2017

Spine: Love in the Time of Big Pharma, ‘The Effect’ at Studio Theatre

Big Pharma is not only big, it’s growing bigger by the panic attack, by the back spasm, by the botched terrorist attack. We want that pill that makes us happy because that happy is our latest knight...

Review: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been…’ at MetroStage

In the current political zeitgeist, which includes Russian hackers manipulating opinion through Facebook ads, playwright Carlyle Brown’s Are you now, or have you ever been… is germane to the truism...

Review: ‘Lotus’ at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater

Tap dancers are family. As family they gather together, catch up, trade stories, reminisce, honor their forbears and simply, yet profoundly, enjoy each others’ company. Saturday evening’s sold-out...

Review: ‘The Swallowing Dark’ at Inis Nua Theatre Company

“Your status has expired.” For Canaan Muponda, these are the most fearsome words imaginable. A refugee from Zimbabwe, Canaan has spent the last five years living in Liverpool with his young son. Now,...

Review: ‘Drumming with Dishes’ at Arts on the Horizon

My three-year old son and I sat with about forty restless children and their haggard parents in a crowded playroom while we waited for Drumming with Dishes to begin. I was especially nervous, because...

Review: ‘The Mistress Cycle’ at Creative Cauldron

Creative Cauldron presents The Mistress Cycle, with Book and Lyrics by Beth Blatt and Music by Jenny Giering. Matt Conner directs a cast of five women in this ambitious musical that, while an...

In the Moment: ‘The Mistress Cycle’ at Creative Cauldron

Illuminating what has been in the shadows, or usually whispered about, Creative Cauldron has provided a delicately rendered musical about the harsh realities women have faced over the centuries when...

Review: ‘The Effect’ at Studio Theatre

When two lovers in life or on stage display an intense interaction of attraction, they are said to have “chemistry.” That elusive feeling may be more than a metaphor, according to Lucy Prebble’s...

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: VelocityDC Dance Festival

Velocity is speed with purpose: a change in distance over time, crucially defined by direction. The VelocityDC Dance Festival took us in many. In its ninth iteration, the variety-style performance,...

Review: ‘Blithe Spirit’ at Hedgerow Theatre

Universal button-perfect delivery of delicious Noël Coward lines takes Carly L. Bodnar’s production of Blithe Spirit at Hedgerow Theatre miles into gratifying comic territory, but rollicking payoffs...

Review: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at The Highwood Theatre

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov believed the role of the artist was to ask questions, not answer them. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Christopher Durang’s 2013 Chekhov-inspired Tony Award...

Review: ‘Night Witches’ at Ground Rush Productions

“We all had things we had to let go of,” says the woman flanked by her six sisters-in-arms in Night Witches, directed by Kathleen Anne Hefferon, and created by the seven women who comprise the...

Review: ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ at Quintessence Theatre

Family is everything according to Eugene O’Neill. The relationships you form as a child will haunt and guide all of your future life. Rebellion is a basic of the dynamic, and as much as O’Neill...

A Look Back at Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival and ‘The Magic Flute’

When Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was announced in October of 2015, the company headlined its importation of the Berlin’s Komische Oper (Comic Opera) production of The Magic Flute. That...

Review: Catholic University of America’s Chamber Orchestra Performs an Evening of Music by Rossini, Bizet and de Falla

The neoclassical room at the Former Spanish Ambassador’s Residence was the perfect backdrop for the sold-out concert of the Catholic University of America’s Chamber Orchestra. On October 5, in...

Review: ‘Assassins’ at Pallas Theatre Collective

This season for whatever reason—and far be it from me to speculate—three theater companies in the nation’s capital are presenting Stephen Sondheim’s tunefully insolent tribute to presidential...

Review: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing is an amusing spectacle. Directed by Sally Boyett and set in the 1950’s, it is a visual and musical treat, with talented acting,...

Review: ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ at Providence Players

The play is set in 1953, and the Hays’ once-proud stage careers are fading due to the increasing popularity of television and cinema, and actors who haven’t been paid in a few weeks are quitting the...

Spine: Love and Menace in ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Early Pinter is marked by menace. The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming leave a chill in the air, and in the audience’s agitated brain. We are disturbed as much by what we don’t know as by...

Review: ‘Blood at the Root’ at Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts

Hard to imagine a dramatic work more perfect for undergraduate actors or more pertinent to the racial tensions of our times than Dominique Morisseau’s trenchant Blood at the Root, now playing in a...

Robin Rothstein’s ‘Derek Jeter Makes the Play’ to Kick Off Best Medicine Rep’s 2017-2018 Reading Series This Sunday, October 8 at 3:00PM.

Best Medicine Rep, Gaithersburg, Maryland’s professional theater company, is proud to present the first of its lineup for the 2017-2018 Play Reading Series. Derek Jeter Makes the Play by Robin...

Celebrate Fall with Brauhaus Schmitz’ ‘Oktoberfest’ at the Armory

Enter the 23rd Street Armory this Columbus Day weekend and be transported to a Munich-style beer hall for the 2nd annual celebration of Oktoberfest, presented by Philadelphia’s own Brauhaus Schmitz....

Review: ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ at Iron Crow Theatre

It takes a lot of Joes to make a sound you can hear. Iron Crow Theatre is on fire right out of the gate with its fantastic season opener, The Cradle Will Rock. Under the expert direction of Artistic...

Review: ‘Kinky Boots’ at the Academy of Music

Drag queens save the day and light up the stage in Kinky Boots, making its return to Philadelphia for a limited run this week at the Academy of Music. Presented in the Broadway Philadelphia series by...

Night Witches – A New Play About WWII Soviet Female Fighter Pilots To Workshop at Local Airports and the Hylton Performing Arts Center

Night Witches, a new play following the true story of the first all-female Soviet combat pilots of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, will be performed at The Hylton Performing Arts Center on...

Review: ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The pairing of a director and a playwright is a mysterious thing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But sometimes, as here, it is a perfect marriage. The Lover and The Collection by Harold...

Review: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

The vignette “Secret” encapsulates the ingenuity of Forum Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information. Two office workers sit at their computers, back to back. One (Samy El-Noury)...

Review: ‘Next to Normal’ at Resident Theatre Company

Next to Normal isn’t your standard Broadway musical. But this offbeat Pulitzer Prize-winner, now receiving a solid production at West Chester’s Resident Theatre Company, shines a light on a condition...

Review: ‘Julius Caesar’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

“Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried ‘Alas, good soul!’ and forgave him with all their hearts: but there’s no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have...

Magic Time!: ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The great Irish actor Lisa Dwan is in town doing something with the playwright Harold Pinter right now at the Lansburgh Theatre that is utterly amazing. She is both doing Pinter and undoing Pinter....

Interview: Leah Mazade Discusses Peace Mountain Theatre Company’s ‘Lost in Yonkers’

Please give us your name, part you are playing in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, and a brief description of your theatrical background. My name is Leah Mazade, and I’m playing Grandma Kurnitz in the...

Interview: Dominic North Discusses ‘The Red Shoes’ and Life As a Dancer with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures Company

Based on the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Red Shoes comes to The Kennedy Center October 10 – 15, 2017. The Red Shoes received two...

Terrace Theater to Re-Open with Series of Events at the Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will officially re-open the Terrace Theater on Friday, October 6, kicking off a month-long suite of performances that highlight the theater’s unique...

Magic Time!: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

This is a most peculiar play, but in a very good way. It’s more about its form than its content. And that’s what makes it one of Forum Theatre’s most fascinating offerings. The famously unorthodox...

Review: ‘The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt’ at Aldersgate Church Community Theater

Aldersgate Church Community Theater presents the world premiere of local playwright Rich Amada’s The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt, an award-winning historical drama about one of the most famous...

Review: ‘Sense and Sensibility’ at Aquila Theatre at the George Mason University Center for the Arts

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is the story of the two older Dashwood sisters. In a delightful Aquila Theatre production at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts, the two sisters –...

In the Moment: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Ford’s Theatre

“There’s just no spot for you,” is the terse way that Willy Loman’s “snotnose” boss-man Howard tells Loman he is fired. Just go and don’t look back, “cause you gotta admit, business is business.” With...

Review: ‘Desperate Measures’ at the York Theatre Company in NYC

A small, amiable musical, very loosely based on Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure, has opened at the York Theatre Company on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue. It’s called Desperate Measures and it offers...

Review: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Ford’s Theatre

It’s hard to believe that nearly 70 years have passed since Arthur Miller penned his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece, Death of a Salesman; the perennially relevant social drama seems as timely as ever in...

Review: Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Performance of ‘EroSpace’ and ‘When Snails Collide’ at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

It’s often difficult to shake off the pre-conceived notions and expectations of what a particular dance concert is going to be like. I am not exactly clear on what I expected with from EroSpace and...

Fringe Encore Series 2017 Review: ‘6 Guitars’ at SoHo Playhouse

Despite the hiatus of FringeNYC in 2017, SoHo Playhouse is presenting a full line-up for its 12th annual Fringe Encore Series in September and October, giving New York audiences a chance to see a...

Review: ‘The Wild Party’ at Constellation Theater Company

In 1928, Joseph Moncure March wrote a racy narrative poem that was received quite successfully, despite a ban resulting from its controversial content, called “The Wild Party.” And in 2000, a musical...

Review: ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre

“We are the slightest bit bizarre” may be quite an understatement when describing some of the delightfully strange tweens competing in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, now playing at...

Review: ‘Stones in His Pockets’ at Keegan Theatre

Engaging with warm-hearted humor and disarming in the depth of scenes about lost boys and bitter men with their dreams crushed, the Keegan Theatre production of the Marie Jones’ Stones in his Pockets...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ at Arden Theatre Company

“Why do we continue to allow destructive powers to gain control?” – Matthew Decker, Director of Cabaret This is the question that runs through Arden Theatre Company’s production of the musical...

Review: ‘A Clockwork Orange’ at New World Stages

Ranked among the greatest novels of the 20th century, A Clockwork Orange – British author Anthony Burgess’s alarming vision of a dystopian future fueled by ultra-violence, hyper-sexuality, and...

Review: ‘Shiloh Rules’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis – Final Weekend Starts TODAY

Colonial Players of Annapolis’ production of Shiloh Rules is a funny, yet thought-provoking play, a wonderful way to begin their 69th season. Written by Doris Baizley and directed by Beth Terranova,...

Review: ‘Godspell’ at Villanova Theatre

Godspell has always been a show filled with spirit. Ever since its New York debut in 1971, it’s been a vehicle for a lot more than a religious message. Its loose structure – John-Michael Tebelak’s...

Review: ‘Almost, Maine’ at Rockville Little Theatre

Oh, love! What a fickle proposition you are! In Rockville Little Theatre’s (RLT) production of John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, we witness a variety of romantic love dilemmas, with comical and heartfelt...