Reviews

Review: ‘White’ at Theatre Horizon

White is pure gold. James Ijames’ audacious and hilarious new play takes on racism, sexism, and a handful of other isms. It’s a comedy, but its message is serious. It’s bold, outlandish, insightful,...

Review: ‘Master Class’ at MetroStage

Welcome to the rehearsal hall. You are a student at a prestigious school for the performing arts. You have mastered your technique, but you are young. You have not thought through the circumstances,...

Review: ‘The Arsonists’ at Azuka Theatre

Haunting and primal, Azuka Theatre’s rolling world premiere of The Arsonists, the final installment in Philadelphia playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger’s “Southern Gothic Trilogy” (following the terrible...

Review: ‘5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche’ at Monumental Theatre Company

Much to my tickled surprise, last night I found myself shouting out that I am a lesbian—I along with an entire audience in Lab One at The Atlas Performing Arts Center! Really, all of us, about equally...

Review: ‘Madame Butterfly’ at The Kennedy Center

Gorgeous, ravishing arias by the legendary Puccini, an ethereally beautiful performance by Soprano Ermonela Jaho as Cio-Cio San (Butterfly), and an exceptionally ingenious concept and stage design by...

Report: CityDance’s 2017 DREAMscape Benefit Gala

Moments into a dimmed house at the historic Lincoln Theatre, an off-stage voice over a loudspeaker made a promise to a buzzing audience: “We’re going to light up the night sky, so dance!” CityDance’s...

Review: ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ at South Camden Theatre Company

A sensitive young man struggles with his heritage as he tries to make his own mark on the world. A predictable story, you might say? Well, My Name is Asher Lev is anything but predictable, and...

Review: ‘Hairspray JR.’ at the Bowie Community Theatre Youth Theatre Program by Sharon Preator

Tracy Turnblad reminds us that “You gotta think big to be big” as Bowie Community Theatre (“BCT”) delivered a big success with Hairspray JR. for their Youth Theatre Program’s first production. This...

Review: ‘Laura Bush Killed a Guy’ at The Klunch

I didn’t know that Laura Bush had killed a guy. It really had never crossed my mind. Well, after seeing Ian Allen’s Laura Bush Killed a Guy, now playing at the Klunch at Caos on F Street (according to...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Presents Leonard Bernstein’s First Major Composition

Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 was the major undertaking at The Philadelphia Orchestra’s concerts of May 3, 5 and 6, 2017. Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the piece as a prelude to a year-long...

Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at the Golden Theatre

In 1982 a distinguished group of Broadway pros, including Hal Prince, Betty Comden and Aldolph Green, came up with what was then thought to be a misbegotten idea: what happened to Nora Helmer after...

Review: ‘Private Lives’ at Reston Community Players

Some plays are like peeping through your eye doctor’s phoropter — layer upon layer of filters. Say, a playwright of the Roaring Twenties borrows a style of the 1660s English Restoration period that...

Review: ‘The White Devil’ at the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective

In the fall of 2010, the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective – the city’s critically-acclaimed purveyor of rarely-performed classics – burst onto the scene at the historic Broad Street Ministry and...

Review: ‘Evita’ at St. Mark’s Players

The classic musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Evita comes to life again with the latest production at St. Mark’s Players. The revival comes at a perfect time, as the production delves into the flawed...

ENDS TONIGHT: Knee Plays – ‘The Cobweb’ by Lucia Treasure and ‘They Were the Ocean’ by Evan Moritz

The Cobweb “I’m really scared of forgetting things” When I was four or five years old, my brother climbed me up to a high branch in the apple tree in our back yard. Then he left me there. A while...

Review: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

H.M.S. Pinafore, Gilbert and Sullivan’s famous operetta, directed by Michael Hartsfield and produced by Maureen Rogers, opened on April 28, 2017 at the Laurel Mill Playhouse on Main Street in historic...

Review: ‘Guys and Dolls’ at Fairfax High School

Fairfax High School Theatre’s production of Guys and Dolls had the audience roaring with laughter. Set in 1930’s New York, the show was based on short stories by Damon Runyon about the gangsters and...

Review: ‘Fronteras: A Door in the Desert’ by Almanac Dance Circus Theatre at FringeArts

I held my breath in glorious anticipation at several instances during Almanac Dance Circus Theatre’s captivating show Fronteras: A Door in the Desert. A Door in the Desert is the second part of...

Review: ‘Happy Birthday’ at 1812 Productions

Laughter broke out in the jam-packed theatre even before the first pratfall, which then only served to fan the funniness. Watching Beverly Cross’ adaption of Marc Camoletti’s Happy Birthday, as...

Review: The 22nd Annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival: Abbey Lincoln Tribute at The Kennedy Center

The music of Abbey Lincoln was The Kennedy Center’s choice for its 22nd Annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival. Showcasing the best in old and new jazz artistry, this year’s tribute presented Jazz...

Review: ‘Dancing at Midnight’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Some plays invite audiences to ask themselves vexing questions: What is the meaning of life? How long is a life well-lived? As King Solomon wrote in the Old Testament: I have seen all the things that...

Josh Hitchens, Diane Richardson, Molly Edelman, and Megan Edelman Discuss ‘Anne of Green Gables’ and Victorian Theatre at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion

The latest offering in Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion’s popular Victorian Theatre presentations is a new interpretation of Anne of Green Gables, playing for four performances this weekend in the...

Review: ‘Bandstand’ at the Bernard F. Jacobs Theatre

Eleven new musicals have opened since War Paint and here comes the last before the April 30th deadline for Tony Nomination. It’s called Bandstand and it didn’t offer us Bette Midler or Patti LuPone or...

Review: ‘Marry Harry’ at The York Theatre Company

If you’re in the mood for some pure light-hearted entertainment, Marry Harry, now making its Off-Broadway debut in a limited engagement with The York Theatre Company, is a delightful new musical...

Review: ‘Anastasia’ at the Broadhurst Theatre

As the theatre season races to the end of its nomination deadline for the Tony Awards, musical shows are exploding all over the place. We’ve had half a dozen in the last two weeks, and Anastasia...

Review: ‘Quatuor Danel’ at the Phillips Collection

Complex 20th century “classical music,” or more properly serious art music as opposed to various forms of popular music, seems to be a gamble. It’s never just as interesting to an audience as...

Review: ‘Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs’ at The Kennedy Center

Wearing his heart on his sleeve throughout, entertainer extraordinaire Alan Cumming (Tony-award winner for Cabaret, regular on the hit television series The Good Wife, concert and recording star,...

Review: ‘The Jungle Book’ at Imagination Stage

Imagination Stage presents The Jungle Book, based on the classic story by Rudyard Kipling and adapted for the stage by Greg Banks. Janet Stanford directs a small cast of five in this production who,...

Review: ‘Macbeth’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Blood will have blood—so go the grim words of Macbeth as it dawns on him that murder is not as simple as he once thought. When it comes to battling and bloodshed, Shakespeare Theatre Company’s...

Review: ‘Russians in Paris’ at the Russian Chamber Art Society

The French and the Russians evoke very different images in the American mind, but they have one thing in common: an affinity for each other’s culture. Many Russian writers and composers lived a good...

Joel Markowitz’s Acceptance Speech Upon Receiving the Gary Maker Award

I am very honored to receive the Gary Maker Award, and I want to thank the committee for this incredible Lifetime Award. Gary Maker was such a mensch and he fought a dreadful disease with such courage...

Review: ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ at Opera Philadelphia by Corey Cohen

Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) is such a perfect amalgam of comedy and pathos that audiences will cheer even a flawed performance of it. It’s hard to get everything right, with...

DC Favorites ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ and ‘Come From Away’ Vie for Best Musical as the 2017 Tony Award Nominations Are Announced

DC Mega-hits Dear Evan Hansen and Come From Away, which wowed audiences during their sold out runs at Arena Stage and Ford’s Theatre, will be vying for Best Musical, as the 207 were Tony Award...

Review: ‘Baghdaddy’ at St. Luke’s Theater

“Alternative facts” and “fake news” are nothing new with the current presidency; they led to the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq and its still-ongoing dire consequences....

Review: ‘Building the Wall’ at Forum Theatre

The dystopia delineated in Building the Wall is predicted by the playwright, Robert Schenkkan, to happen in America very soon. By the time the play is set, in the year 2019, the two characters are...

Review: ‘The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary’ at Curio Theatre Company

How do you turn one of literature’s greatest tragedies into a raucous comedy? Very carefully. I read Madame Bovary in high school, and while it’s been (ahem) a few decades since I’ve thought of it in...

Review: [title of show] at Fells Point Corner Theatre

When it comes to musical theatre, there are two types of people: those who hate it and those who are obsessed with it. There is no in-between. And those obsessives, those for whom musicals are like...

Review: ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre

The night I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the new musical based on Roald Dahl’s novel, the theatre was packed with moms and dads with little kids in tow. All of them seemed to know the story...

Review: ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at Exclamation Theater

The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, one that has spurred argument and discord for over 400 years. Is the play as misogynistic as it often appears, or is its theme...

Review: ‘Billy Elliot the Musical’ at West Potomac High School’s Beyond the Page Theatre Company

West Potomac High School’s Beyond the Page Theatre Company gave us the “old razzle dazzle” in their production of Billy Elliot the Musical, with music by Elton John, and the book and lyrics by Lee...

Review: ‘Forgotten Kingdoms’ at Rorschach Theatre

There are mysteries of belief and faith beneath this fascinating parable of a play, roiling like the seawater that churns below the wooden house where its action takes place. This house is built on...

Review: ‘Passion & Struggle’ at The In Series

Poetry can be the seed of music, and music the seed of love. Music may even be used as a form of protest—and ultimately a promoter of peace. This is evidenced by the music of composers and performers...

Review: NSO Pops: LeAnn Rimes at The Kennedy Center

International multi-platinum selling acclaimed singer and ASCAP award-winning songwriter LeAnn Rimes returned to DC Friday night, joining the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) at The Kennedy Center...

Review: ‘Grey Gardens’ at the Old Opera House

An unusual choice and subject matter for a musical, Grey Gardens tells the story of the dysfunctional relationship between mother Edith Bouvier Beale and daughter “Little” Edie Beale. The two women...

Review: ‘Dorian’s Closet’ at Rep Stage

Strong and dramatic – the two words that continuously came to my mind as I watched Dorian’s Closet at Rep Stage last night. This production is the world premiere of the new musical based on the life...

Review: ‘Adam & Anthony Live’ at Strathmore

Suppose your two best friends were really talented and you invited them over to sing and tell stories and a few of your other friends found out and showed up to listen and it turned out to be a really...

Review: ‘Swallow’ at Inis Nua Theatre Company

Swallow, by Scottish playwright Stef Smith, was first seen at the Edinburgh Festival in 2015. This American premiere is produced by Inis Nua Theatre Company (which specializes in works from England,...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Presents The Rachmaninoff Festival

During his lifetime, Sergei Rachmaninoff was more famous as a pianist than as a composer. Logically, therefore, The Philadelphia Orchestra’s current Rachmaninoff Festival is concentrating on the...

Review: ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ at the City of Fairfax Theatre Company

There’s the daily ordeal of truth, imaginary facts, and shifting identities. There is wealth and privilege and assumptions based on hearsay, without understanding. Within all of this lies the...

Review: ‘crazy beautiful’ at FringeArts

How are dances created? What might inspire a choreographer? Specifically, how does Tania Isaac develop a dance? What role does the viewer have in it all? These are some of the questions that come to...