Reviews

Review: ‘Dial ‘M’ for Murder’ at Sandy Spring Theatre Group by Robin Lynch

Now playing at the Kentland’s Arts Barn, Dial ‘M’ For Murder by the Sandy Spring Theatre Group has a lot to offer those who enjoy a mystery-thriller. First of all, it’s a really good play (that always...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Exit Carolyn’

I love Fringe. And like many theatergoers, I head off each day with tolerance and hope. The tolerance is for shows that are long on ambition, and the hope is for something more. Imagine my surprise at...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘To Be or Not To Be In Love – That Is The Question?’

Sitting in the audience of To Be or Not To Be In Love – That Is The Question?, a one-woman cabaret starring writer-choreographer Beverly Merella, might be the modern equivalent of attending a Florence...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Baltimore Shakespeare Factory

Sitting outdoors is probably the best venue to watch Shakespeare, and watching a production in July of his classic comedy A Midsummers Night’s Dream under the direction of Tom Delise is the ultimate...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Release: A Rock Opera’

An exciting aspect of CapFringe is getting a sneak peek at a new show in the first stage of development. Such is the case with DC Dogs’ Release: A Rock Opera, now playing at the Gallaudet University...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Tiresias’ Tits’

Tiresias’ Tits is a self-described satirical, surreal, burlesque (fun fact – the author of the ur-source material, The Breasts of Tiresias, Guillaume Apollinaire, is responsible for giving us the word...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Just Like a Woman’

The tagline for Larry E. Blossom’s latest Capital Fringe offering, Just Like A Woman, is “Will Trans Trump Fear in These Troubled Times?” Unfortunately, neither the issues of transphobia nor the...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Mr. Taken’

Watching a great sex comedy provides some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Watching a bad sex comedy is painfully awkward and embarrassing. The creative team behind Mr. Taken has...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Dream Dancer’

Magical realism meets morality play with a dash of sideshow in The Dream Dancer, an entrancing journey through time at this year’s Fringe. If magic, hypnosis, and feminism tickle your fancy, then this...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Return to the Scene of the Crime’

An autobiographical one-man show about performing a different autobiographical one-man show? It sounds like the ultimate Fringe Festival cliché. But despite its conceit, David Kleinberg’s Return to...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘MacBheatha’

From the clear and driving melody of Shakespeare’s action-packed hit, MacBheatha pulls out jazzy tangents to the point of what is for some cacophony and others ecstasy. As all good art has, this...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘8 Bit Circus S*it’

8 Bit Circus Sh*t’s two acts are almost as different as fire and ice. Both are video game-inspired displays of fire circus tricks, but vary greatly in excitement and accessibility. Act I takes its...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘J-Swizzle’s (and D-Man’s) Epic Awesome Swaggy Broventure for Sweet Rhymes’

Ah, to be thirteen again- the age full of equal parts hubris and insecurity. Such are the epic struggles of two teenage would-be rappers in this funny new piece by Emma Choi, herself a senior at...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Not Quite: Asian American by Law, Asian Woman by Desire’

See this show. Stop reading this review, click this hyperlink, buy a ticket, and see it. Don’t want to go alone? I’ll see it with you. We’ve never met before? Who cares. I’m your new best friend for...

Review: ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ at The Hub Theatre

Set in a fictionalized American magical kingdom, The Happiest Place on Earth, now playing at Hub Theatre, is a wonderfully bittersweet family saga that actor Tia Shearer crushes in her solo...

Review: ‘2017 Summer One-Act Bonanza’ at Old Academy Players

Ten-minute plays are a modern phenomenon. Some critics refer to them as “theatrical fast food” or “audience sound-bites” but this type of play demands a writer who can present exciting ideas in the...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Ghouls’

There is a moment in Sean Surla’s one-woman piece, Ghouls, where Emel Haddad – Surla’s stand-in for herself, and an extraordinarily generous actress – describes driving to the top of Pike’s Peak with...

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ at Spotlighters Theatre

The success of any production of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s Spring Awakening rests on the ability to find harmony between the two dichotomous elements of setting and song. The musical is set in...

Review: ‘Fabulation or the Re-education of Undine’ at Port City Playhouse

Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation or the Re-education of Undine is an outrageously hilarious romp into the fabulated life of Undine Barnes Callas, a feisty, successful African American woman whose comeuppance...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hexagon 2017: Let Freedom Zing’

Described as “D.C.’s only all-original political satirical musical comedy troupe,” Hexagon gives a musical zing to the political madness of the past year. Now in its 62nd year, Hexagon brings its...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Ladies in Waiting: The Judgement of Henry VIII’

Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived. What a clever mnemonic device to track the tragic lives of Henry VIII’s many wives. And this play will not let you forget it. It has a simple...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Words She Gave Me’

The Words She Gave Me, Solia Bickersteth’s ambitious multimedia project, is a bighearted and moving exploration of how African-American women have shaped one another’s concept of womanhood. Sisterhood...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Last Ditch Playlist’

The unofficial rules for crafting a successful play also tend to apply to compiling the perfect mixtape: tell a compelling story, know your audience but keep them guessing, set a tone, stick to your...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Life, Death & Everything In-Between’

Large swatches of fabric move time forward or weave through space. The bold colors catch the eye. Confrontational dialogue sets characters in opposition while bodies remain static or surge forward...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Abortion Road Trip’

Abortion Road Trip tells the story of three women in a cab headed to New Mexico from Texas for an abortion. In this reviewer’s experience, shows covering the oh-so-taboo topic tend to be heavy handed,...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Blind’

Against a backdrop of trendy dramedies and raunchy musicals, the Wheel Theatre Company’s The Blind leads its audience to a cold, dark forest a century old. Your experience depends on how far you are...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Blue Over You’

It’s winter in Evanston, Illinois, and a woman has gone missing. Her name is Mitzi, and beyond that we know just a scant few details: she works as an Administrator, is unafraid of bumble bees,...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Lazarus’

The notion that medical technology will one day enable human beings to live indefinitely is not just science fiction. Preventing the aging process (or “ending aging”) is an actual field of scientific...

Review: ‘1984’ at the Hudson Theatre

One of the most fascinating items on the Broadway scene is the current production of a British import, 1984. Co-adapted from the 1949 novel of George Orwell by Duncan Macmillan and Robert Icke, it...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Caveat’

Caveat (written and directed by Ben Lockshin and playing at Gallaudet University’s Eastman Studio Theater) is a “One’s-a” show, where each character is an idea of a person more than an actual person....

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Four Broke Guys: LIVE!’

Four Broke Guys: LIVE! is classified as a comedy, but don’t expect mere fluff or pratfalls from this one-man show. Actor and playwright J. Shawn Durham’s sequence of four monologues from four separate...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘I’m Margaret Thatcher, I Is!’

This show is Art with a capital “A”. It is awe-inspiring. It is life-changing. As the actors inform us in the prologue, it may, in fact, be “the most important piece of theatre you will ever...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Constructive Fictions’

Was ever a jailed sex offender more self-righteous and self-pitying than Rabbi Barry Freundel in this brilliantly disturbing new play by A. J. Campbell? Were ever such a predator’s’ victims—in...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Quantum Suicide: A Talk by Professor Sophie Miller’

You don’t have to understand quantum mechanics – or even elementary physics – to follow Quantum Suicide: A Talk by Professor Sophie Miller, the one woman show now enjoying its first Fringe production...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Morningstar’

Morningstar is a small chamber drama playing in the basement of Shopkeeper’s on Florida Ave, (a venue whose old wooden floors add quite a bit of natural folly to the performance, some useful, though...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Wit & Wrath: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker’

Dorothy Parker claimed, famously, that she was “just a little Jewish girl, trying to be cute.” In fact, she was a legendary wit; the first female drama critic in America; and a successful writer of...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Nevertheless, She Persisted’

Nevertheless, She Persisted takes the pulse of the American landscape before and after the November 2016 election, offering a moving compendium of raw emotion, personal drama, and flickering hope....

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Thomas Jefferson Hoochie-Coochie Man’

With a breezy “Hi, y’all!” Clyde Ensslin welcomes us to the complicated story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, as told by none other than Big Bill Clinton himself. It’s a chance to relax, enjoy,...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Mixed Blessings’

There are certain topics that one avoids on first dates. Like race, politics, religion, Moby Dick, your ex. Mixed Blessings is the story of how these topics can make a first date go spectacularly...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Ready to Serve: Remember the Nurses’

Stories of war wounded told from the point of view of military medics—those who try to save lives and bag the bodies of the ones they can’t—give glimpses into the bravery and heroism of the fighting...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘HOWL: In the Time of Trump’

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. But enough about how my closest...

Review: ‘Marvin’s Room’ at Roundabout Theatre Company

Scott McPherson wrote Marvin’s Room, a play about illness, family ties, and death when he was just a lad of 30. As a gay man, he was of course aware of the AIDS epidemic that had been ravaging the gay...

Review: ‘Of Human Bondage’ at Soulpepper on 42nd Street

The first-ever stage adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, written by Vern Thiessen and directed by Albert Schultz for Canada’s Soulpepper Theatre Company, is also the recipient of the...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Poetry Cabaret’

This isn’t your normal poetry reading. Those words, spoken by Creator and Director Caleb Beissert as he introduced the Asheville-based Poetry Cabaret Collective, could serve as the tagline for the...

Review: PBS Presents ‘A Capitol Fourth’

Every year PBS puts on a spectacular show with A Capitol Fourth and has the most talented people involved performing and behind the scenes. This year features The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd, Jim...

Review: ‘Napoli, Brooklyn’ at Roundabout Theatre Company

In Napoli, Brooklyn, playing at Roundabout Theatre Company through September 3rd, Playwright Meghan Kennedy gets us started with a mimed prologue in which a family sits at the dining table, enjoying a...

Review: ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ at Silver Spring Stage

One Man, Two Guvnors directed by William T. Fleming and produced by Karen Flemling is now playing at Silver Spring Stage. This play is a British farce by Richard Bean, based on The Servant of Two...

In the Moment: Report on ‘Declassified’ at The Kennedy Center

A hearty bro-hug to The Kennedy Center and to the National Symphony Orchestra’s (NSO) new Artistic Advisor, Ben Folds, for having the joint jumping at the recent late night Declassified event. It was...

Review: ‘Godspell’ at Infinity Theatre Company

The early 1970s gave us three Bible-themed musicals: Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell (currently in a production directed by Alan Ostroff at Infinity Theatre Company in Annapolis), as well as Andrew Lloyd...

Review: ‘On the Town’ at Gateway Playhouse

Smash hit On the Town has sailed into the Gateway Playhouse. Originally opening on Broadway in 1944, this popular musical is also quite well known for its 1949 film version starring Gene Kelly, and...