Jeffrey Walker - Page 4

Rodgers and Hammerstein's first landmark collaboration is in great hands at Riverside Center in Fredericksburg. The production allows the power of the original musical to come to life with a talented cast, expert direction, and fleet-footed choreography.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA I just experienced at the Kennedy Center renewed my faith in the show: it is a delight for all the senses, possesses dazzling stagecraft, and is performed by a cast that mines the romance, danger, and intrigue from the story and score. I declare this production a dream come true. Chris Mann, formerly a contestant on THE VOICE headlines the show in the title role, performing with mystery and power. His Christine on the night I attended, Kaitlyn Davis, was stunning, as well.

Warmer temperatures, longer days, vacations and stay-cations - it must be summer time. The summer months offer many options for live theatre and entertainment for the entire family. Here are our top picks for the hottest performances in the DMV. Musicals, literary classics, family fare and Fringe are all lighting up the stages in the DC-Metro area.

Taking a trip to the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street will also transport you to a time when radio was king and one of the princes of the medium was the maverick actor-director Orson Welles. Welles and his Mercury Theatre Company on the Air produced a series of classic dramas on CBS Radio in the 1930s. Their most infamous broadcast was their adaptation of the H.G. Wells scifi classic "The War of the Worlds, sent over the airwaves on October 30, 1938 from New York City. That historic and iconic radio play has been translated to a new medium - the stage - by Scena Theatre in a riveting adaptation by Robert McNamara who also directed the production. Crackling with the excitement of live radio, Scena captures the ingenuity, talent and drama of that night.

LOOKING FOR ROBERTO CLEMENTE is back again for a second production at Bethesda's Imagination Stage, one of premiere locations for theatre for young audiences in the DMV. From wee ones in booster seats to parents and grandparents, this musical play hits a huge home-run. Writer Karen Zacarias and composer Deborah Wicks La Puma have fashioned a rock-infused musical that entertains while sliding home a message of friendship and loyalty and the deeper lessons a hero can teach us.

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's near masterpiece of a musical MY FAIR LADY took Broadway by storm 60 years ago this year and has become a 20th century classic. I am happy to report the plucky flower girl from the mean streets of London who gets molded into a proper lady is as lovely as ever as presented by Riverside Performing Arts Center. The sparkling wit, unrequited romance, musical hall turns and lush music are all performed with love and panache in director Patrick A'Hearn's production, featuring well-known DC actor Thomas Adrian Simpson as Henry Higgins and Riverside veteran Quinn Vogt-Welch in the title role.

Shakespeare Theatre Company proves once again their place as one of the nation's finest classical theatre companies with a new production of OTHELLO. A careful blend of grand spectacle and intimate relationships, William Shakespeare's mature tragedy leaps off of the stage with passion, wit, and pathos. Starring Pakistani-American Faran Tahir in the title role, this OTHELLO is filtered through the lens of Othello as a Muslim who has adopted Western dress and religion. The concept works and the tragedy still works as one of Shakespeare's best.

If the term “up-and-coming actor” needed a poster child, last year I would have said Eddie Redmayne would be a perfect match, owing to his Oscar win as Stephen Hawking in the acclaimed film THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. Now, I would say the 34-year old British actor has moved from the up-and-coming category into the column of established film actors. This Oscar season, Redmayne will once again face the red carpet and the possibility of leading actor Academy Award for his role in THE DANISH GIRL as the artist Einar who faces a personal conflict and the expectations of society when he transitions to Lily in the early 20th century.

The profile of Mark Rylance, veteran star of stage and screen, has risen this year due to a number of high profile projects. He is nominated for actor in a supporting role for his turn as Rudolf Abel, an undercover KGB agent who is tried for espionage in BRIDGE OF SPIES. This may be his first Oscar nomination, but Rylance is no stranger to accolades for his acting.

Memories painful and poignant intermingle through a smoky haze in the sharp and vivid production of Tennessee Williams THE GLASS MENAGERIE now onstage at Ford's Theatre. Painstakingly directed by Mark Ramont, the production boasts a superb cast of actors whose nuanced and detailed performances mine the emotional depths of Williams' early and personal play.

Mame Dennis Burnside has coaxed the blues right out of the horn many times since the late 1960s and Riverside Center for the Performing Arts has brought the ditzy, glitzy and glamorous free-spirit back for a big, old fashioned musical hit. This new production of MAME looks and sounds like a million bucks and deserves to be a solid, sell-out for the holidays.

Like a sepia-toned photo from the pages of a family album, Avant Bard's production of HOLIDAY MEMORIES evokes seasonal joys untouched by commercialism and cynicism - two mortal enemies of the true spirit of Thanksgiving and Christmas, in my opinion. Taken from two personal short stories by the iconoclastic author Truman Capote, this stage adaptation deserves to become an annual tradition.

Relive the Golden Age of Broadway and the magical moments from TV's past with Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews,Carol Burnett and many more as we look at the history of live TV musicals.

DEATHTRAP is an old fashioned, twisty thrill ride. NextStop Theatre Company puts the thrill back in thriller with a briskly directed, well cast production of the venerable potboiler. If we gave out ratings at Broadway World, I would offer NextStop four big ones for a production that crackles with wit and delivers a bloody good time.

What is the American dream? This question and many others were asked and explored on a ground-breaking public television series from the early 1970s. Combining elements of variety shows and sketch comedy, documentary film, witty animated sequences, and a who's who of pop culture icons, THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM MACHINE paved the way for future television programming. Years before SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and THE DAILY SHOW, a just before cult classics like THE GROOVE TUBE and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE offered topical and satirical comedy on film, THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM MACHINE was pioneering television.

Stripped to the essentials - a stage, a handful of actors, a rapt audience - ANTIGONE recently proved once again its place in the pantheon of the world's finest tragic plays. The international production of the Sophokles drama made a short stop in Washington for the last leg of a national tour of select American cities, helmed by the Belgian theatre wunderkind Ivo van Hove. French film and theatre star Juliette Binoche led an ensemble of U.K.-based actors who clearly illuminated the timeless tale of family devotion versus the law.

The bottom-line: The DVD set of AMERICA'S TEST KITCHEN Season 15 can help at home chefs to cook up a storm and offers many features which set the series apart from run-of-the-mill how-to videos. Firing up fifteen seasons of deconstructed recipes and kitchen gadget trial and error, AMERICA'S TEST KITCHEN is one of public television's most popular cooking shows. Hosted by the bow-tie sporting and affable Christopher Kimball, the show takes the mystique out of cooking, tests useful kitchen equipment and helps to work the kinks out of cooking gadgets in a straight forward manner that is easy to follow.

Poised to take you to heaven with a song, a prayer and a tug at the heartstrings, SISTER ACT THE MUSICAL is a blessing that needs no disguise. Fredericksburg's Riverside Center Dinner Theatre is presenting the regional premiere of this London and Broadway hit adaptation of the Whoopi Goldberg starring film from the mid-1990s. Riverside audiences will be asking 'Who needs Whoopi?' once they get a load of Felicia Curry as the disco-chanteuse who brings a little funk to the convent.

Welcome to the first of a series of reports from the outskirts of the big cities! For the next couple of weeks, I will be visiting some of the smaller cities and towns around that all share one thing in common: cultural gems that dot the landscape. Today, I present to you Culpeper's State Theatre and the recent performance by Lynchburg's Endstation Theatre Company. Endstation presented TWO GENTLEMEN OF VIRGINIA recently to the delight of an appreciative audience. I think the Bard would have been thoroughly entertained by a skillfully paved intersection of historical references from the 1780s and rock and roll memories of the 1980s.

The iconic rock opera is back onstage and Prince William Little Theatre has got it. A challenging show for even a professional company, this community theatre tackles Pete Townshend's landmark piece with gusto and innovative staging by director Melissa Jo York-Tilley and co-choreographers Melanie Marie Gibson and Ahmad Maaty. Boasting some strong performances of the classic rock score, the production gets an “E” for effort.