Reviews

Review: ‘Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them’ at Iron Crow Theatre

The Kids Are Alright Mom’s dead. Dad is never there. What happens when kids are left – virtually abandoned by the adults in their lives – to fend for themselves? In Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them...

The League of Professional Theatre Women’s 2017 Awards Celebration and Big Mingle

Founded in 1981, the mission of the League of Professional Theatre Women, a non-profit advocacy organization headquartered in New York City, is to promote increased opportunities, greater visibility,...

Review: ‘Sweat’ at Studio 54

It took a while, but the Oregon Shakespeare Festival helped by staging this remarkable play in the summer of 2014. It caused enough of a stir for the Public Theatre in New York to pick it up for a run...

Review: ’10x10x10′ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

There is a profound depth of directing and acting talent in the Baltimore-Washington area. Much of that talent was on display at 10x10x10, a collection of plays by area playwrights, which is playing...

Review: ‘Midwestern Gothic’ at Signature Theatre

A native Midwesterner myself, I was eager to see Midwestern Gothic, Signature Theatre’s new show that is being touted as Misery meets Fargo, a thriller musical in the vein of Sweeney Todd set “in the...

Review: ‘Mamma Mia!’ at Westchester Broadway Theatre

Westchester Broadway Theatre is currently delighting audiences with a dazzling performance of Mamma Mia! This is their 200th production and is well worthy of the honor. From the beautiful peaceful...

Review: ‘Anna’ at EgoPo Classic Theater

EgoPo Classic Theater presents the world premiere of Anna as the final work in its Russian Masters Festival. Anna adapts the story of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina with lots of humor and physicality....

Review: ‘Pike St.’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Even as fear and animus split the human race asunder, great authors have reminded us for millennia that we really are all one. From the ancient Roman playwright Terrence (“I am human, and nothing...

Review: ‘Rent’ at The Hippodrome Theatre

Fans of Rent, it’s time to “Occupy Baltimore” once again. Hook yourselves up with tickets by any means necessary to that 20th Anniversary Tour making a brief, flash-point stop inside the old...

Review: ‘Improvaganza-A 3-Night Improv Festival’ Presented by Howard Community College’s Arts Collective

Thursday, March 30, 2017, the fun began in The Studio Theatre at Howard Community College with the start of Improvaganza-A 3 Night Improv Festival (with the additional bonus of three Master Classes in...

Review: ‘King Lear’ at George Washington University

Director Leslie Jacobson has book-ended Shakespeare’s dark tragedy King Lear with lyrical and lovingly-lit tableaux of the mad king’s court as if in a fairy-tale photo op—Lear regal on his throne, his...

Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

In the new Beauty and the Beast at Toby’s Dinner Theatre, it’s not just the accursed Beast and his castle of talking knickknacks that are caught in a magic spell of enchantment. So were lucky...

Review: ‘Battlefield’ at The Kennedy Center

In The Empty Space Peter Brook declared that the stage has “two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.” In Battlefield, his collaboration with Marie-Hélène Estienne, those two...

Review: ‘Mary Poppins’ at Walkersville High School

From Bert the chimney sweep’s offstage introduction of the Bank’s stately home on London’s Cherry Tree Lane, the audience at Walkersville High School’s auditorium knows there’s magic in the air. Drama...

Review: Hamburg Ballet: John Neumeier’s ‘The Little Mermaid’

In this production, John Neumeier adapts the classic 1837 tale by Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid. The production, not only explores the story of a young woman who wishes to have a human...

Review: ‘Titanic’ at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School

Something about the RMS Titanic’s sinking has, for the past hundred or so years, always struck a chord with the American public. There have been many books, movies (particularly the 1997 James Cameron...

Review: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at The Belasco Theatre

This is the play that introduced me to the writings of Tennessee Williams long ago, in 1945! That was the original production at the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway, and it contained the now legendary...

Review: ‘Faun’ at The Next Ice Age

The Columbia Figure Skating Club put on its annual spring show at the Columbia Ice Rink last Saturday and Sunday. The theme this year was Sing into Spring with two distinct parts. The first part...

Review: ‘Sub-Basement’ at Athena Theatre Company

It’s not always easy to decide who you are and what you want to be when you grow up, especially if your father, ex-boyfriend, new date, and society at large, in both Canada and the US, are pulling you...

Review: Mozart’s ‘Idomeneo’ Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera

Mozart’s Idomeneo is a landmark opera. It is undeniably a great achievement by a 25-year-old composer in the early stage of his career. Unlike the later Mozart operas, Idomeneo was written in the...

Review: ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, directed by Jen Sizer and produced by Maureen Rogers, opened at Laurel Mill Playhouse on Friday, March 24th. The script was written in 1939 at the end of the...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘Three Sisters’ and ‘No Sisters’ at Studio Theatre

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DCMetroTheaterArts writers who saw the same production—in this case the same two productions, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Aaron...

Review: ‘Mary Poppins’ at Charm City Players

For a day of family fun, it doesn’t get much better than Charm City Players. Charm City’s current production, Mary Poppins, continues their tradition of affordable family entertainment helmed by...

Review: ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ at Providence Players of Fairfax

In a scene of fierce confrontation between Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell in Providence Players’ production of To Kill a Mockingbird, Ewell insults Atticus in such a vicious way, that one wonders why...

Review: ‘The New Yorkers’ at New York City Center’s Encores!

Producer Jack Viertel and his merry band of music makers at Encores! have unearthed another great example of the beginnings of American dominance in the field of musical theatre. Our heritage is so...

Review: ‘Wiseguy Kitchen Dinner Show’ at Germano’s Piattini

Wiseguys, also known as those certain individuals the U.S. Government considers a bit more organized than they should be, descended on the quaint restaurant Germano’s Piattini in Baltimore, MD...

Review: ‘Twisted Melodies’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Despite affecting nearly one in every five Americans, including ‘70s soul singer and songwriter Donny Hathaway (perhaps, best remembered for his chart-topping collaborations with Roberta Flack),...

Review: ‘NSO Pops: Sophisticated Ladies: 100 Years of Ella & Company’ at The Kennedy Center

Acclaimed vocalists Capathia Jenkins, Sy Smith and Montego Glover joyously hopped the A train to Harlem along with the NSO Pops in tribute to the Queen of Jazz in Sophisticated Ladies: 100 Years of...

Review: ‘The King and I’ at the Academy of Music

More than sixty years after its debut, The King and I remains one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most popular and enduring musicals. The handsome national touring company of the recent Broadway revival...

Review: ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ at the Walnut Street Theatre

The Walnut Street Theatre is doing The Importance of Being Earnest in high style. The Victorian era was noted for its excesses in decoration and costume, and Robert Koharchik’s set design for this...

Review: ‘The Shattering Frame: A Bridgette Miakowski Mystery’ at Annex Theater

It was night like any other night in Charm City; me and my fella were sitting home, gabbin’ about what to do. We remembered hearing some buzz about a brand new play that ain’t never been seen before....

Review: ‘Los Otros’ #2 at Everyman Theatre

It may be more by chance, rather than design, that Everyman Theatre’s production of Los Otros, with book and lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh and music by Michael John LaChiusa, takes on an urgent sense of...

Review: ‘Footloose’ at Quince Orchard High School

WOW!!! Actual bouncing off walls, excitement, enthusiasm and synchronized choreography – and that was just maneuvering into a parking space out front! Footloose Director Nicholas Jullian Saadipour and...

Review: ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ at The Catholic University of America

Who would have thought that an evening of love, ambition, betrayal, violence, and death could be so enjoyable? That is precisely what last night’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor at The Catholic...

Review: ‘Tribulation Periwinkle: Civil War Nurse’ at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion

In commemoration of Women’s History Month, Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion’s Victorian Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Tribulation Periwinkle: Civil War Nurse. Adapted and directed by Josh...

Review: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Mount Vernon Community Children’s Theatre

I don’t think this is Virginia anymore, Mount Vernon Community Children’s Theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz transported the audience from Munchkin Land to the Emerald City all down a yellow...

Review: ‘Los Otros’ Review #1 at Everyman Theatre

Los Otros, now on stage at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore is a musical in transition. The version audiences in Baltimore are seeing now is different from what audiences in Los Angeles viewed at the...

Review: ‘Steel Magnolias’ at The Heritage Players

Steel Magnolias by the Heritage Players opened Friday, March 24, 2017, at the Thomas-Rice Auditorium written by Robert Harling and directed by Kevin James Logan and Katie Sheldon. This production...

Review: “Jesus Christ Superstar” at Bristol Riverside Theatre

Scheduled to coincide on the calendar with the days historically associated with the last week in the life of Christ, Bristol Riverside Theatre’s spring production of the groundbreaking 1971 rock...

Review: ‘Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali?’ in Collaboration with Sundance Institute Theatre Program at The Kennedy Center

Sometimes a story is so unique it needs no explanation. Sometimes a story dares you to disbelieve. Sometimes a story… Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali? is such a story. And as written and...

Review: ‘My Son the Waiter, A Jewish Tragedy’ at Bucks County Playhouse

Nearly everyone in the arts has taken another job such as waiter, receptionist, or office temp just to pay the rent. Brad Zimmerman has an unfortunately typical problem: He’s Jewish and his parents...

Meet the Cast of Providence Players’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Part 2: Mihara India, playing Calpurnia – by Julie Janson

The Providence Players of Fairfax will soon premiere the third production of its 19th season, To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Christopher Sergel, directed by Beth Gilles-Whitehead. Tickets for this...

Meet the Cast of Greenbelt Arts Center’s ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’: Part Four: Christa Kronser, and Joey Rolandelli

In Part Four of a series of interviews with the cast of Greenbelt Arts Center’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, meet Christa Kronser (playing Olive Ostrovsky), and Joey Rolandelli (playing...

Review: ‘Madama Butterfly’ at Annapolis Opera

Annapolis Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts is a beautiful marriage of music and singing. Directed by Braxton Peters, with music conducted by Ronald J....

Review: ‘Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo’ at The Kennedy Center

Men in tights and pointe shoes ballet super seriously and have fun doing it. The all-male comic ballet company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo returned to the Kennedy Center March 21 with a...

In The Moment: ‘The Sound is the Kicker’ in Scena’s ‘The Night Alive’

Another superior night with Irish playwright Conor McPherson, this time at Scena Theatre under Robert McNamara’s illuminating, layered direction of McPherson’s earthy, sideward glance at damaged...

Review: ‘Antigonón, un contingente épico’ at The Kennedy Center

As the audience gathers in the Eisenhower, antique footage rolls on the screen: people gathering, moving, marching. José Martí, Cuban national hero, poet, and revolutionary flashes on the screen. The...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Prince William Little Theatre by Tamela J. Ritter

It’s probably helpful to be well versed in Chekhov and Greek tragedies to understand many of the in-jokes and allusions in Christopher Durang’s 2012 Tony Award-winning play Vanya and Sonia and Masha...

Review: ‘The Night Alive’ at Scena Theatre

Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive is a story of lost souls seeking redemption, of searching for a light in the darkness. Presented by Scena Theatre, the characters’ cheeky banter...

Review: ‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’ at Quintessence Theatre Group

Quintessence Theatre Group brings William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, as directed by Alexander Burns, vibrantly to life with spectacular staging, scintillating costumes and a sparkling cast....