Reviews

Review: ‘Happy Days’ at Quintessence Theatre Group in Philadelphia

All dolled up in her fanciest dress, she’s smiling and chipper. It’s a sunny day, and Winnie is not going to let a little thing like the gigantic mound of dirt she’s buried in up to her waist bring...

Review: Source Festival 2016: ‘Secrets & Sound’: Six 10-Minute Plays

Don’t feel like committing to a two-hour show in development? Secrets & Sound: Six 10-Minute Plays is your ticket to theatrical speed-dating. You’re bound to fall in love with one of six playwrights,...

Review: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ at Victorian Lyric Opera Company

Conundrums seem to be Gilbert and Sullivan’s specialty. Their most famous works, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, explore the comic antics that ensue when seemingly simple people are thrown...

Review: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ at Stillpointe Theatre Initiative

On Friday, StillPointe Theatre Initiative opened its production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist play by Tom Stoppard that, along with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, sets...

Review: ‘Time Is On Our Side’ at Simpatico Theatre Project in Philadelphia

There’s a song in the Broadway musical Hamilton that asks “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” That question is at the heart of Time Is On Our Side, R. Eric Thomas’ new play. It’s a play...

Review: ‘10x10x10” at Fells Point Corner Theatre

Ten stories, ten plays, ten minutes per play. That was the set up for 10x10x10, a collection of plays by local area playwrights, which played at Fells Point Corner Theatre. The audience got to vote...

Here are the 2016 Tony Award Winners and Link to Last Night’s Musical Performances

Here are the 2016 Tony Award Winners: Best Play Eclipsed The Father WINNER: The Humans King Charles III Best Musical Bright Star WINNER: Hamilton School of Rock—The Musical Shuffle Along, Or the...

In the Moment: ‘La Cage aux Folles’ at Signature Theatre: New Meaning in the Midst of the Orlando Massacre and a Spoiled Son

Signature Theatre’s production of La Cage aux Folles under the sure hands of Director/Choreographer Matthew Gardiner is a fabulously fun-rendering. There is simply no way to leave the production...

Review: Pianist Veronika Böhmová at the Czech Embassy in the Embassy Series

The Czech Republic is a small country with a big impact on music. It’s a good thing they don’t just churn out mere virtuosos, of whom the world has plenty. Instead the best of the lot harness...

Review: Source Festival 2016: ‘Heroes and Home’: Six 10-Minute Plays

Now in its ninth year, the Source Festival aims to act as a starting ground for new work from artists, both new and seasoned, from all over the country. Through collaboration and a great deal of...

Review: ‘La Cage aux Folles’ at Signature Theatre

What is a family? Is it all about biology or does it have much more to do with love? Surely, it’s the latter, and this lesson has never been more sensitively, humorously, and colorfully presented than...

Review: ‘Stupid F#@*ing Bird’ at Port City Playhouse

Port City Playhouse has undertaken the hilarious dark comedy Stupid F#@*ing Bird, by Playwright Aaron Posner. The show is adapted from Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, but with a very modern makeover and...

Review: ‘Snakebit’ at Dominion Stage

You’re lucky if you’ve got one: That old friend from childhood who knows every mistake you’ve ever made but loves you anyway. The friend to whom you can confess your darkest secrets, display your...

Review: ‘Matt & Ben’ at Flying V

After filming not a few Rotten Tomatoes targets and appearing in too many tabloid headlines, the real Ben Affleck has cleaned up and redeemed himself in the public stargaze, both professionally and...

Review: ‘Almost Heaven: Songs of John Denver’ at Infinity Theatre

You might want to “Take me Home, Country Roads” to the latest production Almost Heaven: Songs of John Denver, which for the first time is playing in the Washington, DC metropolitan area in Annapolis,...

Review: ‘The New Old Time Music Hall Celebrating Queen and Country’ at The British Players

It’s a gathering of music, humor, and tradition with The British Players in The New Old Time Music Hall Celebrating Queen and Country. The British Players have quite a storied history, performing at...

Review: Source Festival 2016: ‘Static’

In Tom Horan’s Static, directed by Bridget Grace Sheaff, Emma (Amy Horan), a perky millennial, inherits, after her father’s death, the sad task of excavating the second house he owned later in life....

Review: ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ at Damascus Theatre Company and Arts on the Green

It’s the beginning of Act I. The lights just start to go down, and everyone begins to settle into their seats for the next two hours. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, and all look forward to the...

Spine: Love, Greed, and Bigotry in The Folger’s ‘District Merchants’

There’s no question that Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a problem play, fraught with old hates that were once considered justified and old beliefs that have long lost their hold on the European...

Review: ‘Henry IV Parts I & II’ at The Rude Mechanicals

Over 17 years, The Rude Mechanicals, a local theater company specializing in classic works, has made its way through nearly all of Shakespeare’s enduring canon. After the current production of Henry...

Review: ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

With all of the festivities surrounding the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, many theatres have taken it upon themselves to put forth lavish and bold new productions of the Bard’s work....

Review: ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

What better way to spend a lovely late spring evening than to be charmed by the words of Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest beguiles us at Laurel Mill Playhouse. This farcical satire of...

Review: Source Festival 2016: ‘lost&SOUND’: Artistic Blind Date

“Within each of us lies uncharted secrets. Beyond us drifts an unknowable universe…” thus begins lost&SOUND, a 35-minute Artistic Blind Date inspired by one of the full length plays currently featured...

Review: ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ at The York Theatre Company

This charming piece of work has a long history. Its original run was off Broadway at Theater 80 in the East Village, where it settled in for a smashing run of 1697 performances. Arthur Whitelaw was...

Review: ‘Ragtime: The Musical’ at Wolf Trap

Easily one of most under-rated musicals to come out of Broadway in the last 20 years, Ragtime: The Musical—with book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty, and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens—follows...

Review: ‘District Merchants’ at Folger Theatre

District Merchants, in its world premiere at Folger Theatre, is a tour de force that explores the complexity of race and identity in Reconstruction-era America. As part of Folger Theatre’s 2016...

Review: Source Festival 2016: ‘Buried Cities’

This year’s edition of the DC Source Festival continues with its central mission to present works fresh to the DC area. The new theater works at Source receive their first full production at one of...

Review: Source Festival 2016: ‘Entanglement’: Artistic Blind Dates

Tangled Up in Time Cultural DC’s Source Festival 2016 kicked off with Entanglement, an immersive piece of theatre written and performed by Claire Alrich, Maryam Foye, and Britney Mongold — three women...

Midyear CD Review: Evocative Oboe, Witty Haydn, and a New Take on Duke Ellington

Serendipity counts in music as in anything else. A year and a half ago I recommended two outstanding debut albums by artists with local connections. Soprano Danielle Talamantes, a Northern Virginia...

Review: ‘Cul de Sac’ at Encore Stage & Studio

Encore Stage & Studio is currently showing their world premiere production of Cul de Sac. The play, written by Amy Thompson, is an adaptation of the popular comic strip of the same name by Richard...

Review: ‘Love Letters’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

Talk about age-appropriate casting: Love Letters, a play about the 50-year relationship between a man and a woman, is now at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore starring a man and a woman acclaimed...

Review #2: ‘Going to a Place Where You Already Are’ at Theater Alliance

The main reason I adore live theatre, in comparison to other art forms like cinema, is that the fiber and ligaments that make up this thing we call life – truth, in other words – is best experienced...

Review: ‘Good People’ at The Colonial Players of Annapolis

The Colonial Players’ Good People is a powerful, emotionally raw production that talks about class, poverty, and race in dramatic ways. Written by David Lindsay-Abaire and directed by Edd Miller, it...

Review: ‘The History Boys’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

The Little Theatre of Alexandria presents Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning The History Boys. Frank D. Shutts ll directs a talented cast in this rich production. Utilizing thousands of literary...

Review: Cirque du Soleil ‘Paramour’ at The Lyric Theatre in NYC

Spectacular circus arts meet vintage-style song-and-dance in Cirque du Soleil’s premiere Broadway musical, Paramour, now playing at the Lyric Theatre. Known for its consummately graceful and...

Review: ‘El Paso Blue’ at GALA Hispanic Theatre

‘El Paso Blue’ in long-awaited East Coast Premiere at GALA It took roughly 20 years for Octavio Solis’ El Paso Blue to make it to Washington, DC. But now that it has arrived, the play—written and...

Review: ‘Red Herring’ at the Providence Players Players of Fairfax

Red Herring at the Providence Players is a delightful mix of murder mystery, romance, and broad farce. A noir of the 1950s, it reminds us vividly of the joys, sorrows, and nightmares of that period....

Review #1: ‘Going to a Place Where You Already Are’ at Theater Alliance

Whatever your mental picture of heaven, the funny and beautifully moving production of Bekah Brunstetter’s Going to a Place Where You Already Are just opened at Theater Alliance may alter it....

Review: ‘The Wind in the Willows’ at Creative Cauldron

Creative Caldron presents The Wind in the Willows, an original reimagining of Kenneth Grahame’s beloved classic. Directors Ellen Selby and Denise Perrino adapted this production for the performers of...

Review: ‘Lost in Wonderland’ at Pallas Theatre Collective

‘Lost in Wonderland’: Journeys Through an Author’s Imagination Have you ever wanted to ask a famous, classic author, say a Mark Twain or an Edgar Allen Poe how and why they shaped their characters the...

Review: ‘36 Views’ at Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia

On the surface, Naomi Iizuka’s 36 Views is a straightforward story set against the backdrop of the art world. It’s about an art dealer with a shady reputation, an art scholar who gets drawn into his...

Review: ‘Floyd Collins’ at 1st Stage

“No more plowing a hard-scrabble field, I just know it’s my lucky day!” Evan Casey’s voice rings through the 1st Stage Theater as he navigates the narrow confines of a deep underground cave. His...

Review: ‘Midlife’ at Single Carrot Theatre

Ben Hoover’s Midlife explores that most difficult of theatrical terrains, human subjectivity. Not that subjectivity expressed by human babble, i.e., talking, of which America’s logocentric culture...

Review: Ireland 100: ‘The Gloaming’ at The Kennedy Center

The Ireland 100 closes this weekend with new Irish sensation Ireland 100: The Gloaming who made their Kennedy Center debut with a lovely mix of traditional music, improvisation, and new classics....

Review: ‘Straight White Men’ at InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia

It’s Christmastime at the Norton house. The three Norton boys – well, they’re in their forties, but they sure act like boys most of the time – are spending the holiday with their widowed dad. They’ve...

Spine: ‘An Octoroon,’ ‘The Octoroon’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

An Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ re-imagining of Dion Boucicault’s pre-Civil War classic The Octoroon, opened last night at Woolly Mammoth. Postmodern, hip, sardonic, farcical–An Octoroon deals...

Review: ‘An Octoroon’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Welcome to playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ world. You’re just living in it. Or, is it, welcome to 19th Century playwright Dion Boucicault’s world and Branden Jacobs- Jenkins is living in it? Or, is...

Review: ‘The Miser’ at Faction of Fools

Faction of Fools is delightfully back with a well-concocted, refreshing, street-fair fare of Moliere’s The Miser. This happy show is one with a pointed, underscored, right-on-the-surface message about...

Review: ‘Neverwhere’ at Cohesion Theatre Company

To close out an already impressive second season, Cohesion Theatre Company has mounted its most ambitious show yet – the Baltimore premiere of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, adapted for the stage by Robert...

Director Nick Olcott on Directing ‘Floyd Collins’ at 1st Stage

It’s one of my favorite musicals and I am thrilled that Nick Olcott is directing 1st Stage’s production of Floyd Collins, which plays through June 26th. Joel: Floyd Collins is rarely produced and is...