Reviews

‘Death Takes a Holiday’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

Directed by Mark T. Allen and produced by Maureen Rogers, Death Takes a Holiday follows the fate of a group of aristocrats at the mansion of Duke Lambert, played by Larry Simmons. We hear that death...

‘Collidescope: Adventures in Pre-and Post-Racial America’ at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

On the eve of a grand jury’s decision on the killing of Ferguson’s Michael Brown, Collidescope: Adventures in Pre-and Post-Racial America is a boldly courageous indictment on the origins of racial...

‘In the Next Room’ at Port City Playhouse

Port City Playhouse’s production of Sara Ruhl’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, In the Next Room, is filled with incredible actors, a clever set, and gorgeous Victorian time period outfits (designed by...

‘A Little Business at the Big Top’ at TheaterSpace at George Mason University

Masterful! David Gaines solo performance was clever, skilled and totally engrossing. Using only his body, facial expressions and some gibberish, he transported the audience to the circus, both in the...

‘There is a Happiness that Morning Is’ at WSC Avant Bard

There is one howl of a good time at There is a Happiness that Morning Is at WSC Avant Bard. The production is a masterly feat of acting prowess full of precise, adroit comic work and squinting eye...

Nibbles And Sips Around Town – November 5, 2014: Chef Cathal Armstrong’s Cookbook, ‘My Irish Table – Recipes From the Homeland and Restaurant Eve”

Local Chef Cathal Armstrong’s Cookbook, My Irish Table – Recipes From the Homeland and Restaurant Eve, Will Warm The Cockles of Your Heart My favorite cookbooks reveal the author’s personal connection...

‘Not About Nightingales’ at Howard University

Although it was written in 1938, six years before his breakthrough hit The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ Not About Nightingales was only produced in 1998, due to the persistence of actor...

‘Pen’ at Washington Stage Guild

Washington Stage Guild starts off its 29th season with a smart production of David Marshall Grant’s Pen, a curious play that is by turns provocative and perplexing. The company’s tagline, aptly, is...

DCMTA Scene Stealers-Week Ending 11/7/14

Here are our new Scene Stealers honorees. Congrats to all of you!! This week The Addams Family at Kensington Arts Theatre sets the record for most Scene Stealers from one show-5! _____ Lisa Carrier...

The Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig at Washington Performing Arts

You have a right to be skeptical when a symphony orchestra claims to have a unique sound. Down through the centuries most composers of symphonic music have given specific directions about what...

The 2014 MetroCooking Show Promises To Have All The Right Ingredients by Cary Pollak

On Saturday and Sunday, November 8th and 9th the MetroCooking Show will make its ninth appearance in the nation’s capitol at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and each year it has outdone...

In the Moment: “Julius Caesar’ at Folger Theatre

Let’s be provocative in this column. Let’s imagine a world where the debates within Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar are not between ambitious political people like Brutus, Mark Anthony, Cassius, and...

‘The Addams Family’ at Kensington Arts Theatre

Up for a twisted trip into the macabre world of the famed, now modernized, Addams Family this Halloween season? Well look no further than the Kensington Arts Theatre (KAT) and their current production...

‘Grease’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Opening on Broadway in 1971, with music, lyrics, and book by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, Grease became one of the most successful musicals of its time with an original run of 3,388 performances and...

‘Earth and Sky’ at Silver Spring Stage

Earth and Sky by Douglas Post brings Dylan Thomas, cops and robbers, murder and true love to at Silver Spring Stage in an uninterrupted two-hour production. Director David Dieudonne’s signature...

The Choral Arts Society of Washington Performs ‘Bach’s Mass in B Minor’ at The Kennedy Center

The Choral Arts Society of Washington brought forth a momentous occasion to The Kennedy Center Concert Hall on yesterday afternoon with their undertaking of Johann Sebastian Bach’s legacy masterpiece,...

‘Cabaret Macabre’ at Happenstance Theater

Delivering a tantalizing treat for the Halloween season, Happenstance Theater makes its Baltimore debut at the Theatre Project with the fifth iteration of its 2013’s Helen Hayes multiple...

‘Arabian Nights’ at Creative Cauldron

“Imagination is more important than knowledge,” says Aladdin in one of three stories told by Scheherazade to her Persian King husband, in order for her to save her life. Spinning tales of...

‘Julius Caesar’ at Folger Theatre

Folger Theatre launches its 2014-15 season with a strikingly imaginative production of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, a play whose contradictions and cruelties mirror the bewildering politics...

‘Twelfth Night’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” William Shakespeare probably never imagined a cowboy reciting one of his most famous lines, but Twelfth Night,...

‘How We Got On’ at Forum Theatre

How We Got On, a brilliant new play from Forum Theatre by playwright Idris Goodwin, tells the story of three kids in 1988 who fall in love with rap and hip hop and set out to make a record together....

‘No Exit’ at The Highwood Theatre

Jean-Paul Sartre was not only a great playwright, but one of the leading philosophers of the 20th Century. He wrote No Exit during the German Occupation of France during WWII, after he had been...

‘The 39 Steps’ at Prince William Little Theatre

Love, laughs, and suspense: you’ll get the full package at Prince William Little Theatre’s production of The 39 Steps. Adapted by Patrick Barlow from the early Alfred Hitchcock film, and directed by...

‘Not Enuf Lifetimes’ at The Welders at Atlas Performing Arts Center

There is a shortlist of great American plays about hopes and dreams, wrenching and emotionally exacting dramas exposing the anguish when righteous aspiration is tragically not enough. Arthur Miller’s...

National Philharmonic: ‘Mozart’s Requiem’ at The Music Center at Strathmore

Why do people willingly get dressed up and head out in the dark to hear funeral music when no one has died? Three words: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There have been dozens or hundreds of other musical...

‘La bohème’ at Washington National Opera

Young love is in the air, lifted there by a host of young performers in the Washington National Opera’s new production of La bohème. Most of the cast and crew are making their WNO debut. Many are...

‘The Murder Room’ at Bowie Community Theatre

Verbal wordplay flies faster than bullets Jack Sharkey’s The Murder Room” is a delightfully wacky, witty spoof of the dead serious British murder mysteries of the post-war era of the 1950s. The...

‘The Addams Family – A New Musical Comedy’ at McLean High School Theatre Company by Jason Landrone

Why not cap off Halloween with a late-night showing of The Addams Family – A New Musical Comedy? And so the cast, crew and creative team at the McLean High School Theatre Company (MTC) brought this...

‘Urinetown The Musical’ at The George Washington University

George Washington University’s Department of Theatre & Dance and the Department of Music have joined forces to create a production of Urinetown The Musical that is simply a pisser! You must pee-lieve...

Nibbles and Sips Around Town: ‘A Fall Favorite At The Skyland Resort In The Shenandoah Mountains’

When G. Freeman Pollock founded Skyland in 1894, he had been in and out of bankruptcy so many times he couldn’t possibly have envisioned the immense popularity it would have subsequently gained....

‘Hedda Gabler’ at Quotidian Theatre Company

Hedda, Hedda, I hardly know you. The emotionally ambiguous, deeply layered and mysterious Hedda Gabler whom one could argue is a victim as much as anti-heroine, is more narrowly defined in the new...

‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile’ at The Salem Players

What would happen if two of the most influential and prolific geniuses of the 20th century randomly met and hung out for a night at a bar? In Picasso at the Lapin Agile, award-winning actor, comedian...

‘Visble Language’ at WSC Avant Bard

This weekend at Gallaudet’s Eastman Studio Theatre WSC Avant Bard and Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program opened their world premiere, historically based musical, Visible Language. Aside...

A Duo of Dance and Comedy: Arts Collective @ HCC’s ‘Hallow-Scream’ and Washington Ballet’s ‘Petite Mort’

The late Alan M. Kriegsman once told dance critics at a conference that a “laundry list” of reviews should be avoided at all costs. With apologizes to Mike (who was a dear friend and colleague),...

Spine: ‘Whose War? Our War? Their War?’

The National Civil War Project presents the work of “a multi-city, multi-year collaboration between four universities and five performing arts organizations to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the...

‘The Rocky Horror Show’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

“It’s just a jump to the left . . . and then a step to the riiiight!” That iconic quote from the song “Time Warp” of The Rocky Horror Show is what I caught myself signing as I sat down to write this...

National Chamber Ensemble’s ‘Night of Italian Opera’

The National Chamber Ensemble, directed by the charming violinist Leo Sushansky, opened its eight season with a Night of Italian Opera this past Saturday, October 25, 2014, in the intimate Spectrum...

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Castaways Repertory Theatre

“One of the most enduring features of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the sense that both the characters and the audience take a temporary journey into the world of the mystical. This...

‘Sylvia’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Overheard at intermission of NextStop Theatre Company’s production of A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia, a guy whispers to his female companion: “I thought it was gonna be a real dog onstage.” She bites: “With...

‘Electric Pharaoh’ at Baltimore Rock Opera Society

Cover your butts, DC: the Baltimore Rock Opera Society is about to invade Atlas Performing Arts Center with their brand new rock musical Electric Pharaoh, fresh from completing its first run at...

‘Rage’ at Ambassador Theater

Michele Riml’s Rage made its US premiere this week at Flashpoint’s Mead Theatre Lab. A production of Ambassador Theater, directed by Joe Banno, Rage explores the dynamics of adolescent rage from a...

‘Richard II’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

An Anointed King Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) continues to thrive in their new downtown Baltimore home with an exquisite production of Richard II. While it is one of the Bard’s lesser known...

‘Our War’ at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Our War, an unforgettable production, explores the present-day echoes and historical memories of the Civil War, in a series of monologues which are really like one-act...

‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ at George Mason University’s School of Theater and School of Music

Charles Dickens left his novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished when he died in 1870. Over a hundred years later, Rupert Holmes took advantage of that ambiguity to create a unique musical, where...

Act Two @ Levine Announces its New Season and Collaboration With Signature Theatre and Arena Stage

Act Two @ Levine announced that visiting artists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Cynthia Kortman Westhphal, and an exciting new collaboration with Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre, in addition to a...

‘Macbeth’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a bloody good way to baptize the company’s new theater space Macbeth is the inaugural production of the Annapolis Shakespeare Company in its new home in Studio 111...

The Reel Deal: Watch Kyle Osborne’s Movie Review Video of ‘Kill the Messenger’

Kill the Messenger website. Here are the Washington DC area showtimes for Kill the Messenger. LINKS Kyle Osborne’s Video Movie Review of Gone Girl. Kyle Osborne’s Video Movie Review of The Equalizer....

Top Scene Stealers of the Week Ending 10/24/14

Here are our new group of Scene Stealers. Congrats to all our honorees! ______ Linda Baird as Lucia Singing “Time Stood Still” and “Invisible” in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at American...

‘Beijing Dance Theater’ at The Kennedy Center

Chinese dancers meander through the grass without a GPS It can be a long ride home to Baltimore from the Kennedy Center, especially on a rainy night. After last evening’s Wild Grass presentation by...

‘Signature Sisters’ at Signature Theatre

Growing up during my early, early years, my parents use to grab a babysitter, dress up fancy, and scoot out with their friends to what they called, a cabaret. They always looked so gorgeous and seemed...