Reviews

Review: ‘Shake Loose’ at MetroStage

Shake Loose: A Musical Night of Blues Moods & Icons Hang on to your seats, guys and gals! Over three dozen songs – twelve never sung before at MetroStage – and a libretto comprise a whirlwind,...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Folger Theatre

What continually impresses me about the Folger Theatre is that it takes on Shakespeare plays and that nothing is off limits from experimentation or adaptation. They are masters at unlocking new levels...

Review: ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ at The Media Theatre in Media, PA

For its latest production, the Media Theatre has turned to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a classic story known by millions of readers. The stage adaptation by Christopher Sergel tells the story...

Review: ‘Assassins’ at The Eagle Theatre in Hammonton, NJ

Is there a more relevant topic in contemporary America, while gun control is being hotly debated by the presidential candidates, Congress, and the voting populace, than a look at gun violence via the...

Review: Dance Place’s 35th Year Reunion

Dance Place Reunion Celebrates 35 Years When Dance Place marks a milestone, invariably by the evening’s end its Founding Artistic Director Carla Perlo has more people on stage than in the audience....

Review: ‘St. Nicholas’ at Washington Stage Guild

Theater critics can sometimes be vicious and bloodthirsty…… and that’s before one of them gets employed by a bloodsucking vampire in the Washington Stage Guild production of St. Nicholas. This...

Review: ‘Three Sisters’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Chekhov is a challenge for even the most experienced and skilled artists of our profession. It is not merely that his characters are the most psychologically dense in drama (which they are), or that...

Review: ‘Leave it to Psmith!’ at Lumina Studio Theatre

Clomping into the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre, shivering from Snowzilla’s persistent chill and shaking caked snow and ice from our boots, we are greeted by the pleasant, ear-warming sounds of...

Magic Time! ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at Ford’s Theatre

What’s the best way to stage a modern classic that is both reverential and revelatory? How does one mount a production that is respectful of the author’s intent yet freshly insightful. How can a...

Review: ‘Zombie Prom’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

A Thriller! Grab your hoverboard and blast over to Greenbelt Arts Center to see its latest show, Zombie Prom. It’s totally nuclear, a tongue in chic fusion of Happy Days, Grease, and The Walking Dead....

Review: ‘Deathtrap’ at The Arlington Players

I could tell you about the play’s plot, but then you would have to kill me. Yes, you read that right and it’s the premise of Deathtrap, The Arlington Players’ latest production. The highly...

Review: ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center

The Phantom of the Opera is an entertainment phenomenon. Can we all just agree about that and move on? It’s still going strong after 30 years in London and 27 years on Broadway. As a reminder of its...

Review: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at Ford’s Theatre

Possibly the most lyrical and sentimentally poignant of all the plays written by Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie still holds up as one of Williams’ most well-written plays....

‘Henry IV,” Part 1 at the Britches and Hose Theatre Company

The Britches and Hose Shakespeare Company is just the sort of grass roots, do-it-yourself theatrical troupe one might have hoped the nation would be awash in, but isn’t. Their Henry IV, Part 1,...

Review: ‘Kristin Chenoweth: Coming Home Tour’ at Strathmore

To paraphrase an old expression, “big talent can come in small packages!” This observation was never truer than when the diminutive musical superstar, Kristin Chenoweth, took the stage at Strathmore...

Review: ‘#therevolution’ at InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron told us that the revolution will not be televised. Now, in 2016, Playwright Kristoffer Diaz tells us that the revolution will be webcast. And maybe live tweeted. But...

Review: ‘The Language Archive’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre in Bristol, PA

“I love you.” This simple, universal concept becomes one of the most multi-faceted phrases in all languages in Bristol Riverside Theatre’s recent production of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive. What...

Review: ‘South Pacific’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

The South Pacific of your dreams was just sighted at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia. Never mind the current debate over “New York values” versus “Iowa values” — here you will find Rodgers &...

Review: ‘I Shall Not Hate’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

It was a record-setting blizzard, not prescient season planning, that resulted in Mosaic Theater Company’s rescheduling the opening of I Shall Not Hate to last night, International Holocaust Memorial...

Review: American Ballet Theatre’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ at The Kennedy Center

Alexei Ratmansky’s newest staging of the great classical ballet The Sleeping Beauty feels like that moment in the classic MGM film The Wizard of Oz when the scene goes from black and white to...

Review: ‘Harvey’ at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia

So what if he’s invisible? He’s still the best friend and constant companion of the lovably eccentric tippler Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, a delightful revival of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning...

Review: ‘Under the Skin’ at Everyman Theatre

At first blush, a play about organ donation might not have you rushing to the box office. But Playwright Michael Hollinger’s Under the Skin, which plays at Everyman Theatre through February 21st,...

Review: ‘Our Mother’s Brief Affair’ at Manhattan Theatre Club at The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in NYC

Richard Greenberg’s new play is of the school from which the story “The Lady or the Tiger?” sprang. It has enigmatic hints of Harold Pinter in it as well, though Mr. Greenberg’s ear for his New York...

Review: ‘SWEAT’ at Arena Stage

Permit me this before my actual review of Lynn Nottage’s bold, brave play SWEAT which is receiving a splendidly searing, raw, and real production at Arena (Co-commissioned with the Oregon Shakespeare...

Review: ‘Stone Tape Party’ at Nu Sass Productions

It was clear when I walked into the intimate theatre that the party had already started at this 2014 Capital Fringe Festival ‘Best Comedy and Best Overall Show.’ Music was blasting, drinks were...

Review: ‘Oscar Wilde: From the Depths’ at Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia

Oscar Wilde: From the Depths, Charles McMahon’s new play about the darkest period in Wilde’s life, is a play that’s brimming with intelligence and insight, and it’s beautifully performed and sometimes...

Review: ‘Funnyman’ at Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Funnyman is making its World Premiere at the Arden Theatre Company, and it’s a winner. The play follows an aging great comic actor who is yearning to know what it means to really be funny in a serious...

Review: ‘American Idiot’ at Act Two @ Levine by Laura Marshall

Great punk music paired with edgy, mature performances and soaring orchestration rocked the house in the Kogod Cradle at Arena Stage last weekend. The pre-professional program from Act Two @ Levine,...

DCMetroTheaterArts’ Best of 2015 #23: Best Cabaret, Concerts, and Opera Productions in the DC Metro Area

The staff of DCMetroTheaterArts is honored to announce that their 2015 Best Cabaret, Concert, and Opera honors go to to: CABARETS Anonymous at Creative Cauldron’s Summer Cabaret Series by Rachel...

Review: ‘Let Freedom Ring! Featuring Yolanda Adams’ at The Kennedy Center

The spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was present this past Monday, January 18th, in the John F. Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall for the fourteenth annual Let Freedom Ring Celebration. This...

Review: ‘The Sisters Rosensweig’ at Theater J

There’s a strange sound erupting from the JCC most nights. The source is not burlesque or stand-up comedy—although there are elements of both—but a brand new production of Wendy Wasserstein’s...

Review: ‘Peter Pan JR’ at Bravo Productions at The Randolph Road Theatre

I had the pleasure of seeing Bravo Production’s Peter Pan JR with my three boys on Saturday, January 16, 2016. The show was performed by 41 aspiring artists, in grades 2-8, and was one of the two...

Review: ‘The Piano Lesson’ at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is, on its surface, just a story about a brother and sister who argue over whether to sell a family heirloom. What makes the play so special is that the piano in...

Review: ‘Gone’ by The Oven: A Collective Theatre Movement at Baltimore Theatre Project

The subject of human trafficking, and especially child sexploitation, is as dark and disturbing a topic for a theatrical production as anyone could imagine. The Oven, one of the newest members of the...

Review: ‘Mouse in House’ at Jane Franklin Dance at Theatre on the Run

Mouse in House, a fun­filled show for children, is full of poetry, dance, and wonderful media effects. Performed by Jane Franklin Dance Company, the show is based on the book Mouse of Amherst by...

Review: ‘Into the Woods, Jr.’ at Aldersgate Church Community Theater

Aldersgate Church Community Theater presents Into the Woods Jr., a condensed version of the Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine, and orchestrations by...

Review: ‘Between Riverside and Crazy’ at The Studio Theatre

Such a bubbling, darkly comic world in which to our abundant enlightenment, all that is solid melts into thin air. This is the Studio Theatre production of the vinegary urban domain devised by Stephen...

Review: ‘Equus’ at Constellation Theatre Company

Since Peter Shaffer’s Equus made its striking return to the Anglo-American imagination in 2007, when then-17 year old Daniel Radcliffe stirred international controversy by appearing nude in the West...

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at WSC Avant Bard

Each year, Shakespeare is the most frequently produced playwright in America, and his A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the Bard’s most frequently produced plays. So if you’re going to produce it,...

Review: ‘Chronoshred: The Adventures of Stardust Lazerdong’ at Baltimore Rock Opera Society

Though the week started on a tragic note for rock fans with the loss of David Bowie, a sliver of light has emerged for local audiences in the person of Greg Bowen, currently playing the title role in...

Meet the Cast of Reston Communty Players’ ‘Master Class’: Part 5: Richard Durkin

Here is Part 5 of a series of interviews with the director, producer, and cast of Reston Community Players’ production of Terrence McNally’s Master Class. Meet Richard Durkin. Maria Callas, one of the...

Review: ‘First Date’ at Drama Learning Center

Looking for a respite from the winter doldrums and a glimpse of color, hope, and light-hearted entertainment? Go no further than the Drama Learning Center where founding director Stephanie Lynn...

Review: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ at Restoration Stage

Chocolate Covered Ants, a new play by Steven A. Butler, Jr., and now on stage at the Anacostia Playhouse, is that rarity of theatrical experience in that it explores the psyche of the African American...

Here are the 2015 WATCH AWARD NOMINATIONS

Announcement of Nominations 16th Annual Washington Area Theatre Community Honors THE WATCH AWARDS Nominations Were Announced January 17, 2015 – 7:30 pm at The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA __ Nominations...

Review: ‘Master Class’ at Reston Community Players

Maria Callas is an opera icon. If you have never heard of her, think of the ultimate diva and that will give you a bare bones idea of the incredible talent, intense personality, and enduring influence...

Review: ‘Middletown’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Middletown, written by Will Eno, is a play with heft. It is not an easy play that you can relax and let wash over you. Timid souls who are out for an evening of light entertainment may struggle with...

Review: ‘Noises Off’ at The Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theatre

When you arrive at the American Airlines Theatre for a performance of Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off, along with your Playbill, you will also be given a program for Nothing On, which is the...

Review: ‘Deathtrap’ at The Washington County Playhouse Dinner Theater and Children’s Theater

A play-within-a-play, a comedy and a thriller, individually, are all standard forms of theater easily accepted by audiences today. But can they successfully be combined into a single entertaining...

Review: ‘Lend Me a Tenor’ at Rockville Little Theatre

In 1989, Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor took home four Drama Desk Awards, and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Play. When the play returned to Broadway in 2010, the production was...

Review: ‘On the Road Again’ at Act II Playhouse in Ambler, PA

On a damp, drizzly night in January, it’s hard to fight the impulse to want to jump on a plane in pursuit of a warmer, sunnier locale. Fortunately, On the Road Again, a world premiere now playing at...