. LINKS Kyle Osborne’s website entertainmentordie.com Watch Kyle Osborne’s other movie review videos here.

‘Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye – The Farewell Tour’ at The National Theatre by Gina Jun

Capping a spectacular career spanning nearly 60 years of bravura showmanship, legendary 81-year-old Australian comedian, actor, satirist, artist and author Barry Humphries performed as his...

‘Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye – The Farewell Tour’ at National Theatre by Jordan Wright

A fresh breeze blew into town last night and she was wearing rhinestone-encrusted cat eye glasses out to there, and a hot pink fringe gown glittering with Swarovski crystals. Yes, you guessed it – –...

‘The Lady’s Not For Burning’ at Lumina Studio Theatre

No, she is not. But in the year “1400, either more or less exactly,” per playwright Christopher Fry’s prefiguratively imprecise formulation, written in the aftermath of the, for many, apocalyptic...

‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at Anne Arundel Community College

Anne Arundel Community College’s Spring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera opens at an auction within the dilapidated Paris Opera House, in the year 1911. Among the items up...

Magic Time! ‘Murder Ballad’ at The Studio Theatre by John Stoltenberg

The fourth-floor black box at Studio Theatre has housed some extraordinary original storytelling. Recent productions of Terminus and Moth leap to mind. The space, called Stage 4, seems like a magnet...

‘Sinbad: The Untold Tale’ at Imagination Stage

Imagination Stage presents Sinbad: The Untold Tale, written by Charles Way and directed by Janet Stanford. Over the years, Imagination Stage has built up a reputation for exquisite children’s...

‘Mariela in the Desert’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

“There’s always something beautiful in the truth, even when it’s ugly.” After a standing ovation, many of us in the audience at Sunday’s showing of Mariela en el Desierto sat right back down to take a...

The Soul Crackers at The Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club

33 years after they began, The Soul Crackers deliver tight, in-the-pocket covers from all-star soul, Motown and 70’s Funk bands. For over three hours, the band drove from one song directly to the...

‘Side by Side by Sondheim’ at Vagabond Players

Some of Broadway’s biggest hits have merged into one show and found their way to Baltimore, occupying our own South Broadway in Fells Point. Side by Side by Sondheim is a musical revue featuring the...

‘Crime and Punishment’ at Maryland Opera Studio at The Clarice

The many faces of “Crime and Punishment”at Maryland Opera Studio Part of the beauty of performing opera is having the opportunity to make a role one’s own. To make sure the nine second-year students...

‘Murder Ballad’ at The Studio Theatre (Review) by David Siegel

Let yourself be seduced into a dark reverie as a love triangle, or perhaps a rectangle, goes way wrong. Musical pulp-fiction has come to 14th and P Streets pushed forward by electric guitar power...

‘Carousel’ at Olney Theatre Center

Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel (to the day: April 19, 2015), Olney Theatre Center exquisitely reimagines and reinvigorates the classic epic musical, audaciously...

‘From Moscow to Hollywood: Songs from the Movies” at Russian Chamber Art Society

Even today, a trip from Moscow to Hollywood is not one to be taken on the spur of the moment. What must it have meant for those in the early years of the last century, artists and musicians seeking...

‘We Wait in the Darkness by Rosy Simas Danse at Dance Place

As a long-time dance observer, I like to say the language of dance is universal and that in performance specificity on stage can imbue a work with universality. Saturday evening at Dance Place in...

‘Doctor Faustus’ at Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program

A steampunk staging of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus without any spoken or signed language? Just movement and mime and lighting and scenic effects? Sounds crazy, right? Well, depending on the...

‘Eat The Runt’ at Arts Collective at Howard Community College

College theaters have always been forerunners in experimental theater, and Arts Collective at Howard Community College’s zany production of Avery Crozier’s Eat the Runt is no exception. The play is a...

‘Lettice and Lovage’ at the Quotidian Theatre Company

Tea and Entropy: Lettice and Lovage at the Quotidian Theatre Company Lettice and Lovage is crafted with love, a fitting tribute to a playwright, Peter Shaffer, whose passion for words makes this play...

Rosanne Cash: The River & The Thread at Strathmore

The smoky, soulful singer knows how to make an entrance and how to keep an audience mesmerized. Rosanne Cash played at The Music Center at Strathmore on Friday, April 17, 2015. Her two-hour set...

‘The Romantics Wagner & Liszt’ at The In Series

The In Series self-described salon-style concert tribute is a celebration of musical mastery – from the two composers featured to the pianists and singers – The Romantics Wagner & Liszt is an...

‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Director Ian Gallanar, and his cast and crew have thoroughly delivered on the promise of a “lusty, fiery production” of the classic tale of woe, that of Juliet and her Romeo. In fact, what makes the...

‘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...

‘Tyger’ at banished? Productions at Mead Theatre Lab

Check your pre-conceived notions of a theater experience at the sidewalk at this week’s innovative Tyger at Mead Theatre Lab by banished? Productions. The interactive experience begins before you...

‘Ernest in Love’ at The Colonial Players

The sharp jab at the crusty, Victorian era British upper crust in Ernest in Love, with Book and Lyrics by Anne Croswell, Music by Lee Pockriss, and directed by Rick Wade, is not too farfetched from...

Eileen Ivers at Wolf Trap

Eileen Ivers returned to the Barns at Wolf Trap for a rollicking good show filled with her unique brand of Celtic fiddle and traditional roots music like bluegrass, Cajun, French Canadian, and...

‘Other Desert Cities’ at Vienna Theatre Company

In an upscale California house in Palm Springs, the Wyeth family is gathering to celebrate the Christmas season. What is supposed to be a joyous occasion turns out, on this particular Christmas in...

‘DanceWorks Spring 2015’ at the Department of Theatre & Dance at The George Washington University

This dance variety show featuring undergraduate choreography and dancers unfolds with a consistent contemporary theme, but some pieces achieve more variety of movement than others. These Five Women,...

‘An American in Paris’ at The Palace Theatre in New York City

“Fresh as paint” kept buzzing through my head as I sat, enthralled, as this latest “new musical based on a famous film” sang and danced its way across the boards of the famous Palace Theatre. Soon I...

‘Flyin’ West’ at Bowie Community Theatre

An exceptional and powerful production of Pearl Cleage‘s Flyin’ West, is being presented by Bowie Community Theatre. Director Estelle Miller receives top-notch performances from each of her cast...