Reviews

Review: ‘The Cake’ at the Contemporary American Theater Festival

The Contemporary American Theatre Festival is off to a rocking start, and with the local premiere of Bekah Brunstetter’s ripped-from-the-Supreme-Court-blotter comedy The Cake, the Festival makes a...

Review: ‘Guerrilla Theater Works 3: A New Nation’ by Convergence Theatre

Sunday morning, before I drove from my home in Western Maryland to see Convergence Theatre’s production of A New Nation, I noted the following in a letter to the editor of my local newspaper: “There...

Review: ‘Why is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me? A Love Story’ by UrbanArias

Getting audience attention these days with a title few likely know is no easy task. So know that once again UrbanArias has found a terrific little musical gem: a chamber opera called Why is Eartha...

Review: ‘Mamma Mia!’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

Just months after finishing its final pro tour, Mamma Mia! has hit us closer to home at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. In the hands of Director-Choreographer Mark Minnick, the pro caliber of this staging...

Review: ‘Secrets of the Universe (And Other Songs)’ at the Hub Theatre

Secrets of the Universe (And Other Songs), a new play by Marc Acito having its world premiere at the Hub Theatre in Fairfax, explores the friendship between two 20th century greats in very different...

Review: ‘People for Whom the World Spins and Turns’ at The Essential Theatre

The boarding house play is a staple in theater. Assorted folks who might otherwise never cross paths are thrown together by a playwright who then grips us with their backstories, intertwined character...

Magic Time!: ‘East of the River’ at Anacostia Musical Theatre Lab

Community engagement is a noble aspiration for a lot of theaters around town. The challenge is to make theater matter to folks who live in the nabe. To connect the institution to the community, to be...

Review: Sarah McLachlan at the Strathmore

Attending one of Sarah McLachlan’s concerts is like attending a spiritual mass where your inner being is serenely centered, uplifted, and renewed. McLachlan has a uniquely impactful way of making...

Magic Time!: ‘The Till Trilogy’ at Mosaic Theater Company

The murderous race hate that killed young Emmett Till in 1955 is alive and well. The impunity with which white assailants get away with it is still much with us. And the irony is that the iconic...

Review: ‘Urinetown’ by Stillpointe Theatre

Baltimore-based Stillpointe Theatre’s trademark is taking cult and non-mainstream musicals, and with bare-bones resources and the absolute best local talent, delivering productions that make you go,...

Review: ‘Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations’ at The Kennedy Center

Ain’t too many surprises in Ain’t Too Proud, the new jukebox musical about the supergroup The Temptations and their rise to meteoric heights. Their music defined a generation and gave voice to the...

Review: ‘Motown the Musical’ at Wolf Trap

Motown the Musical is one irresistible playlist of infectious chart-topping music performed by a bevy of fine singers and dancers who have plenty of acting chops as well. While too-sweet nostalgia...

Review: ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ at Imagination Stage

Imagination Stage presents You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, based on the comic strip “Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz. Clark M. Gesner provides book, music, and lyrics, with additional dialogue by...

Review: ‘Tinker Bell’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

As a parent, it’s hard to watch yet another adaptation of Peter Pan without fixating on the fact that he essentially kidnaps children and leaves grieving parents (specifically mothers, constantly...

Review: ‘#poolparty’ by Ally Theatre Company

“No diving. No running. Absolutely no cannonballs,” the pre-show announcement at Joe’s Movement Emporium orders. But get ready to dive deep for the world premiere of #poolparty as it unpacks the...

Review: ‘On the Town’ at Olney Theatre Center

D.C.–area audiences are notorious for their too-free-and-easy awarding of standing ovations. But last night’s prolonged, enthusiastic, standing, whooping, hollering, response to Olney Theatre’s...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Who can resist entertaining theater on a warm, summer night? An outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is especially apropos for such nights, and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company...

Review: The Second City’s ‘Generation Gap…Or, How Many Millennials Does It Take to Teach a Baby Boomer to Text Generation X?’

The Second City’s Generation Gap is everything you’ve ever mocked your parents, grandparents, recent grad intern and tween niece for, but wittier and with better lighting. Generation Gap has you...

Review: ‘The Other Mozart’ at Columbia Festival of the Arts

The Columbia Festival of the Arts began last week in Columbia, Maryland. After a wonderful weekend of music and other performances as well as a place for local artists to display their work at the...

Review: ‘Other Life Forms’ at the Keegan Theatre

When asked recently what he hoped audiences will get from watching Other Life Forms, playwright Brandon McCoy answered, “I hope they laugh, and I hope they have a really good time.” Mission...

Review: ‘The Emperor of Atlantis or Death Goes on Strike’ and ‘The Soldier’s Tale’ by The In Series

“In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.” ― Bertolt Brecht With unsettling powers of persuasion, compelling is the watchword for patrons at...

Magic Time!: ‘The Emperor of Atlantis’ at The In Series

The Emperor of Atlantis—an operatic takedown of autocracy—is relevant to our times in freaky and haunting ways. And its backstory is chilling. Near the end of World War II, the Czech composer Victor...

Review: ‘The Wild Party’ by Ovations Theatre Senior Company

By Andy Arnold Ovations Theatre’s Senior Company ended the 2017-2018 season with Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party playing June 15 – 17. And what a party it was thanks to Darnell Patrick Morris’...

Review: ‘Portraits’ by Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company at the Kennedy Center

The portraits hang solemnly, unmoving at the Smithsonian’s Portrait Gallery. Choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess breathes life and movement into these two-dimensional works of art with a triptych of...

Review: ‘The Maid’s Tragedy’ at Access Theater

With its all-too familiar themes of ambition and power, sexual misconduct and attempted cover-up, disclosure, remorse, and ultimate retribution, the plot of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s...

Review: ‘Leather, Sand, Metal: An Audible Exploration of Tap Dance’ by Capitol Tap at Dance Place

Tap is its own beast. Any dancer can tell you that they can transfer training in ballet to jazz or contemporary, or swing into hip-hop, but they cannot transfer anything to tap. You either do it, or...

Review: ‘Hamilton’ at the Kennedy Center Lives Up to the Hype

Legacy. It is the central theme of Hamilton. One has to ask—could Lin-Manuel Miranda have known while penning this masterpiece that Hamilton would one day become his legacy? If so, that is quite the...

In the Moment: Another look at Round House’s ‘The Legend of Georgia McBride’

Round House is the current Promised Land for anyone wanting to get happy. With its divine, illusion rich production of The Legend of Georgia McBride helmed by Tom Story, Round House is a divine, sunny...

Review: ‘Switch’ at The Welders

The gender-flip trope has been a staple on stage for much of theater history, and just when you thought it had been trotted out every which way imaginable, along comes a delightful surprise. Brett...

Party On! ‘Will on the Hill’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Romeo and Juliet, Beatrice and Benedick, and even (don’t say it) Macbeth were on hand for a Shakespearean love fest on Monday night, all to benefit the wonderful education programs the Shakespeare...

Review: ‘The Legend of Georgia McBride’ at Round House Theatre

In The Legend of Georgia McBride, a theatrical cornucopia of camp, country music, drag, domestic dilemmas, and larger-than-life divas await you. This disarming and sexually-charged excursion into the...

Review: ‘The Vagrant Trilogy’ at Mosaic Theater Company

The vagrant of the title is a Palestinian scholar named Adham who, while on a trip to London as a grad student, must decide, when war breaks out in his homeland, whether to stay or go. Will he remain...

‘A Night at the Gaming Tables’ at The Russian Chamber Art Society

Love and money: when fated to compete, can the fight ever be fair? Or is it—and are the parties caught between them—invariably, if not inevitably, doomed? The Russian Romantic poet, playwright, and...

Review: ‘Dancing in my Cockroach Killers’ at GALA Hispanic Theater

By Ellie Milewski Today, theater has grown into an extravagant event. It’s normal to spend hundreds of dollars on tickets, go to a fancy Broadway Theater, and wait after the show by the stage door to...

Review: ‘Ever in the Glades’ at the Kennedy Center

Whether we grew up in the heart of DC, Manhattan, Evanston, on a midwestern farm, or in the Everglades, we all seemingly arrive at adulthood after spending years on an isolated island, cut off from...

Review: ‘Patience’ at The Victorian Lyric Opera Company

If you’ve ever found fleeting social trends to be disconcerting- never fear, so did Gilbert and Sullivan. In their comedic operetta Patience, now on stage at The Victorian Lyric Opera Company, they...

Review: ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’ at the Kennedy Center

The Kennedy Center advertises its Broadway Center Stage series as presenting shows in a “semi-staged concert format.” For Frank Loesser’s 1961 satire of mid-20th century New York corporate life, How...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ by Avant Bard

How does a nimble theater company retool an often produced Shakespeare classic such as The Tempest? Well, Avant Bard found a way under Tom Prewitt’s inviting direction, with gender-swapping and...

In the Moment: Another Look at Theater J’s ‘Trayf’

I looked forward to taking in the premiere stage production of Lindsay Joelle’s Trayf at Theater J. The title Trayf alone brought me smiles then and now. After all, trayf is the Yiddish word for food...

Review: ‘The Miser’ by Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of The Miser, performed at the outdoor patio of Reynolds Tavern, is a fun farce of a French play. Written by Molière, and first performed in 1668, the comedy...

Review: ‘On Your Feet!’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

Politics may have played a key role in driving the future Gloria Estefan from her home in Cuba and positioning her for eventual world acclaim in Miami. But politics hardly merit an “air guitar” solo...

Review: ‘Trayf’ a World Premiere at Theatre J

New York, 1991: Zalmy (Tyler Herman) and Shmuly (Josh Adams) are two young men, best friends since childhood, excited to get behind the wheel of their newly acquired RV. What makes them different from...

Review: ‘The Nance’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The “double bind” of being gay in an oppressive climate of prejudice against gays and, yet, choosing to turn down any hope of redemption with a loving partner (or a political party that does not...

Review: ‘TransAmerica’ at Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC

At a historical moment when appalling new waves of gender fundamentalism sweep our nation, leaving bigotry and violence in their wake, it was beyond refreshing to hear the Gay Men’s Chorus of...

Review: ‘A Delicate Balance’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage’s production of A Delicate Balance brings Edward Albee’s 1966 play to vivid, powerful life. Directed by Fred Zirm, it combines excellent acting with a detailed set, clever lighting...

Review: ‘An Iliad’ at Atlas Performing Arts Center

The setting (designed by Daniel Prosky) is not a battlefield in Anatolia in modern day Turkey, but what appears to be the office of an academic – perhaps a classicist. There is no computer on the...

Review: ‘California Suite’ at Providence Players of Fairfax

Providence Players of Fairfax presents Neil Simon’s California Suite, a quartet of play-lets set in Suite 203-04 of California’s famed Beverly Hills Hotel. Director Beth Gilles-Whitehead updates the...

Review: ‘Lea Michele & Darren Criss – the LM/DC Tour’ at the Kennedy Center

Cue the dramatic backdrops because the lights of Broadway were sparkling this past Sunday at the Kennedy Center in DC. Crackling with infectious energy, the newly launched LM/DC Tour with Lea Michele...

Review: ‘Botticelli in the Fire’ at Woolly Mammoth

Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” is a painting famous for its youthful beauty and artistic mastery. When I stood in front of it in Florence, I struggled to look away –...

Review: ‘Smokey Joe’s Cafe’ at ArtsCentric

Let me begin by saying ArtsCentric’s production of Smokey Joe’s Cafe is one of the best things I’ve seen on a Baltimore stage, ever, anywhere. I had high expectations for this self-proclaimed...