Daniel Collins - Page 2

If you've seen the Johnny Depp 2004 film, 'Finding Neverland,' you're aware of the story of playwright J. M. Barrie and how his relationship with widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and her four boys, George, Jack, Peter and Michael, inspired him to write the classic play, 'Peter Pan.' If you haven't, you can find the whole movie online, or just Google it like everything else these days.

Audiences are in for a magic journey both on and off stage as Center Stage, now unveiled after a $28 million renovation, presents award-winning playwright Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of the Chinese fable, 'THE WHITE SNAKE.'

Baltimore's Everyman attempts a pre-Halloween scare with WAIT UNTIL DARK now through Oct. 9th.

How characters view life and the value they place on it is at the core of Arthur Miller's ALL MY SONS, directed by Michael Byrne Zemarel at the Vagabond Players Theater in Baltimore.

Evita was one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's more controversial shows, depicting Argentina's beloved Eva Peron as a swindler, cheat, and power-hungry woman, willing to sleep her way to the top. Even when they made the movie almost 50 years after Eva's death, drastic rewrites and additional songs were made simply to film in Argentina. It's interesting to me how the attitude towards women in power have, in some respects, changed, but words like conniving, manipulating, whore, and the like still get tossed around; during intermission, I enjoyed a poignant, and a little heated, discussion of the parallels of this play in our current presidential race. Good theatre provokes discussion, and Spotlighter's Theatre put on a powerhouse of a musical that is very topical today.

Perhaps you're a fan of the new dramatic TV series, 'The Royals,' about a fictional British royal family who face struggles like the death of the heir to the throne, conniving children and assorted romances.

It's clear to me that Everyman Theatre company actor Megan Anderson knows her craft and performs it exceptionally well, given how she brought her character, Raina, to life in playwright Michael Hollinger's 'Under the Skin.' That's because I had to restrain myself, several times, from shouting from my seat that she was an ungrateful, affected, pretentious, New Agey, annoying Millennial (expletive), a particular demographic for which I have a Saudi-Arabian-oil-reserve-size dislike.

I recall a story where a pastor spoke to his congregation about the 10 commandments. To paraphrase, the pastor said, 'About that commandment about not having any false idols--not applicable for today, right? Nobody praying before golden calves today, right?' Then, he held up a football.

The Book of Mormon comes back to Baltimore by popular demand, and its not hard to understand why. The brainchild of South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q's Robert Lopez is the hottest ticket on Broadway. While definitely not for the easily offended, this show is uproariously funny and fun, surprisingly touching and poignant, and the touring company gracing the Hippodrome Theatre does not dissapoint. In truth, I haven't enjoyed myself so much at a musical in a very, very long time.

Classic story of fathers and sons, direams and disappointments and challenging the realities of the American Dream now at the Everyman

Audience has 'the time of their lives' with performance of DIRTY DANCE at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theater

Noted playwright Amy Herzog's AFTER THE REVOLUTION tells the tale of three generations of the Joseph family, shaken by moral and political views and a shocking family secret revealed.

Ira Levin's dark psychological drama, INTERLOCK, runs through Feb. 8th at Baltimore's Vagabond Players' theater.

The Spotlighters brings George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's comedy, THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. to their intimate stage just in time for the holidays.

A humorous tribute to the science fiction and horror B movies of the late 1940s through early 1970s, the Rocky Horror Show featuring 'that sweet transvestite' and his motley crew time warp into the Spotlighters Theater in downtown Baltimore.

Or perhaps a better title for this review should be "pretty typical," i.e. typical for a modern American musical.

SISTER ACT, the family friendly, over the top spectacle with nuns that rock, is now at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre through June 15, 2014.

Manic mothers, desperate daughters, paranoid paramours and hassled husbands come together in Anton Chekhov's four short works,THE DANGERS OF TOBACCO, THE PROPOSAL, THE RELUCTANT TRAGIC HERO and THE BEAR, now at the Fells Point Corner Theater. -- review by guest critic, Mark Squirek

Winner of 5 Tony Awards, WAR HORSE, a tale of loyalty, courage, and friendship, comes to Baltimore's Hippodrome Theater, now through Feb. 9th.

Nearly two dozen characters, spanning race, religion and class, come together on Christmas Eve in 1864 in Paula Vogel's work, "A Civil War Christmas"