Reviews

New Records: Listening to ‘War Paint’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’

This month we focus on two more shows that opened on Broadway this year and are currently running. War Paint (Ghostlight Records) War Paint is an old-fashioned show, in the best sense of that term....

Review: Silver Spring Stage 2017 One Act Festival, Weekend Two

Silver Spring Stage kicks off its fiftieth season with a festival of one-act plays showcasing homegrown writing and acting talent and the can-do spirit of the best of local theater. Though no stated...

Review: Free For All ‘Othello’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Every great play by Shakespeare takes on altered shades of meanings depending on a production’s directing, design, and acting. That’s a theater truism. Also well-known to practitioners is that...

Review: ‘Appropriate’ at Princeton Summer Theater

In Appropriate, the 2014–2015 Obie Award winner for Best New American Play, playwright (and Princeton alumnus) Branden Jacobs-Jenkins boldly explores family relations, racism, religious bigotry, sex...

Review: ‘Whipping, or The Football Hamlet’ at Longacre Lea

What a rush. DC area playwright Kathleen Akerley has aced her way through the hottest of “au courant” identity politics in her newest work, the penetrating Whipping, or the Football Hamlet. With...

Review: ‘The Nerd’ at Prince George’s Little Theatre at the Bowie Playhouse

Now in its 58th season, The Nerd is Prince George’s Little Theatre’s 192nd production. Scripted by Larry Shue, the zany comedy is directed by John Degnan, a long-time area director and retired NASA...

Review: Silver Spring Stage 2017 One Act Festival

Silver Spring Stage opened its 2017 One-Act Festival which has been part of their season for fifty years. Each weekend several short plays from the past and present are produced. There is usually no...

Review: ‘Bastianello’ and ‘The Juniper Tree’ at The Barns at Wolf Trap

It is not often that a program offers heartfelt imagery that is brilliantly optimistic, and also brings in dark, often sad scenarios. That is the beauty of traditional fairy and folk tales, that there...

Interview: Montana DeBor, Mark Harding, Gwynne Flanagan Cox, and Elise “Teddy” Sipos from Sweet Spot Aerial Production’s ‘Smoky Mirrors’

“My faith is a great weight hung on a small wire.” – Anne Sexton Each performer in Sweet Spot Aerial’s Smoky Mirrors places great faith in materials: fabric, rope, chains, muscle. There’s also a...

‘No Ransom To Be Paid’ at Pangea: An Update on ‘GRINDR: The Opera’ and More with Erik Ransom

Featured this summer in producer Ed Miller’s No Ransom To Be Paid four-part series at Pangea, the presented works of writer/composer/musician/actor Erik Ransom include songs from More Than All the...

Review: Herbie Hancock at The Kennedy Center

Legendary Oscar and multi-Grammy-winning pianist and Kennedy Center Honoree Herbie Hancock solidified his avant-garde artistry on the Concert Hall stage Tuesday night, highlighting “smatterings” of...

Review: ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ featuring Tom Teasley at Constellation Theatre Company

When The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari hit German movie screens in 1920, it baffled and delighted audiences who had primarily been entertaining themselves with annual Film Festivals of Fred Ott’s sneeze and...

Review: ‘A Never-Ending Line’ at The Players Theatre

Conceived by Composer and Director Jaime Lozano as a loving tribute to the women in his life and his matriarchal upbringing, A Never-Ending Line, produced by Maribel Escobosa, Martha Orendain, and...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park

An awful lot goes on in William Shakespeare’s dream play, but here’s all you really have to know. It’s set in Athens at first, later moves into the woods, for that’s where all the dreaming goes on....

Review: ‘Lili Marlene’ at St. Luke’s Theatre

Taking its name from the romantic wartime ballad famously recorded by Marlene Dietrich in 1945, and which, in its earlier German and English versions, had become uniquely popular with both Nazi and...

Review: ‘Big Fish’ at The Keegan Theatre

Family-friendly musicals are relatively rare these days. Family-friendly musicals that have adult themes are even rarer. Big Fish, with book by John August and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, is a...

Review: ‘Gruff!’ at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre

Part of the first Summer Family Theater Festival at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, Gruff!, a co-presentation by Vital Theatre Company and Doppelskope, is everything that great children’s theater should...

Review: ‘A Real Boy’ at 59E59 Theaters

In the world premiere of A Real Boy, presented by Ivy Theatre Company in association with Athena Theatre at 59E59, playwright Stephen Kaplan significantly reimagines Italian writer Carlo Collodi’s...

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ at Wildwood Summer Theatre at the Arts Barn

Spring Awakening (co-created by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik and now playing at the Arts Barn in The Kentlands) has a circular tragedy to it. Teens, struggling through youth and confusion and bodies...

Review: Blondie & Garbage – The Rage and Rapture Tour at Wolf Trap

Despite the torrential downpour Thursday night, Blondie and Garbage devotees came in droves to Wolf Trap, with rain ponchos and umbrellas in hand, to hear two distinctively powerful and iconic...

Review: “The Secret Garden” at Other Voices Theatre

Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s The Secret Garden boasts one of the most gorgeous scores in the history of musical theatre, but is rarely undertaken by community theatre groups due to its musical and...

Review: ‘Lysistrata Jones’ at Red Branch Theatre Company

Red Branch Theatre Company continues to amaze with its 2017 season premiere of the perky and impertinent Lysistrata Jones. Thanks to savvy staging and choreography, this short-lived 2011 Broadway...

Review: ‘Georama’ at the New York Musical Festival

The rise and fall of the largely forgotten 19th-century American artist John Banvard is the subject of Georama, an irresistible bio-musical by West Hyler (book) and Matt Schazt (book, music, and...

Review: ‘Alice and the Book of Wonderland’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Alice and the Book of Wonderland is an entertaining treat for all ages, with delightful acting, colorful costumes, a creative use of technology, excellent...

Interview: Performers from the Upcoming ‘Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed!’ – Part II

Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed! was inspired by James Taylor’s Shocked and Amazed: On and Off the Midway, the world’s leading journal on weirdness in entertainment for over 30...

Review: ‘Legally Blonde’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The Little Theatre of Alexandria (LTA) production of Legally Blonde is a laugh-fest for summer audiences. Gauging from the hoots and cheers of appreciation at the curtain call, this campy musical –...

Review: ‘Anne and Emmett’ at MetroStage

Anne and Emmett, by Janet Langhart Cohen, is a play about an imagined conversation between two figures from history – teenagers, who were the victims of institutional terrorism. MetroStage produced...

Review: ‘The Crucible’ at Princeton Summer Theater

When you enter the home of the Princeton Summer Theater to see The Crucible, you may wonder at first whether you’ve wandered into the right place. After all, Arthur Miller’s legendary play takes place...

Review: Aretha Franklin at Wolf Trap

Last night was a miracle of sorts. The heavy rains forecast to wash out the Aretha Franklin concert at The Filene Center of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts didn’t show up. And,...

Review: ‘Troilus and Cressida’ at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

Since 2011, the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival has presented one play a year in its “Extreme Shakespeare” series. The concept is to try to recreate in part the process believed to have been used in...

Review: ‘King Kirby’ at Off the Quill, Performing at Greenbelt Arts Center

Who could guess that a play about the life of the renowned comic book artist, Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), would be filled with so much humor, pathos and fact-dropping narrative?...

Review: National Theatre Live: ‘Angels in America’ Part Two in HD

Tony Kushner divided his epic play, Angels in America, into two parts. The second half, subtitled Perestroika, was beamed live to cinemas worldwide on July 27 from London’s National Theatre where it’s...

Review: ‘Wicked’ at the Academy of Music

From its origins in L. Frank Baum’s1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to its adaptation in MGM’s blockbuster 1939 film The Wizard of Oz to its annual TV broadcast on CBS beginning in 1956 (which...

Review: ‘Seussical The Musical’ at Wildwood Summer Theatre

Hurry to see Seussical the Musical! This may be one of our area’s most popular theatrical events in no small part because it invites performers of all ages. Yet this particular performance stands out...

Review: ‘Rabbit Hole’ at Theater With a View

Warning: You don’t have much time left! Nearly one third of Theater With a View’s performances of Rabbit Hole have been rained out (including the earlier one I was supposed to attend.) There are very...

Review: ‘Coriolanus’ at Shakespeare in Clark Park

Coriolanus has a reputation for being one of Shakespeare’s least accessible plays. Its title character, a Roman warrior turned reluctant politician, can be hard to get a bead on – and hard to root...

Review: ‘Scarborough Fair: A Tribute to Simon & Garfunkel’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre

Whenever a musical group has the name “brothers” or “sisters” (as in “Smothers” or “Andrews”) you can expect a tight, controlled sound with seamlessly blended harmonies. Close harmony (even if it’s...

Review: National Theatre Live: ‘Angels in America’ Part One in HD

Angels in America remains a sad, hilarious, hallucinogenic theatrical achievement. The juxtaposition of those seemingly-opposite qualities is what makes the play memorable. It has even greater impact...

Review: ‘A Grand Night for Singing’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II have been called the greatest writing partnership of the 20th century. Their work spans from 1943 to 1959 and includes some of the most...

Review: ‘Moon over Buffalo’ at People’s Light

Now in production at People’s Light, Ken Ludwig’s Moon over Buffalo, directed by Pete Pryor, contains all the expected elements of a farce: there’s mistaken identity; insult humor; impassioned...

Deb Miller’s Top Picks for the ‘2017 Philadelphia Fringe Festival’

From antiquity to the present, tragedy and drama to absurdism and comedy, masterpieces by classic playwrights to experimental ensemble-devised works by local artists, the 2017 Philadelphia Fringe...

2017 Capital Fringe Announces 5 Best of Festival Awards and 16 Show Extensions

Out of nearly 90 shows in this year’s Capital Fringe Festival, 5 captured Audience Awards, as announced Monday, July 24. And a total of 16 shows got coveted extensions because they became so popular....

Review: ‘Thurgood’ at The Olney Theatre Center

Thurgood, a one-man-show by George Stevens, Jr., is playing at the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at the Olney Theatre Center in Olney. The play is a about the late Supreme Court Justice and respected...

Review: ‘Guys and Dolls’ at Bucks County Playhouse

Guys and Dolls is a paragon of American musical theater. Considering its blend of interesting characters, clever story and glorious songs by Frank Loesser, it deserves more frequent revivals on...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Cockpit in Court

This hot, summery production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (VSMS), a production of Cockpit in Court Summer Theatre, is a spicy show you definitely want to… Chekhov… your bucket list. This...

Review: ‘Nana’s Naughty Knickers’ at Bowie Community Theatre

In Bowie Community Theatre’s latest offering, Nana’s Naughty Knickers, Sylvia Charles (Shelley Rochester) is a modern-day New York widow who has a pretty big secret. When her granddaughter Bridget...

Review: ‘As You Like It’ at The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, As You Like It is filled with rich, quotable language. (This is the one with the “All the world’s a stage” speech.) But Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s new...

Review: ‘The King and I’ at The Kennedy Center

Swapping one beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein’s national tour production for another, the Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center Theater revival of The King and I made its Washington, D.C. premiere at The...

Review: ‘Bonnie & Clyde The Musical’ at Monumental Theatre Company at the Ainslie Arts Center

The history of Bonnie and Clyde is well-known. Lovers, living a life of crime. Since their infamous streak of robberies and murders, which ended with the two being killed in an ambush on May 23, 1934,...

Review: ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ at City of Fairfax Theatre Company

For those who love musical theatre, there is something amazing going on in Fairfax, Virginia this weekend and next, as the City of Fairfax Theatre Company and Truro Anglican Church present Joseph and...