Your Ticket to Theatre News in MD, DC & VA!
Centerstage is up and running with the second half of their Raisin Cycle, Beneatha’s Place, Playwright and Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah’s impressive complement and response to their concurrent production of Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park. While the latter play expands the story of the family home in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha’s Place [...]
As people, as a nation, what are we to do with our dark history of violence and oppression? Is it the key to our progress and redemption, or are we doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes in a new disguise? These are among the questions posed by Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize winning play, Topdog/Underdog, [...]
Before I begin, I should say that it is almost impossible to describe the success of this production without revealing its major theatrical conceit. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the plot may wish to remain so and, in that case, I encourage you to stop reading here and go buy your tickets to [...]
Faction of Fools, DC’s Commedia dell’Arte company, is back this spring with The Lady Becomes Him, a wild adaptation and expansion of a three-page, 17th century text called Donna Zanni. Using classical technique, mask-work, and improvisation, the company tells a humorous story of forbidden love and mistaken identity. And while the style may be unfamiliar to [...]
Shakespeare purists, and perhaps audiences in general, might balk at the idea of a silent Tempest—a seemingly oxymoronic approach to such a lyrical and poetic text. Synetic Theater will draw you in and prove you wrong. Their current production, the latest in an acclaimed series of wordless Shakespeare adaptations, does more than justice to the [...]
It’s a familiar scene to any modern audience—a man, a woman, a motel room. Indeed, at first glance, The Mountaintop, now playing at CenterStage, mimics countless other dramas that have come and gone from the American stage. Don’t let that fool you. What follows is a truly extraordinary piece of theatre—in both content and execution. [...]
The pervading expectation on Christmas Eve in An Irish Carol seems to be that the following day will be nothing more than a worse hangover than usual. Now in its second year, the Keegan Theatre’s darkly comic spin on Dickens’ classic novella updates the story to a pub in present day Dublin, replacing the ghosts [...]
Paul Morella’s one-man adaptation of A Christmas Carol is a timely feat of storytelling; a marriage of Dickens’ original text and modern theatrical magic, the show invites the audience into a whirlwind of ghosts, greed, and personal redemption. As Morella plays the narrator and all of the characters—essentially speaking the text as it appears in [...]
It’s hard not to be seduced by Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Sexy, vicious, witty—this revival of Christopher Hampton’s classical adaptation triumphs with quiet ferocity. Under the direction of John Malkovich—who starred in the 1998 film adaptation, Dangerous Liaisons—Theatre de l’Atelier is presenting the show at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in the original French (or at least, original to Pierre Chodlerlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel of the same name, on [...]
CenterStage’s revival of Bus Stop by William Inge is a heartfelt and charming tribute to a simpler time—the 1950’s American Midwest—that maybe wasn’t so simple after all. Written in 1955, the play depicts a single night in a Kansan diner, where a group of strangers take refuge from a storm of epic proportions. Under a [...]
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is bringing in the holiday season with a fanciful—and fantastic—production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Director Ethan McSweeney has reimagined this well-known comedy with a strong physical aesthetic and precise comic sensibility, which makes for an evening of love, laughter, and magical chaos. The play, which follows two troubled pairs [...]
This past weekend, Charm City Fringe assembled a brilliant collection of artists for Nights on the Fringe, a two-night event at the Autograph Playhouse, raising the bar for Baltimore’s newest theatre and performance festival and giving a promising glimpse of what’s to come. Friday night featured three, wickedly funny improv sets from B.I.G. (Baltimore Improv [...]
Compass Rose Studio Theater is kicking off their second season with Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee. The iconic story—a child’s perspective on her father’s defense of an innocent black man in Depression-era Alabama—may be familiar to most theatergoers, but is delivered with vigor and immediacy by [...]
For the well-read theatregoer in search of a haunting experience this Halloween season, look no further than CENTERSTAGE’S The Completely Fictional—Utterly True—Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe. As the extended title boasts, this production pays tribute to the American icon and Baltimore legend’s final days, lying on his deathbed in Washington Hospital. With no memory [...]
