Reviews

Review: ‘Indecent’ at Arena Stage

The controversial scene that ends this “true story of a little Jewish play” has been foretold at length throughout the show and mentioned in much publicity, so it’s no spoiler to report that we all...

Review: ‘Operetta Wonderland: The Magic of Victor Herbert’ at The In Series

It’s hard to resist the charm and humor of a good operetta. Though the form has been less popular recently, The In Series is doing its part to revive the legacy of Victor Herbert—one of the genre’s...

Review: ‘Beautiful – The Carole King Musical’ at the National Theatre

Beautiful – The Carole King Musical is a delightful, heavenly-sounding, Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical about Carole King, who “wrote the soundtrack to a generation.” With a hit parade of King’s...

Review: ‘Barber Shop Chronicles’ at The Kennedy Center

“To let one’s hair down” is to open up, be freer than usual, be willing to share. The idiom is apt for what transpires in Barber Shop Chronicles, an extraordinary exploration of black masculinity, in...

Review: ‘Silver Bells’ at The Way Off Broadway Dinner Theatre

For people seeking holiday entertainment in the Frederick area who might seek an alternative to A Christmas Carol, or The Nutcracker, or It’s a Wonderful Life, or one of the endless cavalcade of sappy...

Review: ‘An Inspector Calls’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, as directed by Stephen Daldry, represents the best of international theatre. The play combines the chocolate-box delights of an Agatha Christie mystery with deeper...

Review: ‘A Christmas Carol’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of A Christmas Carol is a delightfully faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel. Co-written by Donald Hicken and Sally Boyett, and directed by...

Magic Time!: ‘An Inspector Calls’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

J. B. Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls—a drawing-room drama set in England in 1912 and written there in 1944—has landed in DC with uncanny currency. Now at Sidney Harman Hall in a touring...

Magic Time!: Mike Daisey’s 18-Part, 30-Hour ‘A People’s History’ at Seattle Repertory Theatre

I remember being so bored by my high school American history class that I got a D in it. This was not normal. My report cards always had A’s and B’s. So the kindly elderly woman who taught the course,...

Report: ‘Jingle ARRGH the Way’ by Encore Stage and Studio

Nothing says Christmas like Pirates, am I right?! Well, Encore Stage & Studio’s production of Jingle ARRGH the Way follows Captain Braid Beard and his crew as they sail to the North Pole in search of...

Review: Aquila Theatre presents Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ at George Mason University Center for the Arts

New York-based Aquila Theatre has been hailed by The New Yorker for its innovative staging of the classics. Founded in London in 1991, the company has a regular season of productions as well as a...

Review: ‘The Choir of Man’ at The Kennedy Center

If you’re in a mood for some boisterous joy this holiday weekend—some soul-rousing solos and heartbreaking harmonies in the tenor/bass range—nab a ticket to The Choir of Man. The touring concert show,...

Magic Time!: ‘Cry It Out’ at Studio Theatre

Cry It Out—an exhilaratingly funny and touching comedy about new parenthood—is a joyous reminder that when a playwright of Molly Smith Metzler’s skill and compassion writes “close to home,” as she...

Review: ‘All Save One’ at the Washington Stage Guild

It was another time. It was a time of high anxiety. Even private lives were far from private in the treacherous, early 1950’s with the likes of Senator Joseph McCarthy and columnist Hedda Hopper...

Review: ‘Running on Glass’ at Venus Theatre

Cynthia Cooper’s Running on Glass, playing at Laurel’s Venus Theatre, celebrates six pioneering female athletes, all of whom had to overcome barriers not only of gender but of race, class, illness, or...

Review: ‘Cry It Out’ at Studio Theatre

In the bleak Long Island backyard that serves as their coffee-klatch confessional, neighbors Lina and Jessie chat daily about the alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching emotional terrain of new...

Review: ‘Elf the Musical’ at Olney Theatre Center

The Holidays are upon us and with them comes the rush of themed movies, music, and theater. Olney Theatre Center welcomes the holiday season with their production of Elf the Musical. Based on the 2003...

Review: ‘A Rap on Race’ at George Mason University

The intersection of dance and drama is intentionally harsh in A Rap on Race, the fused performance created by luminaries Anna Deveare Smith and Donald Byrd. Scripted from a 1970 public conversation...

Review: ‘Machinal’ at George Mason University

Taut and remarkable is the production of Sophie Treadwell’s expressionistic play Machinal (1928), performed by George Mason University School of Theater and Mason Players. A student production,...

Review: ‘Anything Goes’ at Arena Stage

“De-Lovely” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Arena Stage’s production of Anything Goes is as close to musical theater heaven as you can get. Cole Porter’s classic melodies and innuendo-laden lyrics, a...

Review: ‘L’amico Fritz’ at Baltimore Concert Opera

The Baltimore Concert Opera has every reason to be proud as it moves into its 10th season of operations. From the concert hall at the Engineers Club, the company provides a unique experience for local...

Review: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at The Hippodrome Theatre

The spirits of displacement and change hang heavily over Fiddler on the Roof these days. What keeps it all from becoming, well, dispiriting is the heartfelt humanity evident in every timeless bar of...

Review: ‘As You Like It’ at Keegan Theatre

The paradise in Shakespeare’s Arden Forest, a beautiful place where everybody is happy, communal, and fed, doesn’t exist in reality. But if it did, you’d want to be there. And since you can’t, here’s...

Review: The Welders’ ‘In This Hope: A Pericles Project’ at Spooky Action Theater

From the moment the audience enters the large square room that is Spooky Action Theater’s church basement home, Environmental Designer Colin K. Bills has already communicated to the audience for In...

Review: ‘Silent Night’ at the Kennedy Center Washington National Opera

The Washington National Opera’s current production of the opera Silent Night is a shattering indictment of the futility and waste of war set during the historical truce that occurred during World War...

Review: ‘Our Class’ at Georgetown University

Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class opens in 1926 in a kindergarten classroom in a small town in northeastern Poland. Whereas most of Europe’s Jews had experienced a long history of expulsions and...

Review: ‘Reditum’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre Flamenco Festival

No more than ten minutes into Reditum – a Flamenco dance performance by José Barrios and Company, at the GALA Hispanic Theatre on Friday night – the man of the hour is drenched in sweat. Barrios, who...

Review: ‘Endgame’ at United States Naval Academy

The Masqueraders’ production of Endgame, performed at the United States Naval Academy, is a powerful piece of theater. Samuel Beckett’s classic 1957 play, considered one of his best after Waiting for...

Review: ‘the end of things.’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

by Ciahna Heck Three Princes Theatre presents the end of things. at the Charm City Fringe Festival, a daring new piece of theater which touches on the termination of multiple relationships and the...

Review: ‘Mt. Rushmore’ at The Charm City Fringe Festival

Mt. Rushmore, activist-artist Monica Hunken’s one-woman show at the Seventh Annual Charm City Fringe Festival through Sunday, has it all: badass women, time travel, punk rock, political activism,...

Review: ‘Crankie Cabaret’ at The Charm City Fringe Festival

Listening to Katherine Fahey recount personal memories, ghost stories, and a lovely tale about Baltimore’s arabbers while grouped around The Lantern Sisters’ gorgeously adorned crankie box, feels as...

Review: ‘Billy Elliot’ at Signature Theatre

Signature’s Billy Elliot the Musical soars with expressive, youthful dance energy and a liberating message of doing what you need to do to be who you want to be. Directed and choreographed by Matthew...

Review: ‘Forgive Us, Gustavito!’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

For a play about a hippo, it’s pretty dark. Forgive Us, Gustavito! is bookended by the primal howling of a grieving animal, as the audience is enveloped in a blackout. This is not to say, however,...

Review: ‘The Male Gaze’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

The title of BlueShift Dance’s show, “The Male Gaze,” refers to the objectification of women by cis-hetero men. The idea of the “male gaze” isn’t new to women. The premise is “what happens when ‘the...

Review: ‘Songs for a New World’ at Spotlighters Theatre

It’s about one moment – the moment before it all becomes clear. Jason Robert Brown succinctly sums up his own production in this line from the opening number of Songs for a New World, now playing at...

Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Riverside Center for the Performing Arts presents Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Time Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton. A beloved classic,...

Review: ‘Beetlejuice’ at the National Theatre

You can’t miss Betelgeuse. A star in the constellation Orion, this supergiant is red as flame and one of the 10 brightest stars in the night sky. At approximately 10 million years old, Betelgeuse...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Kander and Ebb’s classic Cabaret is an intimate experience, with wonderful singing and choreography. Based on Christopher Isherwood’s stories, this...

Review: ‘Cinderella’ at Imagination Stage

Full disclosure: I love fairy tales. All of them. I always have, despite also being a girl who asked myself one day why Rapunzel couldn’t just make a ladder with all her own hair and escape the tower...

Review: ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ at Creative Cauldron

Children’s theatre is almost always adorable but not necessarily a place where you will see fantastic performances. Peter Pan and Wendy at Creative Cauldron succeeds in telling the classic story of...

Review: ’50 Shades of Gay’ at The Charm City Fringe Festival

By Kylie Miller Fringe Festivals are a great platform for shows that push boundaries and challenge the norm. 50 Shades of Gay does exactly that. Ike Avelli, a 52-year-old single gay man, is the star...

Review: ‘NURSE!’ at The Charm City Fringe Festival

Lisa Hayes brings one of her acclaimed one-woman shows to Baltimore with NURSE!, a compelling story of a labor strike from a variety of perspectives. Embodying numerous distinct characters, Hayes...

Review: ‘Dracula’ at We Happy Few

Halloween may be over, but the horror season is still in full swing. We Happy Few Theatre Company invites you to “listen to the children of the night” with Dracula, a repertoire production, at CHAW,...

Review: ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay!’ at Nu Sass Productions

Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay! (one of several English language renderings of the original title, Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!) opens as Antonia (Francesca Marie Chilcote) and her friend...

Review: ‘Un-a-parent’ at The Charm City Fringe Festival

By Kylie Miller The play on words of the show’s title, Un-a-parent, perfectly sets up this comedic solo show. The life experiences of Joe Minchik, the writer and performer, are both hilarious and...

Review: ‘Things That Are Round’ at Rep Stage

The mental province that stretches from magical thinking to ordinary self-delusion is given a new survey in Callie Kimball’s Things That Are Round, now having its world premiere via the Equity players...

Review: ‘The Barber of Seville’ by Annapolis Opera at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts

Annapolis Opera’s production of The Barber of Seville is a hilarious spectacle of a show. Directed by Braxton Peters, with Artistic Director Ronald J. Gretz conducting, it combines beautiful music and...

Review: ‘King of the Yees’ at Baltimore Center Stage

“You don’t have use? You don’t have power? They will erase you from your own story.” -Larry Yee Lauren Yee has a problem. And it’s kind of a big one. Not Lauren Yee the writer, whose very funny but...

Review: ‘Anastasia’ at The Kennedy Center

Will you be swept up into the legend of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia? When her family was executed during the Russian Revolution, the rumor spread that...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Georgetown University

Last night I had the pleasure of visiting a 167-year-old drama society. Georgetown University’s Mask and Bauble Dramatic Society was established in 1852, making them the “oldest continuously running...