BALTIMORE THEATER REVIEWS

Support Group for Men will send you away happy. There is nothing profound or challenging in this show: just a well-crafted and very funny comedy of manners, specifically the manners of the male of Species Homo Americanus, youthful to mid-life, as observed in a middle-class Chicago habitat....

Dougherty unspools the stories of Chester and Dr. Cotton, his treating physician, with novelistic skill. The feeling of truly being in the World War II period never lifts. The stories reel us in: Chester's of the way he deals with his injury, and Cotton's of hospital life in wartime, with its politi...

Then the government, represented by its functionary Lucius (Michael Rogers), brings in Shimeus (Wade McCollum), a derelict of another sort, whimpering and traumatized by an arson that killed everyone else in his family. Lucius orders the Browns to harbor Shimeus as a guest. Almost immediately, howev...

It's an old trick, but a good one: Set two contrasting dramatic tones (usually domestic comedy and dread) against each other and let them fight it out throughout a play. It's the trick playwright Greg Kalleres employs to advantage in Wrecked,...

The drama works because of the intriguing way the characters' ideas about how to act in response to Marian Anderson's two provocative exclusions (first from Nassau Inn and then from Constitution Hall) shift repeatedly in response to new information, so that consensus is almost impossible to achieve,...

And now of course we are into the story of Antonio's family of origin, and the world of his origin, which has conditioned him to behave this way, which implicitly and explicitly looks to its men to solve problems with violence....

Credit Signature Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer for this season on a high....

Let me admit when I saw MATILDA on Broadway in 2013 (winner of 5 Tony Awards), I did not enjoy it. I just could not understand the character of the buffoon Miss Trunchbell, the Olympian hammer throwing athletic principal of Matilda's school. He was the villain of all villains....

Berowne gloomily foresees: 'Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three year's space.' And by 'necessity' we can be sure he means not simply the logistical necessity of dealing with women but what we might call Jurassic Park Necessity: Life finds a way. As Shakespeare...

BWW Review: DISASTER! at Cockpit in Court Summer Theatre at Essex Community College is a HOOT...

A thinly-disguised parable of the ascendancy of Adolf Hitler, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui may have been written in 1941, but it may as well have been addressed directly to Americans of 2019....

Disaster! lovingly pokes fun at two staples of 1970s popular culture: disaster movies like Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure and the disco-heavy pop music of the era. Whether to go is not going to present any great dilemmas. This is a perfect summer evening's smart-alecky entertainment....

When you leave the theater and you immediately purchase a copy of the play, that should indicate that you have really enjoyed it. This does not happen often but it happened to me as I left the Lansburgh Theatre (temporary home of the Round House during renovations) in DC. I loved A DOLL'S HOUSE, PAR...

I had never seen a professional production of HELLO, DOLLY! until now. I recall the 1969 film with Walter Matthau and Barbra Streisand. I did see the play it is based on, THE MATCHMAKER by Thornton Wilder at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and really did not enjoy it....

Fake news circa 1692. No one is safe when the accusations start flying in superstitious Salem....

Everyman Theatre is presenting two plays in repertory: QUEENS GIRL IN THE WORLD and QUEENS GIRL IN AFRICA. Olney Theatre's wonderful MARY STUART could be labeled QUEENS GIRLS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND....

The strange thing about this lyrical cornucopia: it doesn't stick in the mind much as one departs. There is a deliberate effort to craft just such a song, 'I Feel So Much Spring,' as the closer, and it feels and sounds good, but by the time the song finishes, there have been so many harmonic variati...

I must applaud Everyman Theatre's Artistic Director Vince Lancisi for having the brilliant idea of ending its season with two plays by Caleen Sinnette Jennings in repertory: QUEENS GIRL IN THE WORLD and QUEENS GIRL IN AFRICA. What a genius!...

George C. Wolfe's SPUNK was first staged at New York's Public Theater in 1990. It is based on Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'....

Luis Salgado is quickly becoming known as an acclaimed director and choreographer. He has just returned from Germany where he served as Associate DirectorChoreographer for Cirque du Solieil's PARAMOUR. Two years ago he directed and choreographed the Helen Hayes winning musical IN THE HEIGHTS at the ...

Do not miss this three hour thriller about diplomacy about the Middle East makes its regional premiere....

Just Off Broadway's (JOB) delightful production of Neil Simon's RUMORS includes exactly what we all need right now - an evening full of plenty of laughs. From the setup to the final pay off, this cast brings the chuckles (and a few guffaws) to a decades old script, that still holds up today. The sto...

When I left the Studio Theatre at the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center at Howard Community College in Columbia where the Rep Stage is housed, I went up to Director Joseph W. Ritsch with a big smile on my face. He told me he wanted to end their season with a comedy that audiences would enjo...

I do wish I could get to more community theater. It has been too long since my last review of shows that deserve moer attention. There are a plethera of local such productions in the Baltimore/Washington area which provide affordable and entertaining theater. I recently attend the Charm City Players...

From the beginning strumming of the electric guitars (Manny Moreira, Jim Roberts and Paul Henry) from the fabulous Kennedy Center Orchestra's 8-piece orchestra (Joe Mowart on Drums, Geoffrey Pilkington on Horn, and on Keyboards Michael Gacetta, Anthony Nalker, and Alex Tang) I was hooked. I had a pe...