Olney Theatre Center

A richly immersive ghost story in ‘A Christmas Carol’ at Olney

Performed solo by Paul Morella the way Dickens intended.

‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ thrills like fireworks at Olney

An evening full of stunning vocals and powerhouse performances.

Olney elevates ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to new and exciting heights

A diverse, unique, and thoughtful recreation of ‘a tale as old as time.’

The comedy in Olney’s ‘Thanksgiving Play’ comes with a side of snark

Now available to stream: Playwright Larissa FastHorse’s satire about white “wokeness,” a brilliant middle finger.

Olney’s 83rd season keeps promise to reflect whole community

Shows include two world premieres, two area premieres, ‘The Music Man’ with a deaf-and-hearing team, and a groundbreaking ‘Beauty and the Beast.’

Olney Theatre’s open-air summer is open invitation to all

‘Olney Outdoors’ offers something for everyone, live on the Root Family Stage.

Monumental adopts landmark policy against discrimination and harassment

Monumental Theatre Company takes “a definitive, proactive step to empower its community members and create a culture of safety, equity, and inclusivity.”

Olney Theatre Center hosts ‘Just Arts,’ a virtual social justice arts festival

In response to ongoing social upheaval and protests for racial justice, Olney Theatre Center is hosting a virtual social justice arts festival amplifying the voices of BIPOC artists and activists in...

Olney’s virtual ‘The Humans’ shines with fine performances

Olney Theatre Center’s virtual production of The Humans offers proof positive of the old adage: Necessity is the mother of invention. Just see how they have turned the pandemic’s crushing blow into a...

Olney Theatre Center takes ‘The Humans’ from stage to stream

The Humans—Stephen Karam’s Tony Award–winning family dramedy—was slated for a run at Olney Theatre Center this season, but that physical production was shelved this summer when the COVID would not...

Theater artists to envision the future in Saturday chats online from Olney

In a time when connection is more important than ever, Olney Theatre Center is revamping its Streaming Saturdays, a live online discussion series featuring the perspectives of a wide range of theater...

Olney Theatre Center announces ambitious 2020–2021 season

During a recent live-streamed event, Olney Theatre Center Artistic Director Jason Loewith unveiled a lineup of 17 plays, concerts, and presentations coming in 2020–2021 as part of the company’s 83rd...

Olney Theatre Center makes ‘The Amateurs’ available online for one week, offers other online content

Olney Theatre Center’s production of The Amateurs by Jordan Harrison and directed by Jason King Jones will be available to stream online beginning Saturday, March 28 at noon through the end of Sunday,...

Olney Theatre Center’s ‘The Amateurs’ is a comedy of ‘epidemic’ proportions

There is nothing like a good old-fashioned plague to get you pondering life’s big questions: the Bubonic Plague, the AIDS Crisis, COVID-19, really any epidemic will do. Of course, Jordan Harrison’s...

The political becomes personal in Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Miss You Like Hell’

At Friendship Park, on the US-Mexico border just south of San Diego, from 10 am to 2 pm Saturdays and Sundays, 10 people at a time on the US side can see, and talk through a fence, with friends or...

Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ entertains from start to finish

Once again, Olney Theatre Center (OTC) has put on a tap-happy show. This time it’s Singin’ in the Rain, where the audience hums the familiar tunes as they ratta-ta-tap back to their cars. That was the...

Review: Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Cabaret’ Is Among the Show’s Best Productions

It’s been 54 years since Cabaret first opened on Broadway, but this season is the first time the Olney Theatre Center has staged the show. I have always loved this Kander and Ebb masterpiece, but of...

National Players To Offer Low or No Cost Shows at Olney Theatre Center

National Players, America’s longest-running touring company and the hallmark outreach program of the Olney Theatre Center, presents its three-play repertory with a series of pay-what-you can previews...

Review: ‘Tiger Style!’ at Olney Theatre Center

Buy your ticket today for a rich palette of cultural and political satire. Olney Theatre Center’s Tiger Style! is the best stage comedy I’ve seen in 2019. Directed by Natsu Onoda Power, a major theme...

Review: ‘Matilda’ at Olney Theatre Center

A young hero in her own story who redeems the lives of others around her, the title character in the musical adaptation by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin of Roald Dahl’s novel Matilda uses her...

Review: ‘Mary Stuart’ at Olney Theatre Center

What does a 200-year-old literary classic have to do with the chaos of the US Congress today? A lot, according to Jason Loewith, Olney Theatre Center’s Artistic Director, who has adapted Friedrich...

Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton To Join The Honorable Sarah Bloom Raskin In Conversation On Opening Night Of ‘Mary Stuart’

Freshman member of the 116th Congress, Jennifer Wexton (VA – 10th), and former Federal Reserve Governor and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Sarah Bloom Raskin, sit down for a conversation about...

Review: ‘A Comedy of Tenors’ at Olney Theatre Center

Things are getting silly at the Olney Theatre Center these days. Very, very, silly. Very skillfully silly, in the production of Ken Ludwig’s A Comedy of Tenors. A follow-on to Ludwig’s highly popular...

Olney Theatre Center Announces 2019-2020 Season

Olney Theatre Center has announced the lineup for its 2019-2020 season: Mainstage Productions: Cabaret (August 28 – October 6, 2019) Singin’ in the Rain (November 8, 2019 – January 5, 2020) Miss You...

Review: ‘Oil’ at Olney Theatre Center

There are a few shows – very few – which on first viewing have left me breathless. The original productions of Sweeney Todd and Copenhagen come quickly to mind. To this small list add the American...

Review: ‘Once’ at Olney Theatre Center

If you’ve never heard of the musical Once, written by Enda Walsh, with music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, you aren’t alone. Despite receiving eleven 2012 Tony Award nominations and...

Review: Olney Ballet Theatre’s ‘The Nutcracker’

There are certain things that start popping up everywhere to mark the Holiday season. Carols on the radio. Decorations on houses and main streets. (Objecting to the fact that both of these are...

Review: ‘A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas’ at Olney Theatre Center

The entryway to the Muritz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at the Olney Theatre Center is lined with holiday lights and garnish. The cozy lobby is adorned with electric candles and sprigs of holly, creating a...

Review: ‘Elf the Musical’ at Olney Theatre Center

The Holidays are upon us and with them comes the rush of themed movies, music, and theater. Olney Theatre Center welcomes the holiday season with their production of Elf the Musical. Based on the 2003...

Review: ‘Labour of Love’ at Olney Theatre Center

Just when Americans think we have a monopoly on political rancor, along comes a show from across the pond to remind us that we aren’t the only ones dealing with extreme political partisanship....

Review: ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ by the National Players

It seems particularly appropriate that the National Players should be mounting a production about an imperturbable, peripatetic gambler who takes every mishap in stride while journeying as far as it...

Beltway Barks: Smooch a Pooch or Take One Home

When Rusty the celebrity dog goes looking for kisses this Saturday, he won’t be alone. Joining Rusty will be a cadre of adoptable dogs and animal-loving actors brought together by Lisa Carrier Baker,...

Review: ‘South Pacific’ at Olney Theater Center

No one is from there. Espiritu Santo, the main island setting of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical drama and the James Michener novel (Tales of the South Pacific) that inspired it, is not the dreamy...

Review: ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ by The Hypocrites at Olney Theatre Center

Once upon a time, Gilbert and Sullivan staging was – there is no other word for it – stodgy. The D’Oyly Carte opera company dominated G&S performance from the late 19th century until its 1982 death...

Review: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ at Olney Theatre Center

Something for everybody. That’s what comes to mind when I think about the Chicago-based The Hypocrites’ whiplash-inducing, gender-flipped spin on Gibert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. Trying to...

Review: ‘On the Town’ at Olney Theatre Center

D.C.–area audiences are notorious for their too-free-and-easy awarding of standing ovations. But last night’s prolonged, enthusiastic, standing, whooping, hollering, response to Olney Theatre’s...

Review: ‘The Invisible Hand’ at Olney Theatre Center

The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar is a riveting political drama now playing at Olney Theatre Center under the direction of Michael Bloom. It will move you and keep you on the edge of your seat while...

Review: ‘The Crucible’ at Olney Theatre Center

Fanaticism grows in a society fractured along fault lines of political and religious authority, property, status, gender, generational change, and belief, creating a fertile climate for persecution....

Review: ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ at Olney Theatre Center

Five minutes into the start of Every Brilliant Thing, most of the audience had already cried for the first time – and had laughed aloud. By the end of the show, the entire room seemed to be infused...

Review: ‘A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas’ at Olney Theatre Center

Surely, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the definitive Christmas story—at least, in the fiction category—and Paul Morella’s scrumptious and spooky adaptation has become a perennial favorite. Adapted...

Review: ‘Annie’ at Olney Theatre Center

The musical Annie is 40 years old this year, and thanks to the Olney Theatre Center’s cheerful new production, a whole new generation of theater goers will get the chance to travel back in time to...

News: DC Performing Arts Organizations Rally to Support Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria

When Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico on September 20th, the storm left millions of American citizens with no electricity, drinkable water, cell service, or a roof over their heads. A...

Review: ‘Our Town’ at Olney Theatre Center

Thornton Wilder’s New Hampshire creation, Grover’s Corners, sits on some of the oldest rock in the world: “a shelf of Devonian basalt” crossed with “vestiges of Mesozoic shale,” we’re told. The oldest...

Review: ‘Thurgood’ at The Olney Theatre Center

Thurgood, a one-man-show by George Stevens, Jr., is playing at the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at the Olney Theatre Center in Olney. The play is a about the late Supreme Court Justice and respected...

Review: ‘My Fair Lady’ at Olney Theatre Center

Not your grandparents’ My Fair Lady, Olney Theatre Center presents a brilliant reimagining of this classic musical. With book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, it was adapted...

Review: ‘Proof’ at Olney Theatre Center

Who wants to go see a play about math? That could be a typical dialogue when people are perusing the paper wondering how to spend their Saturday night. In the case of David Auburn’s Tony Award-winning...

Broadway Producer Jack Viertel to Appear in Conversation with Jason Loewith at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, This Saturday, May 20th at 2:15pm

This Saturday, at 2:15pm, noted Broadway Producer Jack Viertel will appear at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in conversation with Olney Theatre Center Artistic Director Jason Loewith to discuss...

Review: ‘The Magic Play’ at Olney Theatre Center

In the art of magic, Andrew Hinderaker has found a vivid metaphor for the dynamics of honesty, trust and control that underpin our most important relationships. His immensely entertaining and profound...

Review: ‘Fickle: A Fancy French Farce’ at Olney Theatre Center

Modernizing Comic Antiquity, Or What Would a Classic French Farce Look Today: Fickle Brings the Laughs at Olney Theatre Center In an age where it seems like all the classics are getting reboots of...

Meet the Cast of Olney Theatre Center’s ‘Sweeney Todd’: Part Three: Frank Viveros (Pirelli)

In Part Three of a series of interviews with the cast of Sweeney Todd at Olney Theatre Center, meet Frank Viveros. Please introduce yourself and tell our readers where they may have seen you on the...