Reviews

Review: ‘Queens Girl in the World’ at Everyman Theatre

The mark of good theatre, of a truly transformative piece, is how universal it is. How much it speaks to the then and the now. Queens Girl in the World by Caleen Sinnette Jennings – currently playing...

Review: ‘Pride & Joy: The Marvin Gaye Musical’ at The National Theatre

Spectacular. Amazing. Unforgettable. Pride & Joy is a musical that tells the little known love story of Anna Gordy Gaye (January 28, 1922 – January 31, 2014) and the legendary and iconic R&B singer,...

Review: ‘You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown’ By Other Voices Theatre

“Happiness is anyone and anything at all that’s loved by you.” This line from the final song of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown completely sums up why the Peanuts Gang has remained such a popular...

Review: Ben Platt’s ‘Sing to Me Instead’ Tour Lights Up The Anthem

Undampened by the rain outside, the DC stop on the Ben Platt’s Sing to Me Instead tour brought three serious talents to the Anthem stage with thunderous applause. Passionate, creative, and...

Review: ‘The Heidi Chronicles’ at The Clarice

The University of Maryland’s Production of The Heidi Chronicles, by playwright Wendy Wasserstein and directed by Scot Reese, leads the audience through the productive life of protagonist Heidi...

Review: ‘The Tarot Reading (V)’ at Anacostia Arts Center

The circusy-party vibe begins before showtime. The place is festooned with streamers, furnished with comfy sofas, bedecked in colored light, and stocked with bags of popcorn to share. A friendly Fool...

Review: ‘How to Catch Creation’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Part soap opera, part sitcom, part reflection on Black feminist writers, Baltimore Center Stage’s How to Catch Creation is an expertly staged dramedy, with memorable performances. Playwright Christina...

Magic Time!: ‘The Chibok Girls: Our Story’ at Georgetown University

One night five years ago, a horror happened in Chibok, North Eastern Nigeria. The Boko Haram—Islamicist terrorists who believe that Western education is evil—abducted 276 girls from the school where...

Review: ‘Spunk’ at Signature Theatre

Since 1990 when New York’s Public Theater first staged George C. Wolfe’s adaptation of three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston into the play Spunk, audiences have gleaned the creative mind of one of...

Review: ‘God of Carnage’ at Keegan Theatre

Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning God of Carnage is a cautionary tale for modern times. Written in French and translated into English by Christopher Hampton, Reza’s razor-sharp black comedy has...

Magic Time!: ‘God of Carnage’ at Keegan Theatre

The set foreshadows the coming fracas. There’s a fault line down the middle where this living room seems sliced in two. And something’s out of whack. The halves do not align. Like two stressed...

Review: ‘The Full Monty’ at Workhouse Arts Center

The Full Monty, a musical about a group of unemployed, average Joes who decide to put on a one-night-only strip show to make big money fast, is currently playing at the Workhouse Arts Center in...

Review: ‘The Oresteia’ by Shakespeare Theatre Company

To theater historians, dramaturgs, and lovers of all things Greek, the promise of a production of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia is enough to drive one mad with joy. To begin with, of all the Greek plays...

Review: ‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’ at Folger Theatre

Ready for teasing mockery and romantic conflict that crosses economic classes and genders with an added dash of some re-imagined blurred lines? Then step up to the wit and words of William...

Review: ‘The Children’ at Studio Theatre

Three retired nuclear physicists meet in a quaint cottage not far from the nuclear power plant where they once worked and where a catastrophe has occurred. Earthquake, tsunami, tidal wave,...

Review: ‘Treasure Island’ by We Happy Few Productions

By Andy Arnold Ahoy Washington landlubbers! Prepare to set sail on the Hispaniola with Jim Hawkins (Alex Turner), Long John Silver (Wyckham Avery) and the Treasure Island crew: if you dare. Robert...

Review: ‘Strathmore Annual Spring Gala’ featuring Matthew Morrison and Shoshana Bean

Though it was storming outside, the stars shone brightly inside for Strathmore’s Annual Spring Gala Saturday night. Raising funds for the educational and artistic programs that impact over 30,000...

Review: National Chamber Ensemble performs ‘The Contemporaries’

By Ross Heath Arlington’s Gunston Arts Center was the place to be on Saturday night. Always a joy to hear the National Chamber Ensemble which delivered joy with its season finale concert of...

Review: ‘The 39 Steps’ at Rep Stage Co.

For Rep Stage Co.’s The 39 Steps, disaster is never more than one step away. With only four actors re-enacting an entire vintage spy movie right before our eyes and assuming some 140 different...

Review: ‘Rooming House’ by Lucky Plush Productions at the Kennedy Center

Lucky Plush Productions is a dance/theater company currently performing at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. But this is no conventional company. Compared to dance troupes, they are at the...

Review: ‘Under(world): The Lost and the Found’ by TBD Immersive

TBD Immersive presents their new adventure, Under(world): The Lost & The Found, in Dupont Circle. The Dupont Underground has been transformed into a series of settings representing the inter-crossings...

Review: ‘Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven’ by Rorschach Theatre

There are two things every teenager knows are true: you can’t choose your parents and you can’t choose the jerks you go to school with. Such is life for Annie Jump in small-town Strawberry, Kansas....

Magic Time!: ‘Oslo’ by Round House Theatre

It is rare that theater seriously asks us to believe something far beyond itself. Typically we are asked to suspend disbelief about let’s-pretend that happens on stage. The gripping and inspiring play...

Review: ‘Oslo’ by Round House Theatre

For those wanting to be absorbed into a highly recommended, fictionalized account of events surrounding the 1993 Oslo Accords and the inconceivable peace between Israelis and Palestinians that bloomed...

Review: ‘The White Snake’ by Constellation Theatre Company

Trained in the mystical arts, two snakes, one white and one green (puppeteered and acted by Eunice Bae and Momo Nakamura, respectively) look longingly down from their mountain top at the hustle and...

Review: ‘The Great Commedia Hotel Murder Mystery’ by Faction of Fools

As much as modern culture claims to worship novelty, innovation and even disruption, there is a lot to be said for the tried and true. From an imaginative rendition of a beloved Shakespeare play to...

Review: ‘Pink Milk’ at Single Carrot Theatre

“Those who can imagine anything can create the impossible.” – Alan Turing For its final production in its Remington home, Single Carrot Theatre presents the Regional Premiere of Pink Milk. Written by...

Review: ‘The Value of Moscow’ by Dark Horse Theatre Company

I really enjoy going to Dark Horse Theatre Company productions because troupe founder Natasha Parnian takes every opportunity to bring the audience into the story. The Value of Moscow, written by Amy...

Review: ‘The Burn’ by the Hub Theatre

The Hub is off to a remarkable start under new Artistic Director Matt Bassett with their production of The Burn by Philip Dawkins. Featuring snippets from the Arthur Miller classic The Crucible...

Review: “14” by Theatre Prometheus

Arresting, provocative, and hauntingly relevant, 14 by playwright José Casas weaves a tale of sixteen characters living or born in Arizona who express their divergent views about immigrants and...

Review: Broadway Center Stage: ‘The Who’s Tommy’ at Kennedy Center

Fifty years ago Rolling Stone reported completion of a new album by Pete Townshend and called it “probably the most important milestone in pop since Beatlemania. For the first time, a rock group has...

Review: ‘STOMP’ at the National Theatre

Started by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1991, STOMP is a cacophony of sounds produced by common objects in lieu of musical instruments. An amalgam of music, dance,...

Review: ‘Come From Away’ at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

Ideally, Come From Away should be seen in the round, with the audience gathered so close by that it can share the claustrophobia, fear and love of all those grounded passengers. It’s a pity to be kept...

Magic Time!: Disrupting the White Comfort Zone: A Q&A about ‘P.Y.G.’ at Studio Theatre

I have an ongoing interest in how theaters in DC with predominantly white audiences raise and represent the issue of race. And one of the things I’ve been noticing is how the white comfort zone...

Review: ‘Black Pearl Sings!’ At Alliance for New Music-Theatre

Black Pearl Sings! by Frank Higgins, at Alliance for New Music-Theatre, is an absorbing production with an uplifting message. This witty play was successfully produced here in 2016 at MetroStage,...

Review: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a challenging and much-loved absurdist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, has had long runs and featured many famous actors. Fells Point Corner Theatre’s ambitious...

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ by Boundless Theatre

It is a joyful occasion when a new, vital theater company opens, and the advent of Boundless Theatre in Frederick is a welcome addition to the Western Maryland arts scene. Their inaugural production...

Review: ‘And Baby Makes Seven’ at The Strand

Closing out its 11th season, The Strand Theater Company presents the final three performances of Paula Vogel’s And Baby Makes Seven. Directed by Emily Hall and featuring a talented cast and production...

Review: ‘The Mighty Five and Friends’ by the Russian Chamber Art Society at the French Embassy

With the concept of nationalism hovering uneasily in the political air, it was as edifying as it was gratifying to hear four first-rate musicians celebrate in song some of the masterworks of what...

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory

You’ve seen ten productions of Hamlet, you’ve seen ‘em all, right? There is nothing new you care to see at this point, because even the innovative approach is becoming tired. But have you ever seen a...

Magic Time: ‘Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son’ at Mosaic Theater Company

The splashy opening is spectacularly preconception-smashing. We know we’re about to see a play premised on a 1953 meeting in a Paris café between the literary lion Richard Wright and James Baldwin,...

Review: ‘Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son’ at Mosaic Theater Company

In Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son, Playwright Psalmayene 24, Director Raymond O. Caldwell, and Founding Artistic Director Ari Roth take on the risky task of staging a well-known and...

When BSO’s OrchKids Show Up, Good Things Happen

In the early 1990s, I lived in New Orleans at the corner of Philip and Constance streets. At the time, it was the transition zone between the toney Garden District and the St. Thomas projects. More...

Review: ‘Beckett Trio, Part 2’ by Scena Theatre

Ready for your Samuel Beckett fix? A fix for the lesser-known, very short-form works by the winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature? If you are the least bit curious and open to a quieter form...

Review: ‘A Comedy of Tenors’ at Olney Theatre Center

Things are getting silly at the Olney Theatre Center these days. Very, very, silly. Very skillfully silly, in the production of Ken Ludwig’s A Comedy of Tenors. A follow-on to Ludwig’s highly popular...

Review: ‘Junk’ at Arena Stage

“When did money become the thing—the only thing?” asks an ambitious young financial journalist in her opening monologue. She then answers her own question: “The mid-eighties. 1985 to be exact…. It was...

Review: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Porgy and Bess’ a Crowd-Pleaser

Let’s get the persnickety stuff out of the way first. Then we can get to why the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s second Porgy and Bess in concert at the Strathmore Music Center in three years is...

Review: ‘Grand Hotel’ at Signature Theatre

Time may be running out for the denizens of Berlin’s swanky Weimar era Grand Hotel who wonder if life has passed them by. But Signature Theatre’s roaring, non-stop rendering of the musical Grand Hotel...

Review: ‘Play Date’ at Best Medicine Rep

Farce is a classic form of comedy, based on ludicrous characters, silly situations, mistaken identities, sex, slapstick, and many slamming doors. After centuries of development (refinement would be...

Review: Kristin Chenoweth at Strathmore

If you happened to see something akin to celestial beings descending on North Bethesda on Monday evening, don’t worry – that wasn’t actually Heaven coming down, it was just the sound of Kristin...