Baltimore Theater Reviews

BWW Review: Vagabond Players' CONSTELLATIONS Has Its Cake and Eats It Too
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 29, 2020

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...

BWW Review: An Amusing and Engaging FABULATION, OR THE RE-EDUCATION OF UNDINE at Strand Theater
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 25, 2020

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...

Police Killings of Young Black Men Viewed Through The Lens of Eternity: KILL MOVE PARADISE at REP Stage
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 23, 2020

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, the...

BWW Review: THE BOOK OF DAYS at The Colonial Players is a Creative Take on Small Town America
by Kristen Price - February 23, 2020

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...

BWW Review: Baltimore Shakespeare Factory Manufactures a Muddled, Overwhelmed HENRY V
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 20, 2020

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...

BWW Review: Annapolis Shakespeare Company Has Great Fun with ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S THE 39 STEPS and So Will You
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 20, 2020

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...

BWW Review: RICHARD & JANE & DICK & SALLY Celebrates its World Premiere at Baltimore Center Stage
by Kristen Price - February 15, 2020

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 characters...

BWW Review: WICKED at THE HIPPODROME
by Daniel Collins - February 17, 2020

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...

GUN & POWDER at Signature Theatre - World Premiere Musical is Hottest Ticket in Town!
by Charles Shubow - February 14, 2020

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

BWW Review: THE SHADOW BOX at Spotlighters Theatre
by Tina Collins - February 11, 2020

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....

BWW Review: Weirdness Yields Insight in Masterly MEASURE FOR MEASURE at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 10, 2020

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,...

Violinist Philippe Quint Headlines Charlie Chaplin's Legacy: Classical Music in Film with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
by Charles Shubow - February 08, 2020

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

BWW Review: Overstuffed and Disorganized SAFE SPACE at Single Carrot Theatre
by Jack L. B. Gohn - February 02, 2020

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...

BWW Review: NEXT TO NORMAL at the Kennedy Center is Exceptional
by Charles Shubow - January 31, 2020

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

BWW Review: BE HERE NOW at Everyman Theatre - A Touching Dramady About Happiness and Laughter
by Charles Shubow - January 30, 2020

If I said one should come to the Everyman Theatre and see a play that deals with Geschwind Syndrome you may want to pass or even google it. But do not be put off by this. Just relax and see a play that deals with it. I never heard of this Syndrome and it truly does not make a difference if you know ...

BWW Review: A Frosty but Comic Take on LOVE AND INFORMATION at Fells Point Corner Theatre
by Jack L. B. Gohn - January 25, 2020

Churchill's take on love and on information seems a bit chilly. There may be a lot of both love and information out there, she appears to intimate, but it's not usually of very good quality. Much of Churchill's frostiness is, however, presented with a comic touch, emphasized by Dierdre McAllister's ...

BWW Review: A Sure-Footed BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS at Vagabond Players
by Jack L. B. Gohn - January 18, 2020

Neil Simon's indecision about genre in Brighton Beach Memoirs was related to his problem being direct about his parents. A true account would necessarily have revealed their fighting, his father's desertions and infidelities, and the eventual failure of their marriage, and could only have been prese...

BWW Review: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS at The Everyman Theatre
by Tina Collins - December 17, 2019

Escape into the luxe world of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express st the Everyman Theatre, a murder mystery for all seasons....

New Modes of Representation Forcing Reexamination of Oldtime Heroes: MEN ON BOATS at Baltimore Center Stage
by Jack L. B. Gohn - December 09, 2019

The Powell expedition down the Colorado was a voyage of discovery only from the perspective of certain white Protestant men, since Native Americans lived along the route – and white Mormons dwelt close by as well. But only when the river and surrounding lands were surveyed and mapped by certain kind...