2016

In the Moment: ‘A Dream Within A Dream: Madness’ Playing 9/7-10/31 at The Torpedo Factory

Many know Alexandria’s Torpedo Factory Arts Center (TFAC) as a re-purposed war-time munitions plant now a prominent and beloved non-profit home for artists to create works in a publicly accessible...

Catching Up With Anne Kanengeiser at ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at The Kennedy Center

As the National Tour of The Phantom of the Opera is about to end its run at The Kennedy Center, I had the pleasure of catching up with Anne Kanengeiser, who is starring as Madame Giry, before The...

Review: Barbra Streisand: ‘Barbra: The Music…The Mem’ries…The Magic!’

A diva in the best sense of the word, Barbra Streisand has always understood that only an artistic perfectionist could span decades inspiring generations with her God-given vocal instrument —and,...

Continuing Today @8PM & Tomorrow at 2PM: Silver Spring Stage’s & Montgomery Playhouse’s One Act Festival

Silver Spring Stage is delighted to host Montgomery Playhouse for a collaborative One Act Festival this weekend and next. This weekend belongs to Montgomery Playhouse and its three shows, while next...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘This Gonna Be on the Test, Miss?’

From the time she was a kid, Ronna J Levy knew that she wanted to be an actress. How she ended up being a teacher is the theme of her original one-woman show of 2012, This Gonna Be on the Test, Miss?...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘Tribulation: The Musical’

A post-modern take-off on the Book of Revelation, Tribulation: The Musical, with book and lyrics by Molly Miller and music by Brad Kemp, reimagines the Apocalypse through the eyes of a recent college...

Review: ‘Detroit’ at Theater With a View, in Pottstown, PA

Do you know your neighbors? Even their names? Years ago, (before the internet, video games, and cable TV), people routinely visited their neighbors, to share cups of sugar and companionship. Today, we...

Meet Amy Staats from ‘The Last Class: A Jazzercize Play’ Tonight Through Sunday at The Klunch at Trinidad Theatre

Amy Staats plays MJ in The Last Class: A Jazzercize Play, playing tonight through Sunday at The Klunch performing at The Capital Fringe’s Trinidad Theatre. Joel: How did you get involved with The Last...

Meet Playwright Megan Hill from ‘The Last Class: A Jazzercize Play’ Tonight Through Sunday at The Klunch at Trinidad Theatre

Megan Hill is not only the playwright of The Last Class: A Jazzercize Play, but she gets a real workout playing the Instructor this weekend at The Klunch performing at The Capital Fringe’s Trinidad...

Film Review: ‘Ben-Hur’

If ever our world needed a story of uplift, peace and redemption as told by a repentant old war general, it’s now. But this time around at the movies, sorry to say, General Lew Wallace’s classic tale...

Review: ‘Carousel’ at The Theatre Lab of the Dramatic Arts

Carousel is a bittersweet tale of romance and redemption set against the backdrop of a town on the Maine coastline at the turn of the 20th century. With music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics and book by...

Dangereuse: The Joyous Art: Free For All-‘The Tempest’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Ethan McSweeny’s production makes us realize once again how profound it really is. This Tempest retains most of the cast of the original, which was...

2016 ‘Page-to-Stage’ Schedule for September 3-5, 2016 at The Kennedy Center

The 15th Annual Page-to-Stage New Play Festival Schedule Saturday, September 3 to Monday, September 5, 2016 PERFORMANCE CALENDAR-UPDATED 8/19/16 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2016 11 AM–12:20 PM ISRAELI...

An Interview with The Bang Group’s David Parker on ‘Stuck on You’ at Philadelphia’s GayFest! 2016

“Dance theater with a queer sensibility, high spirits, and a spirit of adventure”: An interview with The Bang Group Co-Founder David Parker, performing at Philadelphia’s GayFest! 2016 Laughs abound as...

Magic Time! ‘The Lonesome West’ at The Keegan Theatre

In real life, when we are spectators to two grown men facing off in dead-serious combat—right in front of us; with words, fists, lethal weapons, whatnot; unmediated by movies and such—our natural...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s ‘Free For All’

All is dark. All is silent. Then, thunder rumbles. Lightning strikes. A boat is caught in the middle of the storm. The sailors frantically run about, making any and all attempts to save themselves,...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘Cabtivist’

After listening to John McDonagh’s hilarious reminiscences about his life as a New York cabbie, you’ll be convinced that few jobs are as rife with comic material. Born and raised in Queens, the son of...

A Report on ‘Handsome Hound’ at Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center

Handsome Hound, a local band piloted by twenty-somethings Claire Daviss and Cuchulain Kelly, gives millennials a better name. Self-described as having “roots in folk, rock, pop, Americana, country and...

Meet the Cast of Hard Bargain’s ‘Radio Golf’: Part 1: Lolita Marie

In Part 1 of interviews with the cast of Hard Bargain Players’ Radio Golf, meet Lolita Marie. Joel: Where have local theatergoers seen you on the stage, and what roles have you performed? Lolita: Hard...

Magic Time! ‘Notes on My Theatergoing in London’

My four days in London last weekend offered time slots to see six plays—four evenings and two matinees. My strategy was to seek intriguing, fresh writing in a mix of West End, Off West End, and Fringe...

In the Moment: Theatre Communications Group Reaches Out to Veterans

Reaching out to new or underserved audience for audience development is likely a major, on-going activity for any local theater troupe. Given the large number of military families and veterans in the...

Review: ‘The Lion In Winter’ at Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA

The Lion in Winter written by James Goldman at Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company is directed beautifully by Joshua Browns. It is a wintery reprieve from the dastardly hot Philadelphia summer. It’s...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘Joey Variations: A Play with Dance’

A poignant and uplifting three-hander, Joey Variations: A Play with Dance, written and directed by Jon Spano, is a seemingly simple story about the psychological and emotional complexities of...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘The Legend of Oni’

Fulfilling a ten-year dream, the all-female Musical Company OZmate, from Takarazuka, Japan, has brought its epic tale, The Legend of Oni, to FringeNYC, and NYC couldn’t be more fortunate! Based on...

Philadelphia GayFest! 2016 Review: ‘My Favorite Husbands’ at Studio X

In 2003, Massachusetts fired a shot heard ’round the world when it became the first state to legalize gay marriage. For Mark (Thomas-Robert Irvin), the central character in Andrew Marvel’s new play,...

Review: ‘Anything Goes’ at Our Gang Players in Manahawkin, NJ

Our Gang Players took on a big undertaking with their production of Anything Goes this past weekend and it was surely an afternoon pleasure cruise. This Cole Porter musical classic with book by P. G....

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘Humorously Horrendous Haunted Hideaway’

If you’re a fan of the fright genre and nostalgic for classic Saturday morning TV shows for kids, Playlab NYC’s Humorously Horrendous Haunted Hideaway will have you screaming with laughter! Written...

Review: ‘Lost in Yonkers’ at Prince George’s Little Theatre

Lost in Yonkers, by Neil Simon, now playing at Prince George’s Little Theatre, is a dramedy. Director Ken Kienas and Producer Malia Murray offer up a rich character study about family dynamics....

Review: ‘Snow White’ at The Heritage Players

The Heritage Players of Catonsville, MD have created a wonderful production of Snow White, the classic fairytale with a young beauty, an evil Queen, a Magic Mirror, seven dwarves, and a handsome...

Review: ‘Oklahoma!’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

When Riverside Center Dinner Theater opened in 1998, their first show was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, known then (and still) as the Great American Musical. As Riverside Center nears its...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘The Intriguing Engagements of Frances and Meg Cheatham, Ladies of Society’

As two upper-crust English sisters of marriageable age in the Victorian era, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw and Natalia Dyer bring new meaning to sibling rivalry in the titular roles of Adaire Kamen’s The...

Review: ‘Breathing Under Dirt’ at Lower Shore Performing Arts Company

Cynthia Watros packed a wallop of twisted fears, resentment and despair into a tumultuous whirlwind performance as Patience Malarkey in the world premiere of Breathing Under Dirt. Entering on a roll...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘The Theatre Made in Paradise’

What better reason to leave Elizabethan England than to stage a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the New World and to found an indie theater there? That’s the witty premise of playwright...

Review: ‘Max Major’s THINK AGAIN’ at Baltimore Theatre Project

I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve always wanted to see a mentalist performance. Until now, though, I’d been too scared to ever actually attend one. I’m not the sort of person who yearns for...

Review: ‘Radio Golf’ at Hard Bargain Players

Radio Golf, expertly directed by Terry Spann, and written by the late, esteemed playwright August Wilson, is a powerful study of Black men with two different approaches to progressing in a country...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘Algorithmism’

Traditionally, one of the defining factors of human civilization is a society that creates art. But are the hand, mind, and emotions of the artist integral parts of the creative process, or can the...

In the Moment: ‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ at Signature Theatre

What a way to blast open the new theater season. So take your seat at Signature’s bold, daring, muscular production of a tale about race and music, Jelly’s Last Jam. The 1992 musical is a journey into...

Film Review: ‘Anthropoid’

Operation Anthropoid was the code name for a mission planned by Czech government-in-exile with the British SOE to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, who was the head of the SS and a primary logistical...

2016 FringeNYC Review: ‘Till Birnam Wood’

Philadelphia’s John Schultz brings an immersive sensory experience to FringeNYC with Till Birnam Wood, an original adaptation of Macbeth. Already a hit in the 2014 and 2015 Philly Fringe Festivals,...

An Interview With ‘My Favorite Husbands’ Playwright Andrew Marvel-Playing at GayFest! 2016 in Philadelphia

Just when the US is in a political freefall, with Trump and Clinton battling it out, while Stein and Johnson are waiting in the wings, Playwright Andrew Marvel opens a Pandora’s box with Gay...

Review: Matt Nathanson and Phillip Phillips at Wolf Trap

A few years ago, I asked to review Gavin Degraw at Wolf Trap. I had loved his music for years, and was anxiously awaiting his turn for the stage when his co-headliner, a man named Matt Nathanson – who...

Review: The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma at Wolf Trap

A high school teacher of mine used to say that there are two universal languages in the world. One is math; the other is music. Simply stated at the time, its message has echoed through my life in...

Review: ‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ at Signature Theatre

The early days of American jazz come fully back to life in Signature Theatre’s Jelly’s Last Jam. But if the notion of spending two hours in the dark watching something historical sounds boring — not...

Here are the 2016 Ruby Griffith Award Honorees

One month ago, on July 10, 2016, 2nd Star Productions was honored with the ‘Best Overall Production’ honor at Ruby Griffith Awards ceremony for their production of Guys and Dolls. And congrats to...

Spine: ‘The Lonesome West’ and Other Motherless Places at Keegan Theatre

Not long ago, Washington was the Murder-Capital of the USA. Crack Wars. Drive-Bys. Domestic Violence. Police Brutality. And all on a daily basis. The Murder-Capital of Europe in 1993 was apparently...

GMCW’s New Executive Director Justin Fyala Begins His New Position on Monday, August 15th

“It is with great excitement that we write to tell you that the Board of Directors of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC has unanimously approved the appointment of Justin Fyala as GMCW’s new...

In the Moment: A Chat With Fight Choreographer Casey Kaleba

How often do we theater-goers find ourselves totally in disbelief when we witness stage violence or physicality? Do you, as I do, find yourself in complete awe of the unnerving movements and actions...

Review: ‘The Lonesome West’ at The Keegan Theatre

The Keegan Theatre’s current and provocatively darkly comic production of Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West, written by the brilliant, raffish and audacious Irish playwright (The Beauty Queen of...

A Preview of ‘Radio Golf’ Which Opens This Friday, August 12th @8PM at Hard Bargain Players

Radio Golf was August Wilson’s last play and was completed in 2005. I came across it about 8 years ago which was right around the time the United States was about to elect its first African American...

Review: The Band Perry at Wolf Trap With Jordan Rager

Pioneers and Comeback Kids – an Evening with The Band Perry The cowboy hats came out to play at Wolf Trap’s Filene Center on August 7, welcoming The Band Perry to Vienna, Va. The trio, comprised of...