Reviews

Review: ‘Intimate Apparel’ at Villanova Theatre

Villanova Theatre’s final production for 2017 is Intimate Apparel, directed by Valerie Joyce. The play, penned by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, tells the story of Esther Mills (played by Sisi...

Review: ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ at Sandy Spring Theatre Group

I heard Kris Kringle (played by Harley Venton) tell little Susan Walker (Leah Packer): “…Imagination is a place all by itself. Now, you’ve heard of the French nation? … And the British nation? … Well,...

Review: Mike Daisey’s ‘This Is Not Normal’ at Philadelphia Theatre Company

It has been exactly one year since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. In that year, countless artists, performers, actors, and professionals have found various forms of...

Review: Verdi’s ‘Il Trovatore’ by the Academy of Vocal Arts

Verdi’s Il Trovatore was revived at the Academy of Vocal Arts for the first time in 20 years this week, and it’s a revelation. Filial love inspired Verdi, and that intense emotion is passed on to a...

Review: ‘The Pink Hulk’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

The Pink Hulk, written and performed by Valerie David and directed by Padraic Lillis, with artwork by Rebecca Kalant, is not your typical sad cancer story. After surviving lymphoma and breast cancer,...

Review: ‘Origin of Species’ at The Strand Theater

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun – “Time,” by Pink Floyd...

Review: ‘Top Girls’ at Keegan Theatre

Only the indubitable Caryl Churchill could, in a play about a contemporary dysfunctional British family, give us an opening restaurant scene that includes the likes of: Dull Gret (a warrior peasant...

Review: ‘The Pajama Game’ at Arena Stage

The Pajama Game is a classic, a Broadway mega-hit with themes and tunes as timely as today’s news. The show is currently a wonderfully realized, dynamic production at the Fichandler Theater in the...

Review: Isley Brothers at The Kennedy Center

The Isley Brothers rocked into The Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall this last Sunday night. Though the Hall is still standing, it may never be the same. Since their founding in 1955, the Isley Brothers...

Review: ‘The Gap’ at Azuka Theatre

The Gap, Emma Goidel’s world premiere play for Azuka Theatre, focuses on Lee, a theater practitioner constructing a performance piece about her older sister, Nicole. Nicole claims, with no irony or...

Review: ‘A Short Series of Disagreements Presented Here in Chronological Order’ at Studio Theatre

Daniel Kitson is an acquired taste. In the premiere of his newest one-actor creation, A Short Series of Disagreements Presented Here in Chronological Order at Studio’s Metheny Theatre, Kitson’s stage...

Review: ‘Vicuña & The American Epilogue’ at Mosaic Theater Company

It’s roughly a year ago to the day that Vicuña—a political satire of presidential proportions—had its first showing in Los Angeles. At the time, audiences laughed themselves silly over the idea that a...

Review: ‘A Short Series of Disagreements Presented Here in Chronological Order by Daniel Kitson’ at Studio Theatre

Living in the modern world, we are constantly the bystander to, or observer of, the life events of others. Be they consequential and indelible, or fleeting and forgettable, these seemingly...

Review: ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at the Academy of Music

“I’m not going to take this on the road unless it’s as good as what people have read about, with the same lighting and the same sound. I think that’s my biggest bequest—that I imposed my standards....

Review: ‘The Hairy Ape’ at Spotlighters

The Hairy Ape, written by Eugene O’Neill and directed at Spotlighters Theatre by Sherrionne Brown, is a testament to the human condition. Written in 1922, this expressionist play is about a man that...

Interview: Nine Dollar Bill Theatre, performing ‘THEM’ at the Charm City Fringe Festival Nov 8-12

The Sixth Annual Charm City Fringe Festival, running through November 12 in the Bromo Arts District, has a ton of fantastic stuff happening. One of the things I am most looking forward to is a show...

Review: ‘It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play’ at Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3

Is seeing a Christmas show in November too early for you? When I went to see this show during the first week of November, I couldn’t help thinking of the scene in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving where...

Review: ‘Barriers’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

Barriers, conceived by Trajectory Dance Project, a Baltimore-based dance ensemble, is a beautiful series of five pieces focusing on human connections, and how those connections can break down:...

Review: ‘Clinically Happy’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

“It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.” — Naomi Shihab Nye, “So Much Happiness” If there’s anything other people feel entitled to explain to you, it’s your own happiness: what you...

Review: ‘Jacques Brel: Songs From His World’ at Source Theatre

Time has not dimmed the impact or abundant love for the musical works of Jacques Brel; even now, nearly 40 years since his untimely death. That is apparent from the audience response and my own...

Review: ‘Alcina’ at The Washington National Opera

The Washington National Opera is now offering opera lovers the rare treat of a disarming and whimsical baroque opera, Alcina, by Composer George Frideric Handel. An opera, by default, is often a...

Review: ‘Amok Monologues: All Pucked Up’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

“Everyone has at least one story that can break your heart.” – Claudia Shear, “Blown Sideways Through Life” Fringe festivals offer a bumper crop of one-person shows – monologues that invite us to...

Review: ‘Magnificent Machines & Astonishing Tales’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

Steampunk fans! Your moment has arrived on the deck of a time traveling airship in Night Watch Paradox’s Magnificent Machines & Astonishing Tales. With lead singer Kaya Kismet weaving her spell over...

Review: ‘Godly Chaos’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

Oh, gosh. What to say about Godly Chaos? This show, produced by QuaQuaQua, is highly ambitious. It takes place, primarily, on a large screen where the movements of the artist/actor are captured in a...

Review: ‘A Tuna Christmas’ at Bowie Playhouse

Satire can be both salve and mirror in tough times and in good. A Tuna Christmas, written by Tony-nominated Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard, satirizes small-town American life, leaving few...

Review: ‘Flamenco Extranjero’ at GALA Theatre

When a technician noticed a lighting cue had come later than planned (the dancing took over), Aleksey Kulikov, co-director of Flamenco Aparicio Dance Company, explained to the crew member: “That’s...

Review: ‘Cody Clark: A Different Way of Thinking’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

Cody Clark is obsessed with magic. At the start of Cody Clark: A Different Way of Thinking, the audience is handed a Rubik’s cube to play with. Everyone passes it around and, when Cody comes on stage,...

Review: ’Foodless Food’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

For every good ad there are a hundred bad ones. This is where Foodless Food by BlueShift Dance starts. The projections of advertising for unhealthy food products takes us from the advent of television...

Review: ‘The Big Thank You’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

“and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing” — Anne Sexton, “Welcome Morning” Every day for a year, playwright Alan Kreizenbeck posted...

Review: ‘Don’t Come In’ at Charm City Fringe Festival

It’s best to start with the description of Don’t Come In from the catalog: Love is scary. And it just might kill you. Stubborn lovers Em and Missy, unable to express their true feelings for one...

Review: ‘Blood Wedding’ at The Wilma Theater

The Wilma Theater’s Blood Wedding sets out to overpower you – and it succeeds. From its first moments, when the 11-member ensemble assembles on a long, bare, black platform, stares directly into the...

Review: ‘Little Women’ at Annapolis Opera

Little Women, composed and with a libretto by Mark Adamo and based on the book by Louisa May Alcott, sweeps into the Annapolis Opera with gusto. This opera, directed by Artistic Director and Conductor...

Review: ‘By the Bog of Cats’ at The Irish Heritage Theatre

“To the Bog of Cats I one day will return In mortal form or in ghostly form And I will find you there and there with your sojourn Forever by the Bog of Cats, my darling one.” If there ever was a title...

Review: ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill’ at Rep Stage

It took way too long for Baltimore gal Billie Holiday to make the 20-odd mile trip out to Howard County for a live performance. It was a hard trip, too, judging from the bruised and fragile state we...

Review: ‘As You Like It’ by Delaware Shakespeare – On Tour

In 2016, Delaware Shakespeare began a new program: the Community Tour. This program is a bold initiative, designed to “bring a professional theater production to underserved or non-traditional...

Sixth Annual Charm City Fringe Festival: What to See and Where to See It

The Sixth Annual Charm City Fringe Festival is in full swing! Today alone (11/4/17), there are TEN different shows for you to enjoy. And after that, there are two Fringe After Dark events. Here’s a...

Review: ‘Quartet’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre

Every few weeks we read in the news about the death, at 90+ years, of a beloved celebrity or artist. Someone always asks, “Whatever happened to them? I thought s/he was already dead.” What does happen...

Review: ‘Broken Stones’ at InterAct Theatre Company

Just because someone says it doesn’t make it true. What exactly are truth and reality? Both are subjective and depend on one’s perspective. In the news, there are often many sides to a story. These...

Review: ‘19’ at Through The 4th Wall

The road to freedom is never easy. Often that road is fraught with several steps forward and several steps back. Marginalized groups must face pressures from without and within. The in-workshop,...

Review: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at Vagabond Players

The timing of Vagabond Players’ production of Little Shop of Horrors is fortuitous, opening Halloween weekend when thoughts turn to the spooky and macabre, and running through November 25, before the...

Review: ‘In the Red and Brown Water’ at Howard University

The wonder-filled stories that wend their way through In the Red and Brown Water were located by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney in “the distant present” in a fictional town in Louisiana. But in...

Previewing ‘The Craftsman’ at Lantern Theater Company: An Interview with Artistic Director Charles McMahon and Playwright Bruce Graham

Philadelphia theater-goers have something extra to be thankful for this Thanksgiving month. Bruce Graham’s latest play The Craftsman, commissioned and developed through Lantern Theater Company’s New...

Book Review: ‘A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back’ by David Hallberg

In his stirring autobiography A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back, David Hallberg – a Principal Dancer with the American Ballet Theatre and the first American Principal Dancer with the...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Little Theatre of Alexandria

The Little Theatre of Alexandria’s most recent production, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang, is an interesting look at family dynamics and the lingering effects that being a...

In the Moment: Billie Krishawn and ‘Emilie’ at Avant Bard

Avant Bard’s Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight with Sara Barker in the role of the whip-smart 18th century very real Emilie is a clear knock-out for critics and audiences alike....

Review: The Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival: Andrea Gibson and Amber Tamblyn

Amber Tamblyn and Andrea Gibson were heard loudly and clearly at The Kennedy Center this past weekend. Washington, D.C. and the Terrace Theater welcomed the two poets as part of the Comedy at The...

Review: ‘Mystery School’ at The Edge of the Universe Players 2

We are all connected. There are forces at play in the universe that are not seen, but felt. Within the realm of spiritual consciousness, we find Mystery School, a play by Paul Selig currently on view...

Review: ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ at Kensington Arts Theatre

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’,” wrote poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The themes of “what might have been” and “what if” were prominent in The Bridges...

Review: ‘Lost In Yonkers’ at Peace Mountain Theatre Company

I had a Great Aunt whose fourth floor walk-up apartment was very much on display when I entered the performance space at Har Shalom. I wondered if set designers Maggie Moddig and Steven Leshin had...

Review: Denève Leads French and Russian Music with The Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra concerts on the last weekend of October featured a fascinating match-up of old versus new, and conservative versus radical. It also was divided between French and Russian....