Baltimore Theater Reviews Page 2

Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT CHESAPEAKE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Timoth David Copney - December 07, 2022

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is an absolute treasure...

Review: TINA, THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL at The Hippodrome
by Timoth David Copney - November 16, 2022

Phrases of praise like ‘tour de force’ and ‘vocal tsunami’ get bandied about so often that they can begin to lose their impact. In the case of Ms. Villanueva, they are not enough....

Review: Uninhibited AIN'T NO MO' at Baltimore Center Stage
by Jack L. B. Gohn - November 04, 2022

As the director says, this is a 'Black play that speaks to Black people and talks about Black shit.' But it allows larger audiences a chance to listen in to the conversation and laugh, if more gently, at the jokes. While not everything in the show is funny, much of it is irresistibly so....

Review: Happenstance Theater's POCKET MOXIE at Theater Project
by Cybele Pomeroy - November 03, 2022

In a tribute to Vaudeville, Happenstance Theater presents POCKET MOXIE. Structured as a Vaudeville show, it's also a show about Vaudevillians, a secret peek into their lives, and the arcs of their days. Infused with music and humor, artistic creativity and a dash of pathos, it's visually sumptuous, ...

Handsome Production, Tedious Script: THE LION IN WINTER at Everyman Theatre
by Jack L. B. Gohn - October 30, 2022

You not only have to have the talent to do the technical side of costume drama well, and have actors who can emote convincingly and then (in this case) reverse gears convincingly, and then reverse gears again as many times as the script calls for. You need a script that doesn’t make them do it so of...

Review: HOLIDAY at Washington's Arena Stage: Deeply Flawed Show, Flawless Performance
by Jack L. B. Gohn - October 17, 2022

They sure don't write them like Holiday anymore. A play about the foibles of a family of rich White people that supplies no meaningful social or racial context, a critique of the world of wealth which is bafflingly superficial, and a romance almost lacking in visible courtship, playwright Philip Bar...

A Pretty-Much Perfect TWELFTH NIGHT at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Jack L. B. Gohn - October 03, 2022

There’s so much to like in Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s current revival of Twelfth Night, a production that succeeds in big things and small, that I can’t imagine any spectator walking away unsatisfied. What did our critic think of TWELFTH NIGHT at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company?...

Good Times, Fun, and Some Laughs: SWEET CHARITY at Cockpit In Court
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 25, 2022

Dated and flawed as I consider it, Sweet Charity is something of a landmark in the world of the American musical, and this rendition is admirable. And then there are those three big songs. You will definitely experience good times, fun and some laughs....

Review: Stunning, Well-Made HOUSE OF THE NEGRO INSANE at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 20, 2022

A well-made, stunning play, about racist mental hospital practices in the not very long-distant past, with four strongly-imagined characters and an explosive ending....

Review: A Love Story, a Critique, a Cry of Despair: SHEEPDOG at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 20, 2022

In the end, it is largely the combination of sensitively-selected detail and poetic diction on the one hand, and the big-picture view of various interlocked social problems that makes the show so extraordinary. In that big picture, the problems are too pervasive, too ingrained to surmount, and well-...

Review: BABEL At Contemporary American Theater Festival Probes the Dilemmas That Could Be Presented By Eugenics
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 18, 2022

Babel, which invites us to contemplate a world, apparently in the near future, in which the human genome is so well understood that every person’s – and fetus’s – potential, including the potential for antisocial behavior – is determinable, and if a child cannot be “certified” while in utero as meet...

Review: A Chaotic THE FIFTH DOMAIN at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 18, 2022

The play is an ungodly and irremediable mess, but it does demonstrate the importance of the proposition for which the central character was willing to put his career at risk, i.e., that more care needs to be taken, by industry and government alike, of secrets – their own and everyone else’s....

The Ending of Humanity at the Bottom of the World? USHUAIA BLUE at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 17, 2022

This is more a theater piece than a play, Caridad Svich's choral meditation on the plight of the earth and the humans who inhabit it....

Review: Giving A 'Karen' the Scrooge Treatment: WHITELISTED at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 17, 2022

This is playwright Chisa Hutchinson's their outing at CATF. I liked both of her previous entries, and she continue to wax both original and amusing, without slighting the serious messages she always delivers....

Review: THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL at Toby's Dinner Theater
by Cybele Pomeroy - June 28, 2022

What did our critic think?If you don't have cable, watch SpongeBob Squarepants nor any clue why SpongeBob should be a Broadway musical, no worries. Everything is made clear for those entering Bikini Bottom for the first time. It's packed with family theater elements: bright colors, important themes,...

Review: World War Two MUCH ADO? Who Knew?
by Jack L. B. Gohn - June 23, 2022

What did out critic think? The essential attribute of the play, the combative romance of Benedick and Beatrice (Dylan Arredondo and Anna DiGiovanni), is the only truly sacred element of the play. Dylan Arredondo and Anna DiGiovanni, give these principals a full-throated presentation, Arredondo leani...

BWW Review: FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS at Audrey Herman's Spotlighters Theatre
by Timoth David Copney - May 31, 2022

Five wise-cracking southern belles come to know way more about each other than they intended as bridesmaids....

BWW Review: AIN'T TOO PROUD at The Hippodrome
by Timoth David Copney - May 04, 2022

For audience members of a certain age (like moi), jukebox musicals are much more than an evening’s entertainment. Sometimes they are a Soul Train dance down the days of our youth. Such is the case with Ain’t Too Proud, The Life and Times of The Temptations. Now playing in Baltimore at the Hippodrome...

BWW Review: Awash in Ideas and Fun: DREAM HOU$E at Baltimore Center Stage
by Jack L. B. Gohn - April 29, 2022

Dream Hou$e is awash in ideas, about Latinx identity, about generational wealth transfers, about gentrification, about memory versus history, about personal authenticity, about priorities, about the inherent value of things, about the TV biz, etc., etc., etc. You wouldn’t expect a package of all the...

BWW Review: A Great, Problematic Ride: HENRY V at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Jack L. B. Gohn - April 25, 2022

To put the biggest problem in contemporary terms, terms which doubtless occurred to many members of the audience besides just me: Is this a play about Zelensky or is it a play about Putin? You can characterize it as the story of a small army’s gallant victory against a much larger and better-equippe...

BWW Review: ROCKY at Toby's Thinks Outside The Boxing
by Cybele Pomeroy - April 14, 2022

New talent joins Toby's regulars to present ROCKY THE MUSICAL at Toby's in Columbia. Inspired by an actual 1974 boxing match, the unknown Rocky Balboa 'goes the distance' against superstar Apollo Creed, proving to himself, his lady love and all of Philly that an underdog can have teeth. Music and ly...

BWW Review: PRETTY WOMAN at The Hippodrome
by Timoth David Copney - April 06, 2022

Pretty Woman, The Musical has shimmered onto the stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome and landed squarely on it's Jimmy Choo'd feet. A bold and brassy tune fest, it's an homage to the 1990 film starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and this version's cast is definitely up to the inevitable comparisons....

BWW Review: A RAISIN IN THE SUN at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Timoth David Copney - February 08, 2022

...it is as fine a theatrical treatment of this oft-produced - not though not oft enough - play as I’ve ever seen...

BWW Review: Thoughtful, Satisfying THE PROM at the Hippodrome
by Jack L. B. Gohn - January 19, 2022

there's hardly a joke that misfires, hardly a dance step that doesn't thrill, and hardly a song that doesn't connect. It all works together, and the audience will leave utterly sated. Not to miss....

BWW Review: Pulitzer Prize winner THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH Is a Romp at Everyman Theatre.
by Charles Shubow - December 20, 2021

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