Reviews

Magic Time! ‘World Builders’ at Forum Theatre

To judge by social media, love and madness are a thing. Here are a few choice examples now making the rounds in the meme-osphere: “Love is merely a madness….” (William Shakespeare) “There is always...

‘Unexplored Interior (This Is Rwanda: The Beginning and End of the Earth)’ at Mosaic Theater of DC

There comes a moment early in Act One when Raymond, a young man who left his family in Rwanda to learn film making at NYU, returns to his homeland, which has become a devastation. The 100-day Hutu...

Oh What a Night at The 2015 Barrymores!

“It’s been a big year for me.” That was quite an understatement coming from Scott Greer. The veteran Philadelphia actor had just won his fifth Barrymore Award, named Outstanding Leading Actor in a...

The Women’s Voices Theatre Festival: ‘Duir-wyyd: The Dreamer’s Doorway’ at Spooky Action Theater

It is intriguing to see a work in progress that has real merit. Sandra Kamman’s Duir-wyyd: The Dreamer’s Doorway, a play with music, straddles time and space to metaphysically interconnect the stories...

‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at Kensington Arts Theatre

What’s the buzz you ask? Well Jesus Christ Superstar now playing at the Kensington Arts Theatre of course! Arising out of the tumultuous 1960’s the era of the Rock Opera gave to way for artists...

Violinist Ji Young Lim at the Phillips Collection

Somebody must have rung a bell and instructed judges at all international music competitions to start awarding prizes to young classical musicians who already demonstrate daring and panache, even at...

‘Pinocchio’ at Creative Cauldron

Creative Cauldron’s Learning Theater Workshop is an excellent program for children interested in exploring the art of live theater. The program is recommended for kids, third grade through high...

‘Betrayal’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

In a season devoted to shows that play with fire, Fells Point Corner Theatre’s second production, Betrayal by Harold Pinter, keeps the flames alive. Directed by Andrew J. Porter, Betrayal examines the...

‘World Builders’ by Forum Theatre at Woolly Mammoth

I first saw Johnna Adams’s World Builders this summer, when it premiered at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. I was immediately struck by the ingenuity of its...

‘Deathtrap’ At NextStop Theatre Company

NextStop Theatre Company’s current production of Deathtrap does an incredible job of honoring the play’s highly successful history. Deathtrap was nominated for a Tony in 1978 for Best Play and holds...

Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘For the Love of Oscar, A Dramedy’ at The New Milennium Howard Players

The New Millennium Howard Players‘ mission is to present “Compelling, cathartic theater from the African American cultural perspective that will touch spirits, challenge thought, move, inspire, evoke...

‘Sylvia’ at The Cort Theatre in New York City

AR Gurney is the rolling stone playwright that is certainly gathering no moss. As recently as August of this year I reviewed a new Gurney offering, Love and Money which deftly dealt with a matriarch’s...

‘Equivocation’ at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia

Equivocation, Bill Cain’s alternative history about William Shakespeare getting caught up in deadly royal court intrigue, is exceedingly clever and almost dizzyingly erudite. And it has some quite...

‘The Metal Children’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage does it again. With Adam Rapp’s The Metal Children, now playing at the Stage through November 21, they once again venture outside DC’s theatrical “safe space” and offer Washington...

‘Polter-heist’ at Murder at the Mansion Dessert Theatre

In their inaugural production, Murder at the Mansion Dessert Theatre has brought murder, mystery, and petit-fours to Kentlands Mansion in the form of Polter-heist. Polter-heist, written by Tony...

Barbara Cook’s Spotlight: Randy Graff at The Kennedy Center

Tony Award-winning (City of Angels) Broadway, concert, and cabaret artist Randy Graff dazzled the crowd Friday night at the Kennedy Center’s intimate Terrace Theater. Graff is utterly unique and...

‘Henri IV Part I’: The Re-Gendered Henry IV Repertory at Brave Spirits Theatre

With the Women’s Voices Theater Festival in DC still going strong, Brave Spirits Theatre asks its audiences to consider the role women have in theatre beyond the reach of the festival. With the first...

‘Fox on the Fairway’ at Act II Playhouse in Amber, PA

If The Fox on the Fairway shows how the other half lives, well, I don’t know if I want to be a part of that other half. But I certainly do want to watch those country club hijinks from afar. Ken...

Magic Time! The Women’s Voices Theater Festival: Darius & Twig’ at The Kennedy Center

I cannot help but think that if W.E.B. DuBois were alive, he would absolutely love Darius & Twig, the passionately purposeful play by Caleen Sinnette Jennings adapted from Walter Dean Myers’s popular...

‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’ at Scena Theatre

Scena Theatre’s comedy through the lens of small-town folk in a small Aran Islands community named Inishmaan, off the coast of Ireland. The year is 1934, and we catch a glimpse of all the archetypal...

‘Footloose’ at Rockville Musical Theatre

Let’s hear it for the Rockville Musical Theatre’s production of Footloose! This bold and bodacious, high-kicking, foot-stomping extravaganza features a dedicated cast of volunteer performers who...

‘Winners and Losers’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

According to their mission statement, part of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s objective is to “ignite an explosive engagement between threatre artists and the community by developing new plays that...

‘Cabaret Noir’ at Happenstance Theater at Baltimore Theatre Project

Femme fatales and fedoras, trench coats and torch songs, intrigue and suspense… such is the tagline for Happenstance Theater’s Cabaret Noir, and it offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies in store...

Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘Darius & Twig’ at The Kennedy Center

Darius & Twig, now playing at The Kennedy Center’s Family Theater, tackles issues confronted by inner city kids throughout the country. And it does so with a mixture of hope and hard truth that is as...

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet: ‘Balanchine, Béjart, and the Bard’ at The Kennedy Center

Suzanne Farrell – still fairest of them all From the early 1960s until the late 1980s (except for a five-year escape to Belgium), Suzanne Farrell reigned as George Balanchine’s muse at the New York...

‘Dames at Sea’ at The Helen Hayes Theatre in New York City

Way back in the dark ages (circa early 1930s) when musicals were musical comedies (if you don’t know what I mean, listen to “Musicals,” the showstopper in the light-hearted hit Something Rotten!), the...

‘All in the Timing’ at Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium in Philadelphia

The L’Etage Cabaret’s lounge, with its mood lighting and leather seating and tea candles, is the perfect setting for the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s treatment of David Ives’s All in the...

‘Top Girls’ at George Washington University

I may have missed it, but to my knowledge no playwright in the current Women’s Voices Theater Festival set out to write a feminist-socialist play and explicitly said so. (Not that there’s anything...

‘Hamilton’ at The Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City

I was away in August when the musical Hamilton opened on Broadway so yesterday I caught up with it as it was about to enter its third month of sellout business at The Richard Rodgers Theatre. It is...

‘Bullets Over Broadway’ at Broadway Philadelphia

Bullets Over Broadway is one of Woody Allen’s funniest, most accessible movies. But the stage musical adaptation, using a script by Allen himself, is an awkward mishmash of comedy and music that never...

Tracy Lynn Olivera’s ‘Halloween Spooktacular Cabaret’ at Signature Theatre

As Halloween approaches, ghosts and monsters and witches seem to be everywhere. But by far the most entertaining witch of all was Tracy Lynn Olivera, presenting her Halloween Spooktacular Cabaret at...

Spine: Is ‘Avenue Q’ Just What the Doctor Ordered? Constellation Theatre’s Marvelous Production

Let me be absolutely clear. I loved Constellation Theatre Company’s production of Avenue Q, which opened last night to a packed, laughing audience. Fast paced, precisely choreographed and executed,...

‘The Night Alive’ at Round House Theatre

Last night, Round House Theatre premiered their second play of the season, The Night Alive. As always, I read up on the play before attending, but no amount of research could have prepared me for the...

Magic Time! ‘Avenue Q’ at Constellation Theatre Company

The intriguing tagline for Constellation Theatre Company’s 2015/16 season is “Playtime for Grownups,” which could not have been more appropriate on opening night of its Avenue Q—the wholly humable...

‘Play On’ at Castaways Repertory Theatre

Play On is a fantastically funny play, written by Rick Abbot, which encapsulates the many horrible ways that a play can be undone: A community theater has decided to put on a play, written by a local...

‘Avenue Q’ at Constellation Theatre Company

Avenue Q is that rarest of Broadway hits that captivates everyone, theatre geek or casual fan, who has blushed at its racy tunes or busted a gut seeing the hilarity firsthand. I am pleased to report...

‘Girlstar’ at Signature Theatre

Ha! Ready to visit a Coney Island fun-house with plenty of resounding rock show ambiance? Ready to open up to plenty of utterly blazing showbiz; “tricks and treats”? Well, step right up and enter the...

Bowen McCauley Dance 20th Anniversary Celebration at Dance Place

Bowen McCauley Dance is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary season with a four-piece retrospective. All choreographed by Lucy Bowen McCauley, the opening number takes the audience back to the...

‘Northern Lights’ at Columbia Pro Cantare

On Saturday October 24, 2015 the Columbia Pro Cantare Choral group, lead by Conductor Frances Motyca Dawson, opened their 39th Season with Northern Lights, performed at the Jim Rouse Theatre for the...

‘A Comedy of Tenors’ at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ

Is A Comedy of Tenors, Ken Ludwig’s newest comedy, a worthy successor to Lend Me a Tenor, his knockabout farce that opened on Broadway in 1989 and has been produced in hundreds of theatres around the...

‘Playing the Assassin’ at Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington, DE

In my experience, football fans and theater goers don’t frequently overlap, but Playing the Assassin combines these two vastly different fandoms surprisingly successfully. With the second production...

The Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘Raw’ at Venus Theatre Company

Among other notable experiences I’ve had during the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival, I can now say I’ve been admonished by a cow. Please don’t think I’m being derogatory. Because in Venus Theatre’s...

‘Smartphones–a pocket-size farce’ at Ambassador Theater

saw this show last nite. LMAO. 2 funny. OMG. u G2G. So might read a hasty text from a self-absorbed hipster about Smartphones, the ridiculously delightful farce now playing at Mead Lab Flashpoint....

‘The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

Herman Hesse was once – and for all I know still is – highbrow chic. Marjory Taub (Karen Jadlos Shotts) – heroine of Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, directed by Michael Kharfen — is...

‘Ripcord’ at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City

David Lindsay-Abaire has an enviable record of success with a solid list of plays, and in many of them he has written rewarding roles for the actress Marylouise Burke. He’s done so again with Ripcord,...

‘Rizzo’ at Theatre Exile in Philadelphia

Technically speaking, Rizzo isn’t a great play. Bruce Graham’s new play about the life of the late Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo doesn’t dig deeply enough into what made its main character tick. The...

‘Assassins’ by Spotlight UB and Stillpointe Theatre Initiative

In his Tony Award-winning musical Assassins, Stephen Sondheim states that “Angry men don’t write the rules, and guns don’t right the wrongs.” Through their production of this same musical, the cast...

‘The Most Happy Fella’ at The Catholic University

Be ready for a big production when you see The Most Happy Fella at The Catholic University of America’s Hartke Theatre. A 27-piece orchestra, lavish staging, more than 30 actors, gorgeous singing, and...

‘Technicolor Life’ at Rep Stage

Three generations of women in one contemporary American family prove “ready for their close-up” in Technicolor Life, a world premiere at Rep Stage in Howard County. Don’t make a mistake thinking...

‘Frankenstein’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

“I saw a figure…or was it a reflection?” This rhetorical question literally haunts Frankenstein, an original Maryland Ensemble Theatre (‘MET’) production adapted from Mary Shelley’s classic work of...