2016

Review: ‘Political Cabaret’ at Cohesion Theatre, Baltimore Improv Group, and Spotlighters Theatre

As a welcome election-year treat, Cohesion Theatre Company (“Cohesion”), Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre (“Spotlighters”), and the Baltimore Improv Group (“BIG”) have collaborated to create a...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Sword of the Unicorn’

Sword of the Unicorn is an intriguing show. Under the direction of Director, Writer, and Producer Harrison Stengle the play cleverly provides insight on the stress coming out in a new exciting way. I...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Dutch Masters’ at AMH Productions

Ostensibly, Dutch Masters is a trope we’ve seen enough times before. A young black man, Eric (James Whitfield) approaches a young white man, Steve (Robert Dondiego), on the subway. Eric is intent of...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘7 Person Chair Pyramid High Wire Act’ at Der Vorführeffekt Theatre

In Kingsessing, in the bare-bones exposed-brick performance spare Panorama, Der Vorführeffekt Theatre’s “The 7 Person Chair Pyramid High Wire Act” is a welcome oasis of imagination. Directed by Sarah...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Deep Blue Theater Collective

A lost Blanche DuBois greets you at the door, as you make your way upstairs, live piano music plays loudly as the troupe of performers dances and lightly interacts with the audience, asking simple...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Exile 2588’ at Almanac Dance Circus Theatre

Inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Io, the principles of existential risk and human enhancement ethics considered by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrum, and the popular genre of science fiction,...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Spherus’

Greg Kennedy bills himself as an “Innovative Juggler,” and he lives up to that billing in Spherus, his show now running as part of the 201 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Kennedy’s style is rooted in...

Review: ‘Steel Magnolias’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

Set in the pleasantly pastel-colored world of Truvy’s beauty salon, The Little Theatre of Alexandria’s production of Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias starts out by introducing us the everyday life of...

Review: ‘Lobby Hero’ at 1st Stage

The imposing lobby of a tony Manhattan apartment building—all sleek gray marble, glass, and stainless steel—commands the spacious 1st Stage stage. Sound Designer Neil McFadden has created a...

Review: ‘Dog Sees God’ at East Street Arts Center

We all have those childhood cartoons and characters we loved in our youth, whose innocence and wholesome comedy are branded in our memories and popular culture. But what happens if those wholesome...

Review: ‘Dinner With Friends’ at Peter’s Alley Theatre Productions

Peter’s Alley Theatre Productions opens its fifth season with Dinner With Friends, a 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Donald Margulies, directed by Kristofer Kauff. An intricate drama about the...

Review: ‘Catch Me If You Can’ at NextStop Theatre Company

The story of Frank Abegnale, Jr., was first brought to America’s attention in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Catch Me If You Can. It gained a new lease on life in 2011 with the Broadway musical version...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Pangaea: A Folk Opera’ at The Hum’n’Bards

“I am not prepared to be isolated” ~ Anna Michael, Lead Artist The Hum’n’Bards, directed by the talented Jasmine Kojouri, in association with Van.Martin Productions, have produced a charming, and...

Review: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ at Hedgerow Theatre Company in Rose Valley, PA

Spooky moors, haunting noises in the night, one or two mysterious deaths, and a fabled homicidal hound make for a cozy evening of suspense in the The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted by Brock D....

Review: ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis

This remarkable production of The Cripple of Inishmaan is a fantastic way to kick off Colonial Players’ new season, its 68th. Written by Martin McDonagh and directed by Dave Carter, it tells the story...

Review: ‘Wait Until Dark’ at Everyman Theatre

A policeman. A con man. An old friend. A blind woman. A lost doll. A murder. Everyman Theatre (“Everyman”) kicked off its 2016-17 season on Friday with the suspenseful thriller, Wait Until Dark, a...

Review: ‘Electile Dysfunction’ at Act II Playhouse in Ambler, PA

Electile Dysfunction is a very funny show. Act II Playhouse is performing quite a community service, since the current election news ranges from ridiculous to terrifying. Laughter is certainly called...

Review: Bryan Adams at Wolf Trap

If you’re looking for the fountain of youth, look no more, it’s called Rock ‘N Roll. Boyish and Renaissance man Bryan Adams transported through a time machine from the 1980s to grace Wolf Trap’s stage...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘In the Clearing’ at Birds on a Wire

Birds on a Wire takes Fringe-goers on an evocative journey into the woods in a short-run premiere of its newest modern dance piece In the Clearing. The full-length adventure, choreographed and...

Review: ‘The Other Place’ at Rep Stage

Today’s playgoers are used to solving puzzles in the theater. So perhaps Playwright Sharr White spends a bit longer than necessary to get us to The Other Place promised by the title of his 2011 drama....

Review: Angelique Kidjo at The Music Center at Strathmore

The raves never stop pouring in for Grammy Award-winning singer, composer, and humanitarian Angelique Kidjo – nor should they. Called by NPR “Africa’s greatest living diva,” Kidjo’s ample gifts – her...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Two Stories’ by Jillian Glace

Two Stories, choreographed by Jillian Glace, touts itself as a dance piece centered “on the concept of perspective and how intimately we experience relationships.” While the piece succeeds at the...

Review: ‘All My Sons’ at Vagabond Players

‘All My Sons’ highlights painful secrets from the past Vagabond Players’ All My Sons, expertly directed by Michael Byrne Zemarel, is a masterful staging of a classic work by one of the great American...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Room 21’ by Jace Clayton at The Barnes Foundation

The 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival celebrated its official launch at the Barnes Foundation on Friday evening with an extraordinary one-night-only sold-out event in the Curated Fringe, as New York...

Review: ‘Come From Away’ at Ford’s Theatre

Nestled in the northwestern part of the island of Newfoundland, lies the small town of Gander. In 2001, the population of Gander was 9,651. On September 11, 2001, that population increased by over...

Meet the Cast and Director of Providence Players’ ‘Amadeus’ Part 2: Mike Rudden (Mozart) by Chip Gertzog

Amadeus, the late Peter Shaffer’s Tony and Academy award winning masterpiece opens September 30, 2016 and kicks off the Providence Players 2016-2017 season. In Part 2 of interviews with the cast and...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Animal Farm to Table’ at The Renegade Company

Animal Farm to Table isn’t like any other show in the Fringe Festival. The show, conceived and directed by Mike Durkin for The Renegade Company, is performed on an actual (but small) working farm just...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs’ at Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium

Emptiness. Isolation. Boredom. Expectation. Emptiness. The Old Man and Old Woman over-react to the petty nuisance of mosquitoes flying around them, then yammer incessant inanities to fill up the void...

Review: ‘A Dream Within A Dream: Madness’ at Through The 4th Wall

Hats off to the totally nifty, quite intense, immersive production of A Dream Within A Dream: Madness at Alexandria’s Torpedo Factory Arts Center. Created by Through the 4th Wall Dreams is abundantly...

Review: ‘EDWIN, The Story of Edwin Booth’ at The Theatre at St. Clement’s in NYC

Renowned as the greatest American Shakespearean actor of his day, Edwin Booth (1833-93), the brother of Abraham Lincoln’s killer John Wilkes Booth, could have easily become the collateral damage of...

Review: Don Henley at Wolf Trap

Seeing American icon in concert Don Henley is a must! He is Americana at its best! A musician to the core, his musical craftsmanship holds up to the test of time. A founding member of one of the most...

‘Take A Bow’ Part 7: The Staff of DCMetroTheaterArts’ Favorite Spring/Summer 2016 Performances

Here’s Part 7 of the staff of DCMetroTheaterArts’ favorite Spring/Summer 2016 performances. To our honorees: TAKE A BOW! _____ Caitlin Carbone as Hamlet in Hamlet at Cohesion Theatre Company. Caitlin...

In the Moment: Jessica Robinson on Better Said Than Done at ‘Fall for the Book’ on September 5th-30th

What can be more exhilarating and authentic than standing up in front of an audience to tell a true story about yourself? Maybe unnerving at first; to open up to possible ridicule from people who...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Carried Away’ at Brian Sanders’ JUNK

Boldly erotic, seductively exuberant, and profoundly intimate, Carried Away, this year’s world-premiere Fringe piece by Brian Sanders’ JUNK, brings all the physicality, psychology, and emotional...

NextNOW is the Final Arts Festival of the Summer at The Clarice September 9-10

For many of us, summer means hot evenings out attending arts festivals. Music fans travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles to attend big music festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo. And locally, the...

Meet The Cast of The Castaways Repertory Theatre’s ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof’: Part 1: Jay Tilley and Matthew Scarborough

In part 1 in a series of interviews with the cast of Castaways Repertory Theatre’s production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, meet Matthew Scarborough and Jay Tilley. Please introduce yourself and tell our...

Page-to-Stage Festival: ‘Wendy: The Girl Who Grew Up’ at Monumental Theatre Company

The Kennedy Center’s 15th Annual Page-to-Stage Festival took place on Labor Day weekend, with over 50 D.C. area theaters participating. Through free readings and open rehearsals, the Festival offers a...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: ‘Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Mosaic Theater Company of DC Unveils Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies. Full Production Set for World Premiere in January 2017 One of the most highly anticipated new plays of the 2016-17...

Renegade Company’s Mike Durkin on ‘Animal Farm to Table’ at the 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival

Mike Durkin, an innovative Philadelphia director who has opened many doors, starts out this interview by giving a brutally honest self-assessment on the ongoing fluctuating weight issues in our...

A Preview with the Cast and Team of ‘The Vanity’ at Theatre Row in NYC

What do you get when you mix The Picture of Dorian Gray with Sunset Boulevard and Valley of the Dolls? A high-camp melodramatic parody on the consequences of aging in a profession where youth and...

Review: ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ at The Goodspeed

I have been viscerally connected to this charming musical about teenage life during the mid-1950s, when pop music was surrendering to the hot wave of rock ‘n roll started more or less by icon of the...

The 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival: ‘Feed’: “Bring Your Appetites.This is a Play You Can Eat!” An Interview with the Applied Mechanics Collective

Applied Mechanics (AM) is a Philadelphia-based collaborative ensemble that has been making original, immersive theater since it was founded by Director Rebecca (Becky) Wright and Designer Maria...

Page-to-Stage New Play Festival: Brave Soul Collective and African-American Collective Theater

Two of DC’s most important independent theater collectives bearing witness as black artists to #BlackLivesMatter are Brave Soul Collective and African-American Collective Theater (ACT). Both...

Review: ‘Urinetown’ at Constellation Theatre Company

In the not too distant future there will be a drought so long and severe that water use will become strictly regulated. So regulated that even your right to pee will be in doubt. How will you handle...

Review: ‘Blackberry Daze’ at MetroStage

MetroStage’s Blackberry Daze adapted by novelist Ruth P. Watson and Director/Choreographer/Lyricist Thomas W. Jones II from Watson’s best-selling novel, and with a soulful, beautiful, and emotional...

Review: ‘Marx in Soho’ at Spotlighters Theatre

Have you ever wished you could return to a conversation after-the-fact to clarify a misunderstanding? So did Karl Marx, at least in the witty and poignant one-man show, Marx in Soho, which is playing...

Review: ‘Murder Ballad’ at StillPointe Theatre

In 2013, Playwright Julia Jordan and Indie rock singer/songwriter, Juliana Nash (formerly with Talking to Animals), created a ground-breaking minimalist musical about a tragic love triangle. Though...

A Report on Landless Theatre Company’s Symphonic Metal ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’

Following the success of last year’s Sweeney Todd Prog Metal Version, Landless Theatre Company is back with their latest metal adaptation of a Tony® Award-winning musical. This time, the company...

Review: ‘The Elephant Man at Collaborative Theatre Company and Fells Point Corner Theatre

On Friday night, The Collaborative Theatre Co. (“Collaborative”) and Fells Point Corner Theatre (“FPCT”) opened the 2016-2017 theatrical season with their co-production of Bernard Pomerance’s classic,...

Review: ‘Kraftwerk’ at The Music Center at Strathmore

Review: Kraftwerk brings electro-pop and 3D imagery to The Music Center at Strathmore The electro-pop group Kraftwerk has been shredding the envelope of what is possible in electronic instrumentation...