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Review submitted by Amanda Gamage of Albert Einstein High School. With lively Scott Joplin-esque music filling the air, mysterious illusionists breaking out of impossible traps, and Latvian immigrants, you will think you have stepped through a time machine and entered early 20th century America. But you havent – you’ve only stepped into Thomas S. Wootton High [...]
Barbara Ingram School for the Arts production of Legally Blonde: The Musical tracks Elle Woods, a sorority girl-turned-law-student, in a sweet story of self-discovery, ambition, and the power of pink. Dumped by her boyfriend, Warner, Elle decides to follow him to Harvard to prove that she can be serious. She overcomes the snobbery of her classmates, [...]
Catholic University’s current production of Ken Ludwig’s Shakespeare in Hollywood is a high spirited and broadly comic take of Max Reinhardt’s time in Hollywood in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II. The play is based on a historical event. The famous German director Reinhardt comes to Hollywood to direct his version of Shakespeare’s A [...]
A cast of twenty two teenagers from the Synetic Teen Ensemble have come together to remount Synetic’s “Silent Shakespeare” hit, The Taming of the Shrew. Under the outstanding direction of Irina Tsikurishvili and Alex Mills, cast members rehearsed for about 6 weeks with each actor training about 40 hours, sometimes not getting home until 11 [...]
At Compass Rose Theater’s new location on Spa Road in Annapolis, they are currently showing Eleemosynary; “Spelled e-l-e-e-m-o-s-y-n-a-r-y and defined as, “Of, relating to, or dependent on charity; charitable.” Playwright, Lee Blessing repeats the definition throughout the play, reminding the audience that charity is a give and take. And that is what Dorothea (played by [...]
Review submitted by Allison Fantz of Robert E. Lee High School. Were either men, or were monkeys, and if we know that were men, we should never let someone treat us like monkeys. The shocking drama “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” tells a story of determination and intimidation, of courage and fear, as a [...]
Today, they would be called terrorists. Then, in the 1860s, they were called heroes. McNeill’s Rangers, a production by Potomac State College and in association with Apple Alley Players, chronicles the bravery and passion of a partisan Confederate battalion functioning in the foothills of West Virginia. Due to the nature of the unit, they did [...]
Review submitted by Jordan Goodson of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Teenagers dance jubilantly across the stage, chattering and laughing amongst themselves. However, instead of skinny jeans and hoodies, they are bedecked in poodle skirts and leather jackets. The music floating around is not Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus, but Elvis Presley and Johnny [...]
Review submitted by Daryl Bright of Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Home is where the heart is. Well when home consists of a narcissistic father, an evil stepmother, and a dimwitted half-brother, then I, like Pippin, would have searched for fulfillment elsewhere too! With a disco ball, a dancing granny, and a dying ducky, The [...]
Surely few shows have ever grabbed its audience so immediately and fully into its grasp. The opening of The Drowsy Chaperone, performed at Catholic University of America’s Rome School of Music, takes place in abrupt darkness, while an anxious but personable voice drifts from stage left to greet us. As we learn, he is an [...]
Review submitted by Max Johnson of McLean High School. Call them what you will– losers, punks, delinquents, outcasts– stuck within society’s fringe, Ponyboy Curtis and his fellow greasers can’t seem to escape from these stifling labels. However, when an understanding hand is extended from the exclusive circle of the “Socs,” the opportunity to be seen as [...]
A Christmas Carol, Howard Community College’s Arts Collective production, is a unique and festival adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic tale. A play within a play, the show begins with the Stage Manager, played by Yury Lomakin and Prop Girl portrayed by Adrianne DuChateau, prepping for their production of A Christmas Carol. The ensemble cast is [...]
Veterans of the theatre know that the antics backstage are often more entertaining that the show occurring onstage. Such is the case with Noises Off at Hagerstown Community College’s Robinwood Players. Set as a show within a show, audiences are exposed to the grittier truth behind live performance, where emotions spiral out of control, tensions [...]
Review submitted by Elgin Martin of Thomas S. Wootton High School. When you think of musical comedy, you think of Anything Goes. This Cole Porter classic debuted on Broadway in 1934 and since then has been revived twice on Broadway, produced three times on the West End, inspired two movies, and recently, embarked on a [...]
