BALTIMORE THEATER REVIEWS

In the oft-repeated words of the character Sandy, sung in a hilarious patter-fest at strategic points in the musical of Tootsie, playing this week only at the Hippodrome, 'I know what's going to happen.' What's going to happen is that you will attend the show and have an uproarious good time....

Let’s stipulate that book writer and lyricist Tom Eyen and composer Henry Krieger were not Sondheim. What they gave us in Dreamgirls was serviceable, not brilliant, the result of a long development process largely aimed at repairing holes in the melodrama. The result: the company that puts on the ...

In the tradition of ‘40s musicals, WHITE CHRISTMAS tugs heartstrings and brightens spirits. The timeless music of Irving Berlin combined with the dedication and talent of Toby’s yields a family-friendly show sure to give you cocoa-and-fireplace feelings no matter the weather...

Building on Adrienne Shelly’s sometimes grimly hilarious and frequently heartwarming 2007 movie of the same name, and realized for the musical stage by Broadway’s first all-female creative team in 2016, Waitress has been almost continuously on Broadway, apart from a COVID break which ended when...

Mark Scharf is a master of the 10-minute play, except, perhaps, where he tries to use it to explore large themes....

There can be rational decisions to end one’s own life, but when such decisions are driven by most kinds of depression, which by definition are not rational, no one else, especially no one else touched by it, can make sense of it. And no string of “Whys” will bring us closer to an explanation. ...

Audiences need each other as much as the performers need audiences; in the aisles we feed off each other's energy, helping each other get the jokes, experience the pathos, and admire the performances. Steel Magnolias, is an excellent way to make our return, with plenty of jokes, plenty of pathos, an...

Attending the musical ELF in July, (and August) in the air-conditioned comfort of Toby's, which is featuring reduced capacity pod seating until further notice, is a sweet novelty, and a community-supportive way to emerge from seventeen months of dormancy. You're in for holiday sweetness with heart a...

Given all the slapstick in this staging (jousting with pool noodles, silly sound effects, outrageous costumes, sending a coffin to a sea burial down a playground slide, tossing a babe-in-arms around like a fumbled football), the endless choruses of What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor in which t...

Get lost listening to Dane Figueroa Edidi’s sensual and striking radio play GHOST/WRITER....

So while the course of true love does not run smooth when pursued by these slightly deranged lovers, it does in the end run true. All in all, then, this is a pleasing way for theatergoers to begin emerging from hibernation....

Playwright Payne's evident intent here was to illustrate the fullest range of things that can happen when Boy Meets Girl. Boy and Girl here are, respectively, a Wiltshire beekeeper named Roland (Christian Smith) and a University of Sussex cosmologist named Marianne (Ryan Gunning). We are plunged rig...

Turns out Undine doesn't exist in the public records beyond 15 years back because Undine was born Sharona Watkins, and cruelly deserted her folks' lives to reinvent herself with a highfallutin' name and a highfallutin' profession. Now she needs to rebuild the bridges she burned and reclaim Sharona-d...

While there are four characters in Kill Move Paradise, and they are endowed with names and hints at backstories, their individual identities don't matter much. They are unified more than distinguished, engaged as they are in a common enterprise, chorally addressing the same issues. Specifically, t...

Colonial Players production of Lanford Wilson's play THE BOOK OF DAYS, is a creative take on one of the playwright's lesser known works. The piece, which tells the story of the townsfolk in Dublin, Missouri, is billed as a murder mystery, though I think it's less about the mystery of who, and more a...

It isn't easy to stage Shakespeare's Henry V (1599). It's a big play), with a large complement of characters. Structurally, it is partly built around a siege and a battle, each of which occurs onstage. There are scenes and pageantry in two royal courts. No wonder, then, the directors tend to cut the...

Now presented by the Annapolis Shakespeare Company in Patrick Barlow's adaptation (London 2006, Broadway 2010), The 39 Steps is part music hall, part slapstick, part sex comedy, part thriller a?" and requires the skills necessary for each. Add to this that it contains 157 roles written to be perform...

The new play RICHARD & JANE & DICK & SALLY, written by Noah Diaz and directed by Taylor Reynolds, had its world premiere at Baltimore Center Stage Thursday evening. The play is a simultaneously quirky and heartfelt look at grief, loss and accessibility.  While the Dick & Jane stories, the character...

Chances are, as America is an increasing book-abhorrent culture, most folks familiar with THE WIZARD OF OZ know only of the 1939 Judy Garland film, versus author L. Frank Baum's children's 1900 book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While the book and the film are fairly well aligned as children's entert...

Inspiring musical by Angelica Cheri and Ross Baum examines race, family and identity in the Wild West....

Learning to mediate loss is the secret to celebrating life. Learn to live and let go with three who are in THE SHADOW BOX at the Spotlighters Theatre....

If we can climb beyond the foothills of the weird norms of the dramatic universe, we can take in how marvelously has Shakespeare anticipated some issues we must confront today. Showing us the Duke's deputy Angelo telling novice nun Isabella that he will save her brother Claudio from the executioner,...

Quint mesmerizes the audience with his virtuoso performance....

There is no question that R. Eric Thomas has serious things to say about the state of race in our country. In a Single Carrot press release, he is quoted, for instance, as saying that the play was written now to address a?oethe scourge of white supremacy,a?? and that the play is a?oeabout priorities...

You only have until Sunday night, Feb. 2 to this Tony Award winning musical....