Reviews

Review: ‘Altar Boyz’ by Rockville Musical Theatre

Promoted as a hilarious send-up of Christian boy bands, Altar Boyz, with music and lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, delivers witty lyrics sprinkled among twelve songs. The storyline...

Review: ‘The Seafarer’ at Irish Repertory Theatre

Mystic realism and metaphor meet the Irish gift of gab and a dire predilection for alcohol in Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, a disturbingly dark and devilish comedy about lost souls, drunken...

Review: ‘Three Tall Women’ at the Golden Theatre

Brilliant. Extraordinary. Ingenious. Superb. The best. Yet all adjectives and superlatives pale in comparison with the truly unsurpassed quality of the script, performances, direction, design, and...

Review: ‘Master Harold…and the Boys’ at Round House Theatre

On a rainy afternoon in 1950, two middle-aged black servants slowly scrub the floor and wipe tables in an empty South African tea room. They banter about an upcoming ballroom dance competition and the...

Review: ‘I Did It My Way In Yiddish (In English)’ by Deb Filler at MetroStage

Deb Filler’s love note to the world wends through near-universal musical touchstones, bawdy humor, the joys (or not) of Yiddish, coincidental connections, and the impact of one important musical...

In the Moment: Report on The Kennedy Center’s 2018 Arts Summit

The time is most certainly right for the arts to be disruptive; to assert and insert itself in national discussions about social justice and inclusion. Turbulent times call out for the arts–not merely...

Review: ‘SOON’ at The Highwood Theatre

Depending on whom you ask, climate change is either ongoing, its devastating progression towards the inevitable oblivion of life on Earth all but inarguable, or a hoax perpetrated by the ignorant or...

Review: ‘Hoodoo Love’ at Arena Players

Katori Hall’s Hoodoo Love is like a three-hour, heartache-filled blues song. Set in Memphis in the 1930s, the memories of slavery still linger and the reality of life in the south for African...

Review: ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ at Constellation Theatre Company

With admirable nerve and imagination, Constellation Theatre Company has mounted an endlessly inventive production of a work by a playwright who dares us to enjoy him. Bertolt Brecht wrote plays to...

Review: ‘En el tiempo de las mariposas’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

The play En el tiempo de las mariposas (In the Time of the Butterflies), making its D.C. debut at GALA Hispanic Theatre, tells one of the most inspiring and heart-wrenching stories to come out of the...

Review: ‘Shear Madness’ at The Kennedy Center’s Theatre Lab

Let’s face it: things have been a little stressful lately. Everywhere we turn we see violence, corruption, investigations, allegations. Shear Madness, a long-running (over 13,200 performances and...

Review: ‘Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

By Andy Arnold If you enter Greenbelt Arts Center expecting Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery to focus on Holmes and Watson, you will be disappointed. What you will find instead is a...

Review: ‘A Chorus Line’ at Compass Rose Theater

Compass Rose Theater’s production of A Chorus Line is an entertaining spectacle that also leaves audiences thinking. With music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James...

Review: ‘10x10x10’: A Ten-Minute Play Festival at Fells Point Corner Theatre

In its sixth year, Fells Point Corner Theatre’s 10x10x10, a collection of 10-minute plays by Baltimore-DC area playwrights, is a feast for theater lovers. The setup of this must-see show is ten...

Review: ‘Use All Available Doors’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Dupont Underground

Sherry (Lady Davonne), a WMATA train driver, starts her day at Shady Grove in Derwood, MD. She has a word with the lead car of her train, “Forty-Twenty”: a soon to be decommissioned vehicle which she...

Review: ‘Fly By Night’ at 1st Stage

Recipe for a vexing evening of musical theater: combine cuteness, sweetness, quirkiness, clever and funny dialogue, and a sprinkling of amusing and melodic songs. Add a heavy dose of sentimentality....

Review: ‘The Mountaintop’ by L.A. Theatre Works at George Mason University

On April 3, 1968, a rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee, in a dingy hotel, there was a man working on a speech. This man had missed birthdays and anniversaries in pursuit of his dream. He was a man who...

Review: ‘The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence’ at Silver Spring Stage

Thematically, The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence is simple and relevant: the frightening trend toward rejecting selfless, mutual, unconditional love with a person in favor of a mechanical...

Review: ‘Luzia’ at Cirque du Soleil in Tysons

For a Cirque-head such as myself, anticipation of a new Cirque du Soleil show coming to town kicked in months ago. It had been two long years since Cirque last pitched its Big Top here, with Kurios –...

Review: ‘Robin Hood’ at Imagination Stage

Long live King Richard! Robin Hood (Chris Dinolfo) and his Merry Men (Jon Jon Johnson, Jason B. McIntosh, Nick DePinto) embark on their quest to steal from the rich, give to the poor, and join (not...

Review: ‘Sweet Charity’ by The Heritage Players

The minute I walked in the joint, I could see this would be a play of distinction. Indeed, a high kicking, rollicking good time at the 1960s Fandango Ballroom was had by all on the opening night of...

Review: ‘Border’ by Jane Franklin Dance at Theatre on the Run

Using interviews of real community members wanting to live a full life here in America as her source of inspiration, Jane Franklin and her eponymous dance company have developed an engaging evening...

Review: ‘Sweeney Todd’ by The Arlington Players

Stephen Sondheim himself felt some uncertainty in categorizing Sweeney Todd, the 1979 show that many regard as the masterpiece of his long and spectacular career. In his annotated book of lyrics,...

Review: ‘Motown the Musical’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

The fun of seeing Motown the Musical starts a few hours before leaving for the theater. Just the promise of that glorious oldies playlist is like inner ear foreplay. There isn’t much that puts a...

In the Moment: ‘John’ at Signature Theatre

Taking in Annie Baker’s John at Signature Theatre gives me the rare opportunity to use a word I have always wanted to, but haven’t before–the word “anhedonia.” Yes, Baker’s play John has a full share...

Review: ‘John’ at Signature Theatre

An eerie sense of the supernatural combined with an almost ritualistic sense of the minutiae of daily living combine to form the aesthetic ambiance of playwright Annie Baker’s haunting and disarming...

Review: ‘Children of a Lesser God’ at Studio 54

When Mark Medoff‘s award-winning play Children of a Lesser God premiered on Broadway in 1980, followed by the highly-lauded film adaptation in 1986, it provided groundbreaking insights into the need...

Review: ‘Between the World and Me’ at The Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, Samori, was 15 when his father wrote a book addressed to him, Between the World and Me. Before that book won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, it was a...

Review: ‘The Front Page’ by Providence Players

There are few perfect things in life, let alone in theater. But Providence Players’ The Front Page comes darn close. Every aspect of the production is first-rate. The newspaper world created for this...

Review: ‘Roz and Ray’ at Theater J

Fierce. No word short of that can fairly describe the characters’ commitment to their consuming passions, and the actors’ commitment to their roles, in Theater J’s harrowing production of Karen...

Putting It Together – ‘Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,’ by Todd S. Purdum (Book Review)

How do you solve a problem like translating music into words? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Music is a gossamer thing, difficult to pin down with language. As the critic Winthrop Sargeant...

Review: ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ at Spotlighters Theatre

By Kylie Miller Spotlighters Theatre is halfway through their run of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, a musical comedy with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts. This...

Report: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids Perform at the Library of Congress

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 student musicians in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program performed at Library of Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium as a part of a collaboration with the Library....

Review: ‘Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre)’ at American University’s Greenberg Theatre

Though he had a wide stylistic range, in America, Federico García Lorca’s fame as a playwright is mostly limited to his rural tragedy, Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) which was originally staged in...

In the Moment: Nicole Burton, Pipeline Playwright discusses upcoming MetroStage reading

Pipeline Playwrights, the Northern Virginia-based collective of accomplished women playwrights who support productions that explore the variety of women’s experiences, continues its new series of play...

Review: ‘Cabaret Noir’ by Happenstance Theater

The phrase “film noir” evokes both a particular sub-genre of the crime film as well as a particular era. Inspired by the moody expressionist dramas of the silent era that had come to an end a...

Review: ‘Honey’ by Nameless Theater

“Clutch my pearls!” one audience member remarks toward the end of Nameless Theater’s motel-room drama, Honey, which has at least three throat-clutching twists during its less than 30-minute run time....

In the Moment: ‘Florida’ from UrbanArias at Atlas Performing Arts Center

Life’s a bitch especially for those struggling with the angst of life — in this particular case, the characters of the world premiere opera Florida from UrbanArias. Now please don’t stop reading...

Review: ‘She Kills Monsters’ at Green Globe Theatre

Eighties and Nineties nostalgia is big right now. Adults newish to marriage and mortgages and over the hump of deciding to spend the $10 in their wallet on laundry or beer are starting to daydream...

Review: Molière’s ‘Don Juan’ by Taffety Punk Theatre Company

There is always a good reason to see Tonya Beckman perform, and she is a superb Don Juan. Her rendition of the famous seducer is beguiling but at the same time horrifying, like watching a particularly...

Review: ‘Florida’ by UrbanArias

In the second production of their 2017-2018 season, UrbanArias brings the world premiere of Florida to the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Based partly on true events, Florida follows the 16-year-old...

Review: ‘Mean Girls’ at the August Wilson Theatre

If you’ve ever witnessed (or worse yet, experienced, encouraged, or participated in) the “girl-on-girl crime” of high-school cliques, malicious gossip, fierce competitiveness, and vicious...

Review: ‘Wicked Frozen’ at St. Luke’s Theatre

What do you get when you cross the super-popular hits Wicked and Frozen with a Boston accent? The laugh-out-loud musical parody Wicked Frozen, presented by John Lant and making its Off-Broadway debut...

Review: ‘Top and Bottom’ at Rainbow Theatre Project

Top and Bottom— written by Kevin Michael West, directed by Christopher Janson and produced by the Rainbow Theatre Project— is a unique comedy exploring the ways in which people express themselves via...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Vagabond Players

The opening night performance of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by the Vagabond Players in America’s oldest continuously operating theater in historic Fells Point turned out to be a festive...

Review: ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood [Symphonic Metal Version]’ by Landless Theatre Company

The 1986 Tony Award best musical winner is playing in DC, and it has one different detail from any other production you’ve ever seen before: a symphonic metal score. Created by Landless Theatre...

Review: ‘Lucky Stiff’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis

Colonial Players’ production of Lucky Stiff is a fun romp of a musical. First performed in 1988, with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, this production, directed by Eric...

Review: ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

There are potholes in the road not taken. So discover many of the characters in Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, now being presented by the Maryland Ensemble Theater (MET) in Frederick,...

Review: ‘Paper Dolls’ at Mosaic Theater Company

From start to finish, Paper Dolls is a wildly entertaining and unapologetic dramedy filled with biting contradictions, provocative imagery, and endearing characters that you can’t help but root for....

Review: ‘Underground Railroad Game’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

How can you unpack a show with as many racial, sexual, and historical bombshells as Underground Railroad Game? The conceit of the play (2017 Obie Award Winner, Best New American Theatre Work) is an...