2017

Review: ‘Oklahoma!’ at John W. Engeman Theater

The John W. Engeman Theater at Northport is closing its 10th season with the rousing classic, Oklahoma! With book and lyrics by Rodgers and Hammerstein, this beloved musical has been a family favorite...

Review: ‘The Man Who’ at Spooky Action Theater

Curious questions tease the brain during this peculiarly provocative production. One is: Is this theater? Another is: What are we to make of it? The Man Who, just opened at the estimably idiosyncratic...

Review: ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at Synetic Theater

Haunting is the word that quickly came to mind as I sat, mesmerized, rediscovering a classic of literature I thought I knew from reading print on a page and from the movies. But, oh my, Synetic...

Review #2: ‘An American Daughter’ at Montgomery Playhouse and Arts on the Green

Just when you thought that scandalous political agendas were restricted to CNN’s 24-hour news cycle, along comes An American Daughter, Wendy Wasserstein’s 1997 play about a woman’s nomination as...

Spine: ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at Synetic Theater

The spectacle of movement has always been Synetic’s star attraction. When those primal, emotional moments fuse with a strong narrative throughline, Synetic’s brilliance shines brightest. Their newest...

The 2017 Helen Hayes Awards Recipients to be Announced Tonight

Nominations for the 2017 Helen Hayes Awards Outstanding Choreography, Musical-Hayes Christopher d’Amboise, “Evita,” Olney Theatre Center Kelly Devine, “Come From Away,” Ford’s Theatre Parker Esse,...

Review: ‘Betrayal’ at Allens Lane Theater

Adultery, the trespass that has fascinated human beings through the ages, offers many emotional highs and lows. There is the desire that overwhelms all reason. There is the joy of stealing about,...

Review: ‘Legally Blonde The Musical’ at Silhouette Stages

OMG! OMG! Silhouette Stages’ Legally Blonde is a blast! The closed curtains on the stage at Slayton House Theater gave no clue as to what dynamic show the highly regarded Silhouette Stage’s would be...

Review: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at Parlor Room Theater

Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is an American theater classic. At its center a story about a shattered family, the show is timeless in its themes. Parlor Room Theater (PRT) Director Dillon...

Review: ‘Dream: A Phonograph Musical’ at Ritz Theatre Company

Celebrating the 90th anniversary of its historic building, Ritz Theatre Company presents Dream: A Phonograph Musical, an original prequel to the genre of the ‘jukebox musical’ inspired by the hits of...

Review #1: ‘An American Daughter’ at Montgomery Playhouse and Arts on the Green

Humanity can never quite manage to get out of its own way. And that’s a good thing for the entertainment industry. Since “there is nothing new under the sun,” there is constant material for every next...

Review: ‘Crowns: A Gospel Musical’ at Arena Players

Apropos to Mother’s Day, and a magnificent button to the end of its 63rd season, Arena Players’ Crowns: A Gospel Musical is, among many things, a celebration of Christian and African religious...

Magic Time!: ‘Outside Mullingar’ at The Keegan Theatre

How does a play that starts out about real estate for gosh sake—adjacent farms in rural Ireland—become a heart-wrenching story of adjacent lost souls who fall in love late in life? How does a play...

Review: ‘Buzzer’ at Theatre Exile

Buzzer is a story about real estate, and how moving to a new home can mean more than just leaving a forwarding address. Tracey Scott Wilson’s play addresses several compelling subjects: race,...

Dangereuse: Playing Gloucester Female: A Q&A With Cam Magee About Her Regendered Role in Avant Bard’s ‘King Lear’

Much of the publicity for the much-anticipated Avant Bard production of King Lear has focused on Rick Foucheux’s Lear. I recently saw Foucheux play Gloucester in a production at George Washington...

Review: ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ at Orbiter 3

I attended Peaceable Kingdom, a new play by Mary Tuomanen, last night at Christ Church Neighborhood House. I am already checking my calendar for a day when I can see this unique and riveting...

Review: ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre

A grand presentation of Agatha Christie’s popular whodunit of 1953, Witness for the Prosecution, closes out Bristol Riverside Theatre’s 30th anniversary season with a bang. Directed by Susan D....

Report: The 2017 ‘Kennedy Center Arts Summit’

Two-hundred and fifty artist citizens, teachers, members of arts non-profits, business executives, scientists and technologists from around the world, came together for a full day at the fourth annual...

Review: ‘The Tempest’ at Encore Stage & Studio

Encore Stage & Studio closed their most recent production, Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest, this past weekend. As the self-proclaimed “Theatre for kids, by kids,” Encore works with young local talent...

Review: ‘My Funny Bone’ at Brian Sanders’ JUNK

In My Funny Bone, the latest offering from Brian Sanders’ JUNK, the boundary-breaking choreographer/dancer traces the evolution of his, let’s say, “eccentric” sense of humor from childhood to the...

Review: ‘Protest’ at Alliance for New Music-Theatre

DC site-specific theater of resistance reached a new height last night—also a new low—as Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s arresting staging of Václav Havel’s Protest became the first play performed...

‘The Show Must Go On!’ Preview, Part 2: Interview with Jessica Myles Henkin

Stoop Storytelling, the Baltimore-based live show and podcast that features regular people telling “the extraordinary, true tales of their lives” is partnering with Everyman Theatre to present a night...

Review #1: ‘Outside Mullingar’ at The Keegan Theatre

Theatre-lovers searching for a sequel to Doubt—John Patrick Shanley’s prize-winning (and frequently revived) play about nuns and priests in an Irish-American enclave of New York—will be surprised to...

Review: ‘Clue On Stage’ at Bucks County Playhouse

Wanna play a game? Clue On Stage is a show that doesn’t ask deep, profound questions of its audience. Instead, it simply asks, whodunit? Who killed Mr. Boddy? Was it Professor Plum in the conservatory...

‘The Show Must Go On!’ Preview, Part 1: Interview with Everyman Founding Artistic Director Vincent Lancisi

In conjunction with their last show of the 2016/17 season – the classic farce, Noises Off – Everyman Theatre is partnering with Stoop Storytelling to present a night of side-splitting stories about...

Review: ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ at the Kellar Theater at the Center for the Arts by Leslie Ann Ross

Delightful and charming. Those are the words I would use to describe Rooftop Production’s current offering You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown which comes to life at the Kellar Theater at the Center for...

Review: ‘Come Together:  A Celebration of John Lennon’ at The Kennedy Center

At a time when we can only imagine a world without walls of division and exclusion, the Annual Kennedy Center’s Spring Gala concert, Come Together: A Celebration of John Lennon, reached for the stars...

Review: ‘Marry Harry’ at The York Theatre Company

With apologies to James Morgan and the York Theatre Company (“York Theatre”) for this very late review of their current offering Marry Harry. I saw this new musical on April 30, but in the last-minute...

Dangereuse: ‘A Macbeth for the 21st Century’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that seeing Edmund Kean play Shakespeare was like “reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” Acclaimed Director Liesl Tommy brings us Shakespeare torn asunder by...

Review: ‘The Arabian Nights’ at Constellation Theatre Company

One Thousand and One Nights, the collection of classic Islamic tales upon which Mary Zimmerman built The Arabian Nights, now playing at Constellation Theatre Company, could not have a more violent...

Review: ‘The Secret Garden’ at Memorial Players

If you’re looking for a musical of Broadway quality in the Baltimore area, look no further than some of the work being produced by Memorial Episcopal Church’s drama ministry, Memorial Players, now in...

Review: ‘Barnaby Rudge’ at Lumina Studio Theatre

Of Charles Dickens’s fifteen novels, there are few, if any, that are less well-known than his first historical, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty—and few, with its forty-plus characters and...

Review: ‘Book of Days’ at Rockville Little Theatre

Written in 1998, Book of Days is one of the final writings from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson. The play is set in a fictional rural Missouri town of 4,500 or so residents, and...

Review: ‘White’ at Theatre Horizon

White is pure gold. James Ijames’ audacious and hilarious new play takes on racism, sexism, and a handful of other isms. It’s a comedy, but its message is serious. It’s bold, outlandish, insightful,...

Review: ‘Master Class’ at MetroStage

Welcome to the rehearsal hall. You are a student at a prestigious school for the performing arts. You have mastered your technique, but you are young. You have not thought through the circumstances,...

Review: ‘The Arsonists’ at Azuka Theatre

Haunting and primal, Azuka Theatre’s rolling world premiere of The Arsonists, the final installment in Philadelphia playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger’s “Southern Gothic Trilogy” (following the terrible...

Review: ‘5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche’ at Monumental Theatre Company

Much to my tickled surprise, last night I found myself shouting out that I am a lesbian—I along with an entire audience in Lab One at The Atlas Performing Arts Center! Really, all of us, about equally...

Review: ‘Madame Butterfly’ at The Kennedy Center

Gorgeous, ravishing arias by the legendary Puccini, an ethereally beautiful performance by Soprano Ermonela Jaho as Cio-Cio San (Butterfly), and an exceptionally ingenious concept and stage design by...

Report: CityDance’s 2017 DREAMscape Benefit Gala

Moments into a dimmed house at the historic Lincoln Theatre, an off-stage voice over a loudspeaker made a promise to a buzzing audience: “We’re going to light up the night sky, so dance!” CityDance’s...

Review: ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ at South Camden Theatre Company

A sensitive young man struggles with his heritage as he tries to make his own mark on the world. A predictable story, you might say? Well, My Name is Asher Lev is anything but predictable, and...

Review: ‘Hairspray JR.’ at the Bowie Community Theatre Youth Theatre Program by Sharon Preator

Tracy Turnblad reminds us that “You gotta think big to be big” as Bowie Community Theatre (“BCT”) delivered a big success with Hairspray JR. for their Youth Theatre Program’s first production. This...

Review: ‘Laura Bush Killed a Guy’ at The Klunch

I didn’t know that Laura Bush had killed a guy. It really had never crossed my mind. Well, after seeing Ian Allen’s Laura Bush Killed a Guy, now playing at the Klunch at Caos on F Street (according to...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Presents Leonard Bernstein’s First Major Composition

Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 was the major undertaking at The Philadelphia Orchestra’s concerts of May 3, 5 and 6, 2017. Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the piece as a prelude to a year-long...

Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at the Golden Theatre

In 1982 a distinguished group of Broadway pros, including Hal Prince, Betty Comden and Aldolph Green, came up with what was then thought to be a misbegotten idea: what happened to Nora Helmer after...

Magic Time!: ‘Laura Bush Killed a Guy’ at The Klunch

Who’da thunk that our current administration’s dysfunction would prompt nostalgia for our eight years worth of W.? But that indeed is the curious takeaway from watching Lisa Hodsoll’s poignant...

Review: ‘Private Lives’ at Reston Community Players

Some plays are like peeping through your eye doctor’s phoropter — layer upon layer of filters. Say, a playwright of the Roaring Twenties borrows a style of the 1660s English Restoration period that...

Review: ‘The White Devil’ at the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective

In the fall of 2010, the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective – the city’s critically-acclaimed purveyor of rarely-performed classics – burst onto the scene at the historic Broad Street Ministry and...

Review: ‘Evita’ at St. Mark’s Players

The classic musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Evita comes to life again with the latest production at St. Mark’s Players. The revival comes at a perfect time, as the production delves into the flawed...

ENDS TONIGHT: Knee Plays – ‘The Cobweb’ by Lucia Treasure and ‘They Were the Ocean’ by Evan Moritz

The Cobweb “I’m really scared of forgetting things” When I was four or five years old, my brother climbed me up to a high branch in the apple tree in our back yard. Then he left me there. A while...

Review: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ at Laurel Mill Playhouse

H.M.S. Pinafore, Gilbert and Sullivan’s famous operetta, directed by Michael Hartsfield and produced by Maureen Rogers, opened on April 28, 2017 at the Laurel Mill Playhouse on Main Street in historic...