2017

Review: ‘Wonderland: Alice’s Rock & Roll Adventure’ at Imagination Stage

Wonderland: Alice’s Rock & Roll Adventure follows the timeless Lewis Carroll tale, with all the memorable characters we know and love, but with a Rock ‘n’ Roll twist. Written by Rachel Rockwell and...

​Review: ‘Into the Woods’ at Summer Dinner Theatre at Montgomery College

Each time I’ve seen Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, now playing at Montgomery College’s Summer Dinner Theatre through July 2nd, is the best time I’ve seen Into the Woods and this production,...

Review: ‘Ballet, Brass & Song: Chamber Dance Project’ at Sidney Harman Hall

Baseball players take the winter off. Football players do the same in the summer. Ballet dancers are of a different breed. When their companies go on hiatus, typically in early June, they find other...

Capital Fringe Preview: ‘In The Company of de Sade’ by Timothy R. King

It was 2012 when King’s Players was born. For our first show, we tackled an original piece called In the Company of de Sade. The premise was simple: a director attempts to stage the Marquis de Sade’s...

Review: ‘Alex Keiper & The Next Generation’ at The Arden Cabaret Series at Arden Theatre Company

Alex Keiper is a well-known Philadelphia actor who was originally asked to do a solo cabaret show by the Arden Theatre Company. Unexpectedly, she decided she wanted to share this event with some of...

Review: ‘Stoop Storytelling Series: My Favorite Film’ at the Columbia Festival of the Arts

On Friday, June 23rd, the Columbia Festival of the Arts brought up the curtain on another edition of the wonderfully unusual, Baltimore-based performing arts group, Stoop Storytelling, at the Smith...

Review: ‘Murder on the Nile’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

Imagine this scene. You’re on a paddle steamer on the Nile River in Egypt. It’s the mid-60s. You find yourself surrounded by an off-kilter cast of characters: Miss Ffoliot-ffoulkes on holiday with her...

Tantalizing Tastes from a Boffo Buffet: A Report on the 2017 Capital Fringe Festival Preview Night

Fifteen of the 80-plus shows in the 12th Annual Captial Fringe Festival presented five-minute teaser scenes to a packed house Thursday night at Logan Fringe Arts Space. Act after act, the house was...

Review: ‘Death Comes for the War Poets’ at The Sheen Center

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of America’s involvement in World War I in 1917, and The Sheen Center has recognized it with the stellar world premiere of Death Comes for the War Poets...

Capital Fringe Preview: ‘It’s What We Do: A Play about the Occupation’ by Pamela Nice

What is it like for a young Israeli soldier to have to enforce the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? What is life like for Palestinians living under that occupation, subject to martial law, for 50...

In the Moment Interview: Jordan Friend, Artistic Director of 4615 Theatre

A new generation of theater-makers are beginning to assert themselves in the DC area. They are the Millennial generation who have made DC their home over the past decade. Many are natives of the area,...

Review: ‘American Idiot’ at Beyond the Page Theatre Company at West Potomac High School

A guitar solo sounds, the band joins in, and the stage is set for a very talented group of performers at Beyond the Page Theatre Company of West Potomac High School. Who knew that the rebellious...

Report: ‘Justice for Shylock’ at the Library of Congress

The verdict is in: Shylock–the Jewish moneylender whose trial is detailed in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice–has been exonerated. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg presided over the...

Spine: ‘When We Were Young and Unafraid’ at The Keegan Theatre

Stepping back 45 years, America is in the midst of a social revolution, and feminist consciousness-raising sessions are underway. Radical feminists, cultural feminists, and political feminists are all...

An Interview with the National Orchestral Institute and Festival (NOI+F) Director Richard Scerbo: Thirty Years After It Began, NOI+F is Breaking Ground and Stronger Than Ever by Robert Lintott

When the National Orchestral Institute and Festival (NOI+F) began in 1987, its first director appealed to student musicians across the country by telling them that “participants will have the...

In the Moment: Interview with Theatrical Designer Deb Sivigny Part I

Deb Sivigny is one busy scenic and costume designer in the DC theater community. Just recently, she developed design elements for the Rorschach Theatre production of Forgotten Kingdoms. The 1st Stage...

Review: ‘d4rkly your retrorockets fl4re’ at the Flamboyán Theater

The world-premiere full-stage production of d4rkly your retrorockets fl4re, written by Steven Mark Tenney and co-directed with his sister Susan Tenney, is presented by The Constellation Project as...

Review: ‘The Little Mermaid JR’ at BRAVO Productions

Theater is a vital part of our culture. Imagination is discovered. History revealed. New ideas expressed. And the limitless lessons to be garnered from our fundamentally flawed human selves are...

Celebrating the Lives of the Emanuel Nine: An Interview with the Cast of New Freedom Theatre’s ‘Mother Emanuel’

During a prayer service on June 17, 2015, nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, were killed by a 21-year-old white...

Magic Time!: ‘When We Were Young and Unafraid’ at The Keegan Theatre

On the top floor of The Keegan Theatre is a cork board labeled “What Does Feminism Mean to You?” Pushpins, pens, and slips of paper are provided so that patrons can have their say, and they do. Lots...

Review: ‘Broken Glass’ at Theater J

Shards of unseen, but sharply-felt shattered glass, both of a collapsing marriage and the infamous Kristallnacht (Night of Crystal), are fused together in Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass, now playing at...

Review: ‘Rent’ at the National Theatre

Okay, twenty years ago I was more concerned with raising kids than living rough on the street, but that’s what the current tour of Rent celebrates. Where to live, how to love, finding work, survival,...

Review: ‘When We Were Young and Unafraid’ at The Keegan Theatre

In 1972, there was no Roe v. Wade or Violence Against Women Act. Battered women had little legal recourse, and many found shelter—if they were lucky—in safe houses run by good Samaritans. House of...

Baltimore Center Stage Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah Announces Departure at End of 2017/18 Season

The Board of Directors of Baltimore Center Stage and Kwame Kwei-Armah have jointly announced that Kwei-Armah will leave his position as artistic director at the end of his contract on June 30, 2018....

Review: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ at The Collaborative Theatre Company at Fells Point Corner Theatre

Delving into classic text with histrionic flair, The Collaborative Theatre Company (TCT) presents The Manhattan Project’s version of Lewis Carroll’s time-honored 1865 tale, Alice in Wonderland, which...

Opinion: ‘Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, and the Fine Art of Dissent’

It’s a classic art-imitating-life-imitating-art situation: to make a production relevant, the director decks out the cast in modern dress to create the illusion that Shakespeare was writing about our...

Review: ‘The Summer Club’ at Venice Island Performing Arts Center

In his banter with the audience during last night’s musical homage to Swing, Big Bands, and ‘The Rat Pack’ at Manayunk’s Venice Island Performing Arts Center, Jeff Coon, Executive Director and...

Review: The Second City’s ‘Divided We Stand’ at The Kennedy Center

They’re back! Second City–the group that made Chicago the capital of comedy and that all but invented improv–has returned to DC, where it is part of The Kennedy Center’s month-long second annual...

Review: ‘Junie B. Jones is Not a Crook’ at Adventure Theatre MTC

When I was about eight-years-old, I saw an irresistible set of Hello, Kitty pencils while shopping with my mom. She told me I couldn’t have them, so I slipped them into my pocket. Once home, my mother...

In the Moment: A Report on ‘How I Learned What I Learned’ at Round House Theatre

Reflections of a hard-headed son on the Round House Theatre production of August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned. As a theatrical production, August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned,...

Magic Time!: ‘The Return’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Inside this taut and provocative two-character play—which vividly evokes the political tension between the Israeli state and its Palestinian citizens—there is a startling sex scene, one that vividly...

Review: ‘Forsaken Angels’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

“Write what you know.” Attributed to Mark Twain, this advice is adhered to by many a playwright, including a local one, William Leary. His Forsaken Angels, a joint production of Wolf Pack Theatre...

Review: ‘Always… Patsy Cline’ at The Media Theatre

Anyone who has ever felt any heartfelt connection to another can hear a legendary Patsy Cline song and say “Oh yes, been there, seen, done that.” The lyrics are about much more than trucks, beer or...

Review: ‘Oberon, or The Elf King’s Oath’ at The In Series

“I’m stuck with writer’s block!” Who among us—be we beginners, practitioners or professionals, list makers, blog posters, PhD thesis or diary writers—has not been visited by that alarming thought?...

Review: ‘The Sound of Music’ at The Kennedy Center

Art has a way to awaken the senses and make you feel alive. Art shakes the dreariness of everyday life off you as you bathe in the beauty of a live musical performance. The Sound of Music at The...

Review: ‘Evita’ at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

The life of Eva Perón is the stuff legends, and rock operas, are made of: a rags-to-riches story of a poor illegitimate child from provincial Argentina, whose ambitious determination, seductive...

Preview: Thunderous Productions’ ‘Murder on the Nile’ Opens on Friday, June 23rd at the Greenbelt Arts Center by Aref Dajani and Emily Canavan

Thunderous Productions’ Murder on the Nile is not your parents’ or grandparents’ version of Agatha Christie. Opening Friday, June 23, 2017, at the Greenbelt Arts Center – with a cast that screams...

Review: ‘Dreamgirls’ at ANKH Repertory Theatre and The Finest! Performance Foundation

Dreamgirls, with book and lyrics by Tom Eyen and music by Henry Krieger, was one of the very first shows I saw on Broadway, back in the 1980s. It was memorable then and it remains memorable now in the...

Review: ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

“May I return to the beginning?” runs a beloved lyric to the song “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, now back for the summer at Toby’s — The Dinner Theatre of...

Magic Time!: ‘Still Life with Rocket’ at Theater Alliance as Voyage to a New Form: A Q&A with Director Mollye Maxner

Still Life With Rocket is greater than the sum of its arts. The diverse forms of installation, choreography, and character-driven drama come together in this collaboratively devised experience in what...

Review: ‘Rebollar and Friends: 40 and Up!’

We’ve all heard the cliches about aging: Life begins at 40. You are not getting older, you are getting better. Age is just a number. Once a man, twice a child. The inspiring dance repertoire Rebollar...

Review: ‘Project Dawn’ at People’s Light

Gritty and harsh, but with flashes of humor and hope, Project Dawn tackles a vital issue and doesn’t shy away from showing its worst repercussions. Karen Hartman’s play, inspired by a real-life court...

Review: ‘The Roses in June’ at Seagull Productions

June 1967. What memories does that bring? Sgt. Pepper, The Rolling Stones, bell bottoms, assassinations, the conflict with ’50s conformity, trouble in the Middle East? This is the era summoned by...

Review: ‘Cry-Baby The Musical’ at Drama Learning Center

Baltimore’s John Waters takes another swipe at Eisenhower-era conformity in Cry-Baby: The Musical, making its area premiere now at the Drama Learning Center in Columbia. The show had a short Broadway...

Review: ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ at The Kennedy Center

It’s hard to believe that almost 20 years have passed since John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s ground-breaking, genre-bending, glam-rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch first emerged, but the...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Shakespeare in the park is a long-held American tradition. From venues in places such as New York City’s Central Park and Washington, DC’s Carter Barron Amphitheater, watching the Bard’s works under...

Review: ‘Julius Caesar’ at The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park

We are in the streets of Rome. The lights onstage bump up and immediately we are in the midst of controversy. Flavius and Marullus are admonishing the crowd to break up and get on with their business....

Review: ‘An Enemy of the People’ at Wheelhouse Theater Company

Economic self-interest, an ‘inconvenient truth,’ a ruthless politician, a whistleblower, ‘fake news,’ closed-door meetings, a bureaucratic cover-up, the refusal to work together for the common good,...

Single Carrot Theatre Announces Additional Performances of Sold-Out ‘Promenade: Baltimore’

In response to continued demand for tickets, Single Carrot Theatre will be extending the sold-out Promenade: Baltimore for three performances. The production, which is already the highest-grossing...

Interview: Playwrights Hanna Eady and Edward Mast on ‘The Return,’ Now in US Premiere at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

Seeing The Return – the stunning new play that has just burst upon the stage at Mosaic Theater Company of DC – is like watching fireworks up close. In fact, the heat from this drama is so intense that...