Your Ticket to Theatre News in MD, DC & VA!
Theater goers do not need to be a country music aficionado to appreciate the deep and rich song styling of Jenny Lee Stern who portrays Patsy Cline in Infinity Theatre’s production of Always…Patsy Cline. From the parking lot to the stage itself, the mood is set by the band with upbeat, toe-tapping instrumentals of Ms. [...]
Anytime you look on the popular website Craigslist you are barraged by job listings and people looking for companionship. Every once in a while you come across a listing that is really ridiculous. If you’ve ever answered one of these ads, you know that it’s always a crapshoot as to what the outcome is going [...]
Ladies and gentleman, this is your reviewer speaking. Climb aboard a luxury ocean liner for an evening of hit tunes by Cole Porter and award winning choreography by Kathleen Marshall. Your ship is called the Anything Goes and it departs from Kennedy Center’s Opera House. Once onboard be prepared to find mistaken identities, medaling debutante [...]
A Gothic-novel-turned-musical is good, but a Gothic-novel-turned-rock-opera is better. Landless Theatre Company’s Frankenstein is atmospheric and exciting, a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original novel. Strong vocal performances overshadow a few minor flaws in design. The lyrics are poetic but passive, but the orchestration adds complexity and dimension to a familiar story. If you’re [...]
S.N. Behrman’s Biography, currently enjoying an infrequent revival at The American Century Theater, is a depression-era meditation on love, art, and all the intersections of the two. So go see ‘Biography.’ You won’t be shocked, but you might be moved. The story centers around Marion (Jennifer Hopkins), a Tennessee girl turned bohemian artist, whose scandalous affairs [...]
Most families are a little bit complicated, dysfunctional even. If we’re lucky, things eventually mellow out and folks manage a certain level of civility with one another. But sometimes resentments linger, jealousies build, and childhood sibling rivalries follow us into adulthood. Sure there are a number of healthy and constructive ways to resolve our conflicts. [...]
One of the greatest romances in history is playing out on the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s stage in William Shakespeare’s retelling of Antony and Cleopatra. Director Ralph Alan Cohen’s treatment of the text is fluid and accessible, triumphing over the play’s unwieldy volume of locations, rulers, plots, war, power, sex, money, food, drink and, of course, [...]
In the age of economical theatre—think: two men and a couch—Restoration Comedy is hardly the genre of the hour. Its large casts, elaborate costumes, multiple locations, and purposefully dated style are often prohibitive in full production. Still, it is my personal conviction that any genre—done well—can succeed, and Everyman’s revival of The Beaux’ Stratagem, adapted [...]
“I Wanna Rock” – and Rock of Ages is just the musical to help a girl out. This jukebox musical, featuring covers of great 80s bands from Styx to Asia, REO Speedwagon to Whitesnake, (and of course, Journey) hit Wolf Trap this Friday and Saturday. This headbanging musical, recently made into a movie with Tom [...]
Most of us probably do not know what actually goes on behind the stark, sturdy walls of a traditional convent. We believe that such an edifice would reflect austerity, include much prayer as well as “proper” behavior among the nuns. Not so with the Order of the Little Sisters of Dundalk—yes, Dundalk, Md.—whose loopy, hilarious [...]
Most people have seen the film Legally Blonde and know the story of Elle Woods, the fun and frivolous fashionista who would be a lawyer, proving to the world she is more than just a ditzy blonde. Riverside Theatre’s production of Legally Blonde, the Musical definitely is a good effort in trying to capture the essence of [...]
Some people enter our lives and make ripples. Others make waves. But every so often someone comes crashing into our worlds like a monsoon – someone like Becky Shaw. In the Pulitzer Prize nominated play by the same name, one little blind date sets off a series of calamitous events that throw the lives of [...]
The Hampton Years, the new play currently playing at Theater J in Washington, shows the value of highlighting a little known chapter in black history – in this case, the rise of African-American artists at a historically black college during World War II, with the help of an encouraging Austrian refugee who ran the department. It’s [...]
Reinventing theater is easier said than done – and easier still said with an expletive. Thus we have Aaron Posner’s Stupid F***ing Bird, an adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull that just opened at the Woolly Mammoth. Using that supposedly edgy but ultimately limiting device of similarly titled plays like The Mother ****** With the Hat does [...]
