Reviews

Review: ‘The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning’ at Inis Nua Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Inis Nua Theatre Company has made a specialty of performing plays written in, and set in, the British Isles. So it may seem odd that Inis Nua is doing a play about Bradley Manning, the American...

Review: ‘Starlight Express’ at West Potomac High School

You’d have to be “Crazy” not to go and find the ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’ with the fastest show on earth: Starlight Express at the Beyond the Page Theatre Company of West Potomac High School!...

Review: ‘The Ring Cycle’: ‘The Valkyrie –The Ring of the Nibelung-Part One’ at Washington National Opera

Love in all of its many manifestations runs rampant throughout the Washington National Opera’s most recent offering in the continuing tale of The Ring Cycle—-namely, The Valkyrie –The Ring of the...

Review: ‘See What I Wanna See’ at 11th Hour Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Based on short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, See What I Wanna See tells stories of two different time lines questioning truth and faith. Originally work shopped at Williamstown Theater Festival and...

The 2016 Tony Award Nominations Announced: ‘Hamilton’ Sets Record with 16 Noms

Here are the 2016 Tony Award Nominations: Best Play Eclipsed Author: Danai Gurira The Father Author: Florian Zeller The Humans Author: Stephen Karam King Charles III Author: Mike Bartlett ____ Best...

Review: ‘The Conference of the Birds’ at Montgomery College

Lots of ‘fowl’ play was displayed at Montgomery College during their stunning intimate production of The Conference of the Birds, passionately directed by KenYatta Rogers, during the weekend of April...

Review: ‘A Single Shard’ at People’s Light in Malvern, PA

How does a plain pile of clay become a work of art? The courage of an artist to create something out of nothing infuses the recent regional premiere of A Single Shard, now playing at People’s Light in...

Review: ‘The Elixir of Love’ at Opera Philadelphia

Unrequited longing for a capricious woman of a higher social class can only be cured by a magic potion, or so thinks the lovesick Nemorino when he overhears Adina, the object of his affection, reading...

Review: ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Romeo and Juliet, set in Italy circa 1948, proves William Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers is timeless. Sally Boyett, Founding Artistic Director of Annapolis Shakespeare Company, has...

Review: ‘Our Town’ at Rockville Little Theatre

“The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises,” so it says in the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter One, Verse 5. People, live, people die, life goes on. That...

Review: ‘Transmission’ at The Welders

You know you’re having an unorthodox experience in theater when there’s a near absence of dramatic action in front of you but an epic interplay of ideas happening in your brain. So it goes in...

Review: ‘A Lesson from Aloes’ at Quotidian Theatre Company

Globally, it’s 1963 in South Africa, in the midst of the Apartheid, and also the same year as the Rivonia Trial. This is the event in which ten leaders of the African National Congress (including...

Meet the Cast of Sandy Spring Theatre Group’s ‘The Foreigner’ Part 2: Paul Noga

In Part Two of a series the cast of The Foreigner at the Sandy Spring Theatre Group, performing at The Gaithersburg Arts Barn, meet Paul Noga. Joel: Please introduce yourself and tell our readers...

Review: ‘Wild Sky’ at Solas Nua

Exactly one century ago, on Easter Week 1916, Irish nationalists staged uprisings in Dublin and some surrounding areas in defiance of centuries of British rule, and in particular their conscription in...

Review: ‘The Explorers Club’ at Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington

Patterned Oriental carpets, richly aged dark wood paneling, a tufted leather sofa and a tapestry upholstered chair, an exotic collection of art, curiosities, and taxidermy specimens, and other...

Review: ‘The Ring Cycle’: ‘The Rhinegold’ at Washington National Opera

German composer Richard Wagner’s much heralded and talked about (over the past many decades!) Ring Cycle opened at The Kennedy Center Opera House on Saturday evening with the first opera in the cycle,...

Review: ‘A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur’ at South Camden Theatre Company

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is one of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-known plays. First staged in 1978, a few decades after his biggest successes, Creve Coeur has echoes of Williams’ best-known works,...

Review: ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ at American Airlines Theatre in NYC

Eugene O’Neill’s masterwork shows up in London or on Broadway every other season or two, and with good cause. It remains a bravely probing look into a particular family, one which produced an American...

Review: ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’ at Curio Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Telling stories is what the Irish are known for, and Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, directed by Joshua Browns at Curio Theatre Company, does not disappoint. The rumors are as reliable as...

Review: ‘Skin Deep’ at the Old Opera House

Skin Deep at the Old Opera House proves love comes in all shapes and sizes and the message is easily displayed with some outstanding performances from the small ensemble cast in this clever romantic...

Review: ‘Tender Tears and Love and Life: Songs by Anton Rubinstein, Anton Arensky, Alexander Glazunov, and Mark Minkov’ at the Russian Chamber Art Society

In a concert that rang the rafters and tugged at the heartstrings, the Russian Chamber Art Society bade a thrilling farewell to its longtime home at the Austrian embassy, which, after hosting more...

Review: ‘‘I Will Not Go Gently’ at 1812 Productions in Philadelphia

Back in the eighties and nineties, there was no rock star edgier or more electrifying than Sierra Mist. (No, she’s no relation to the soda.) But that was a long time ago. Now it’s 2016, and Sierra is...

Review: ‘Coming Home’ at Port City Playhouse

With Eleanore Tapscott’s gentle, affecting, eloquent direction, the Port City Playhouse production of Athol Fugard’s Coming Home (2009) is an exemplary work about love, loss and resilience. The...

Review: ‘Unnecessary Farce’ at McLean Community Players

Misunderstandings? Check. Discarded clothing and sexual innuendos? Check. A ridiculous number of doorways? Check. An absurd plot that you feel compelled to see through to the end despite the high...

Magic Time! ‘Lord of the Flies’ at Imagination Stage

When Randy Baker told me he had directed a production of Lord of the Flies with a cast of mostly teenage girls, I knew I had to see it. William Golding’s classic about British schoolboys whose...

Review: ‘Assassins’ at the Laurel Mill Playhouse

Assassins, comes to Laurel Mill Playhouse for a murderously fun evening of theatre. This quirky little musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, is based on an idea...

Review: ‘All Lady Macbeth’ at Theatre Prometheus

The Northwest and Southwest sides of DC are filled with theatre and art. From the Shakespeare Theatre Company and Woolly Mammoth to Arena Stage and Studio Theatre, one never needs to look too far to...

Review: ‘Waitress’ at The Brooks Atkinson Theatre in NYC

I’m sorry to have to report that Jessie Mueller, the appealing young lead in last season’s Beautiful, the Carole King Musical, has moved on to the role of Jenna in the musical adaptation of the film...

Review: ‘Fully Committed’ at The Lyceum Theatre in NYC

As I gleefully watched Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s brilliant tour de force performance in this one man telephone marathon called Fully Committed, I pictured him playing so many leading characters from...

Review: ‘American Psycho’ at The Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in NYC

From what would seem to be the most unlikely source material, Duncan Sheik and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa have fashioned a dazzling and original musical theatre piece. The source is Bret Easton Ellis’...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at Arena Stage

If you think we are over-saturated with passionate discussions of race, gender, nationality, and religion during this chaotic election year — think again. There is still much to be probed, and...

Meet the Cast of Roseprose Productions’ ‘Voices the play’: Part 2: Meet Stanley Freeman

In part two in a series of interviews with the cast of Voices the play, meet Stanley Freeman. Joel: Tell us about yourself. How long have you been acting in the DC, MD, VA area? What are some of your...

Review: ‘Lacey Ward: Girl Detective’ at The Phenomenal Animals in Philadelphia

The first of Robert Cousins’ four-part series on fictional teenage sleuth Lacey Ward makes its Philadelphia debut with the Phenomenal Animals in a short six-performance run. Self-described as a...

Review: ‘As You Like It’ at Howard County Community College

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” is among Shakespeare’s most famous lines. When it was penned, the Bard probably did not imagine it delivered by a girl dressed like...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre

Randy Harrison is raising a bit of hell as the Emcee for Cabaret in midtown Baltimore. I mean, just take a look at that demented, Chucky doll leer. He knows the Devil has his back, and before doing a...

Review: ‘Journey to the West’ at Constellation Theatre Company

Mary Zimmerman has mastered the stage adaptation, particularly of the classic tale, freely blending cultural forms and styles with hypnotic brilliance. Her Metamorphoses and Arabian Nights are shining...

Review: ‘The Naked Magic Show’ at Lincoln Theatre

Admittedly, I haven’t been to that many bachelorette parties, and with good reason – Ms. Blozia drinks a little – but the atmosphere at The Naked Magic Show at the Lincoln Theatre on Sunday night felt...

Review: ‘The Emperor’s Nightingale’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

Adventure Theatre MTC’s latest project is based on Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, The Emperor’s Nightingale. Playwright Damon Chua has created a new adaptation, set in China in the eighteenth...

Review: ‘The Electric Baby’ at Rorschach Theatre

At the center of this beautifully ambiguous and hauntingly honest play is a sick infant. The baby is peculiar, perhaps mythically so, in that it glows like the moon. As we enter the theater, the...

Review: ‘In the Secret Sea’ at The Beckett Theatre in NYC

A company called Wellington Road, LLC has produced this 80-minute play by Cate Ryan at the Beckett Theatre on Theatre Row on 42nd Street, with a company of five featured players, under the direction...

In the Moment: ‘William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged)’ at Folger Theatre

The boys from the Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) have been a mainstay in the DC area for decades. They never wear out their welcome whether performing at the Folger, The Kennedy Center or Reston’s...

Review: ‘Cosi Fan Tutte Goes Hollywood’ at The In Series

The confusion all begins with the title. Cosi Fan Tutte — It is of course the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart comic opera, or “opera buff,” that is today considered part of the gold standard of the opera...

Review: Kristine Fraelich at the Arden Cabaret Series at the Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia

“It is terrifying.” More often than not, the actor’s relationship to their audience involves three parties; the audience, the actor, and their character. Guarded by learned lines and blocking, an...

Review: ‘Nothing to See Here’ at Found Theater Company in Philadelphia

Well, actually, there’s a lot to see in Found Theater Company’s latest ensemble-devised work Nothing to See Here, and there’s even more to hear, to think about, and to feel. But above all else, the...

Movie Review: ‘Elvis & Nixon’

It’s not every day that the world’s greatest entertainer asks the President to become an undercover narcotics agent (and the badge that goes with it, of course). Up until Elvis did it, it wasn’t any...

Review: ‘Sleeping Beauty’ at The Puppet Co.

The fairytale of Sleeping Beauty is a beloved classic, and what better way to tell the ancient story then through the timeless art of puppetry? The Puppet Co. Playhouse in Glen Echo Park is well-known...

Review: ‘Black Pearl Sings!’ at MetroStage

Review: ‘Black Pearl Sings’ explores the political and the personal Politics, whether personal or political often divides us. These differences come to light when two women with out-sized...

Review: ‘Hugo Ball: a Dada puppet AdveNTuRe!!/?1!!?? at Pointless Theatre Company

The whooshing, passionate ride that is Hugo Ball: a Dada puppet AdveNTuRe!!/?1!!?? – an original piece by DC’s perennial enfant terrible, Pointless Theatre Company – masquerades as a simple biography...

Review #2: ‘I Am Anne Hutchinson/I Am Harvey Milk’ at Strathmore

Composer Andrew Lippa’s pulsating music shoots like a jolt of adrenaline throughout the super-charged heightened music of the World Premiere Concept Opera I Am Anne Hutchinson/I Am Harvey Milk....

Review: ‘Force Continuum’ at Cohesion Theatre Company

Force Continuum opened at Cohesion Theatre Company on Friday – three days after the first anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimorian who died from injuries sustained while in...