Reviews

Review: “Elephant & Piggie’s ‘We Are In A Play!'” by Adventure Theatre & ATMTC Academy

Elephant and Piggie, two delightful characters based on the Elephant & Piggie books by Mo Willems, come to life in Adventure Theatre’s musical theatre production, Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are In A...

Review: The American Pops Orchestra ‘Coat of Many Colors: The Music of Dolly Parton’ at Arena Stage

Luxurious! No rags here, only riches. Luke Frazier, the Pops’ magnificent maestro, once again wove a rich tapestry of talent to compose APO’s Coat of Many Colors: The Music of Dolly Parton. If you...

Review: ‘Trying’ at 1st Stage Tysons

You could approach Trying at 1st Stage as a realistic, two-character play about a real-life character, Judge Francis Biddle, and his new secretary, Sarah Schorr. Born to a life of wealth and...

Review: ‘The Finger’ at Venus Theater

Ambiguous loss that binds two people together while pushing them apart. Incompatible paths of grief that alienate each other’s only source of connection. The dominating presence of someone who is...

Review: Book ‘The Book Club Play’ at Silver Spring Stage

Whether you’re an avid reader or a theater buff or both, there’s a supersmart, superfunny show up in Silver Spring that should be on your short list. Marking its 52nd anniversary (!), community...

Review: ‘Cats’ at The Kennedy Center Opera House

Andrew Lloyd Webber catapulted to unprecedented West End and Broadway success with his musical extravaganza Cats, based on a 1939 collection of light verse by the otherwise modernist poet, T.S. Eliot....

Review: ‘Jitney’ at Arena Stage

When the opening moments of a play are a super loud blast of bluesy music and a checkers game on the verge of anarchy, you know you are in for a lively ride. But it was the acting in Jitney, Arena...

Review: ‘Miss You Like Hell’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Theater – including musical theater – has long been used as a medium for analysis of societal issues and concerns in a way that is more entertaining than an essay or lecture. Miss You Like Hell, now...

Review: ‘NSO Pops: Maxwell: A Night at the Symphony’ at the Kennedy Center

There’s something way-cool seeing a full classical orchestra accompany a cornrowed, ponytailed R&B crooner in a bow-tied tux on the stage of the hallowed Concert Hall of the Kennedy Center. These...

Ed Gero Delivers Stunning Performance as Falstaff in Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV Part I’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

Henry IV Part I, which opened at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre last week, is superb. (Click here for DCMTA’s review.) This production, starring Ed Gero, is equal to any I’ve seen. In fact, it is...

Review: ‘Life is a Dream’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

In our world-class DC area, the GALA Hispanic Theatre continues to be a beacon with a mission to produce playwrights and plays often unknown to English-speaking audiences. GALA is a National Center...

Review: A Simmering Production of ‘The Gulf’ at Peter’s Alley

Silences speak loudly in the first Maryland production of The Gulf by Audrey Cefaly at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. This professional production by Peter’s Alley Theatre group, features two...

REACH Report: DC Playwrights Forum

It’s true. The DC area has moved into the forefront of the nation’s theater communities. A recent report from Actors’ Equity Association named DC the “fastest-growing theater city.” It was in the...

Review: ‘Meatballs and Music’ at Creative Cauldron

“Sing your song… be someone big on earth” is one of the centering lyrics that Tom Sweitzer sang in his one-actor, cabaret-like performance of Meatballs and Music on September 13 & 14, 2019 at Creative...

Review: Pulitzer-Winning ‘Fairview’ Jump-Starts Woolly Mammoth’s New Season

The Woolly Mammoth Theater Company has rocket-launched its 40th anniversary season with a searing production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama....

Review: ‘Surfacing’ at Expats Theatre Depicts the Desperation of the Displaced

It isn’t every day you see a play that merges Becket and Martha Graham. That’s my takeaway from watching the hybrid form of Surfacing play out at the Atlas: Three actors are strictly circumscribed in...

Review: ‘Helen on Wheels’ at Best Medicine Rep

The central character in Best Medicine Rep’s (BMR) DC-area premiere of Cricket Daniel’s Helen on Wheels, Helen Wheeler (Liz Weber), is a 74-year old Oklahoma widow full of vim, vigor, and strong drink...

REACH Report: Renée Fleming, Angélique Kidjo, and Jason Moran

Two of the world’s biggest voices blended beautifully Thursday night on the Main Stage at the Kennedy Center’s REACH Opening Festival, demonstrating the power of song to unify and inspire disparate...

REACH Report: ‘The Just and the Blind’ Aims to Save Black Sons

“How does a black boy become an American?” asks spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. “How does he learn his role to play?” For Joseph the question is personal and visceral. In The Just and the...

Review: Raise a Glass to ‘The Smuggler’ at Solas Nua

The bar is open and there’s 100-proof theater on tap. It’s a stirring play about an Irish immigrant bartender, and it’s shaking up a classy new cocktail bar where only 30 patrons at a time can see it....

Review: ‘Love Sick’ at Theater J Offers a Contemporary Look at the Biblical Song of Songs

Celebrating the lushness of love without shying away from the moody darkness that might befall lovers, Theater J opens its new season with the East Coast premiere of the musical Love Sick. Love Sick...

REACH Report: ‘Storytelling for Seniors with Candace Wolf’

More than 50 seniors crowded into a storytelling circle inside one of the Kennedy Center’s new REACH buildings on Monday, and I, as a card-carrying member of the reduced-fare generation, squeezed in...

Review: ‘1 Henry IV’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

1 Henry IV at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, directed by Rosa Joshi, is perfectly cast and beautifully executed. Edward Gero is a superb Falstaff, and he is surrounded by gifted actors and strikingly...

REACH Report: ‘The Second City and Kennedy Center’s Jazz Comedy Experiment’ at The REACH at The Kennedy Center

The Opening Festival of the new REACH complex at The Kennedy Center featured a plethora of live performances and films, including the laugh-until-you-break-your-funnybone The Second City and Kennedy...

Review: ‘Souvenir’ at Rep Stage

Rep Stage presents a strong introduction to their 2019/2020 season with a charming production of Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir, directed by Joseph W. Ritsch. This play details the meteoric rise of...

REACH Report: ‘Spotlight on Jazz’ Events at The REACH at The Kennedy Center

DCMTA joined the teeming crowd at the Kennedy Center’s “unprecedented new expansion,” the REACH, on the second day of a 16-day multi-genre festival to check out the spotlight on jazz. From the morning...

Review: ‘Doubt: A Parable’ at Studio Theatre

In 2003, John Patrick Shanley started writing a play about an America full of opinionated people, people who were certain they were right, people who shunned intellectual debate. From Shanley’s point...

Review: ‘Proof’ at Everyman Theatre

No gift comes without a cost. And that lesson courses through every moment of Proof, David Auburn’s very fine Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which is being given a thrilling revival at Everyman Theatre....

Review: ‘Butterfly’ by the IN Series Presents a Radical Restructuring of the Original Puccini

While considered one of the classics in opera’s storied canon, Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini is simultaneously acknowledged to be one of the most problematic for its depictions of race and...

Review: Jennifer Hudson and the NSO at Wolf Trap

Gracious, engaging, and a powerhouse of a voice, Jennifer Hudson brought the house down and left the audience standing and cheering while in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap...

Review: ‘A Nite at the Dew Drop Inn’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Director Stephawn Stephens has deep family roots at the Dew Drop Inn, having started as a performer in A Nite at the Dew Drop Inn. When asked how he pulled off the latest edition he said he simply...

Page to Stage Festival 2019: Tastings from a Buffet (Part Two)

Kennedy Center’s annual Page to Stage Festival is always chock full of tempting offerings, and the challenge of deciding what to see is daunting. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet…except you really...

Page to Stage Festival 2019: Tastings from a Buffet (Part One)

Kennedy Center’s annual Page to Stage Festival is always chock full of tempting offerings, and the challenge of deciding what to see is daunting. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet…except you really...

Review: Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Cabaret’ Is Among the Show’s Best Productions

It’s been 54 years since Cabaret first opened on Broadway, but this season is the first time the Olney Theatre Center has staged the show. I have always loved this Kander and Ebb masterpiece, but of...

Review: ‘Perfect Arrangement’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

Long a mainstay of the Baltimore community theater landscape, Fells Point Corner Theatre has been on quite a roll recently – delivering knockout productions like Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem last...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ by ArtsCentric at Motor House

ArtsCentric’s Little Shop Of Horrors, a bouquet of beauty, lush with rich vocals, indicates a growth of collective greatness at MotorHouse and beyond. I’m sorry you missed it. It was amazing and...

Review: ‘Fabulation’ at Mosaic Theater Is an Outright Joy

It takes a certain talent to turn topics that are no laughing matter into laugh-out-loud comedy that doesn’t condescend, doesn’t ridicule, and yet imbues life with meaning as only art can. That kind...

Review: ‘Beehive’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Let yourself drift back and be carried away to another time–the time when music with its rhythms was the center of a young life. Now with that thought, take yourself to the vibrant, energetic...

Review: An Audacious and Urgent ‘Assassins’ at Signature Theatre

Nearly thirty years after its premiere, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins still astonishes. An audacious meet-up of nine successful and would-be presidential assassins – from the narcissist John Wilkes...

Teatro de la Luna: Providing Spanish-Language Theater to DC Since 1991

Nucky Walder and Mario Marcel are household names to many Spanish-speaking residents of Washington, DC. For more than 60 years, Marcel, who is from Argentina, has dedicated himself to acting, theater...

Review: ‘Ephemeral Fatale’ by Area Woman

Area Woman is a group of four local DC artists who came together to premiere their “comedydramadance,” Holon!, for the 2018 Capital Fringe Festival. This August at various venues throughout DC, they...

Review: ‘No Exit’ by Dark Horse Theatre Company

Dark Horse Theatre Company knocks it out of the park again with this atmospheric trip to the afterlife. No Exit, written by Jean-Paul Sartre and directed by Natasha Parnian, is weird and dark and will...

Review: ‘Betrayal’ at 4615 Theatre Company

Betrayal, one of Harold Pinter’s finest works, will open on Broadway September 5 after an extended run in London’s West End. Thanks to 4615 Theatre, a young professional company, you can see a...

Review: ‘Diagnosed’ at Theater Alliance

I know what it feels like to not want to take a shower for three days. I know how the aches and pains of depression make you crawl into the fetal position and want to close out the world. I am...

Review: ‘Enron’ at 4615 Theatre Company Is an Excellent Investment

Back in 1998, the official Enron vision and values statement had a line in it that said: “Ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance don’t belong here.” Two years later, as the company’s stock...

Review: ‘Crusade’ by Rapid Lemon Productions

In today’s excessively divisionary, violent, corrupt political environment, perhaps seeing a weapons-filled show set during an internal war wouldn’t be your immediate go-to of choice. Rapid Lemon...

Review: ‘The War Boys’ at Ally Theatre Company is raw and riveting

The animus being whipped up against “invaders” at our southern border lends Naomi Wallace’s 1993 The War Boys an unsettling resonance. Written when she was but 26, the play is about three men in their...

Review: An Emotionally Gripping ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ at the Kennedy Center

Some musicals are all about the entertainment. You expect to see some awesome dancing, amazing singing, and leave the theater smiling (see my review of Disney’s Aladdin, also currently playing at the...

Review: ‘Treasure Island’ at Synetic Theater

If you’re a fan of swashbuckling pirate tales, you’ll love Synetic Theater’s charming and atmospheric spin on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Treasure Island. Directed by Tori Toletino and adapted by...

Magic Time!: ‘Blank’ at Theater Alliance

“There are holes in the script!” would be the deathblow for any more conventional work of theater, but in Nassim Soleimanpour’s Blank, the gaps are where the action’s at. As with Soleimanpour’s hugely...