Because Williams has so successfully gotten us cheering for Maggie, we in the audience would very much like to see Maggie triumphantly dragging Brick into bed in the final frame, and an interpretation like director Judith Ivey's, which all but promises that, is bound to be a crowd-pleaser. But if a ... (more...)
Your sense of home lives in the boundaries of childhood memory. Aspects of the larger world are distilled to smaller moments that define each person's life. The intricate patterns of past and present, memory and reality choreograph the story of Everyman's DANCING AT LUGHNASA, Brian Friel's 1991 Tony... (more...)
In a short 2016 profile in American Theatre, Russian emigre director Yury Ornov expounded on the freedoms of theater: 'You can hate people; you can do a hate show about Putin, for example, or about your ex-wife.' It seems that Lola B. Pierson's Putin On Ice (That Isn't the Real Title of This Show) i... (more...)
The play will certainly keep challenging you the way a puzzle does. It begins, no doubt portentously, with a question that it never completely answers (Olivia to Ethan 'Who are you?') and it ends with deliberate lack of clarity over whether the characters have any future. In short, this is theater w... (more...)
Rep Stage Producing Artistic Director Joseph W. Ritsch Directs, Choreographs, and does the Set Design for a 'hair-raising' rendition of this Stephen Sondheim classic musical.... (more...)
Many of my readers know my connection with MAMMA MIA! on Broadway (see my bio below). When I saw many months ago that Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia would be presenting it (the professional regional premiere) I knew it would be a money maker and knew, after seeing many Toby productions, it would ... (more...)
I do not believe I have ever seen a more 'kid-friendly' theatrical event than the Olney Theatre Company's H.M.S. PINAFORE. Olney has welcomed back 'The Hypocrites' Chicago based troupe (they last appeared during the summer of 2016) who have taken their productions of both PINAFORE and PIRATES OF PEN... (more...)
Bianca Laverne Jones gives us a Berta a man would want to compose a song about. Her face, her eyes, the modulations of her voice, like the song Berta, Berta itself, communicate so much more than the lines she delivers. 'Berta is a voluptuous, stately Black woman with a striking countenance,' say the... (more...)
It is plain that Della's resolution of the issue whether to bake a cake for Jen's same-sex wedding will call for a gingerly reassessment of her faith and her life. Realistically, it will not be solved wholesale by Della's discarding of her allegiance to what Macy dismisses as 'a book that's thousand... (more...)
Alexandra and Frankie are shown tacitly agreeing to steer clear of the secret not merely because such circumspection is calculated to heighten audience interest; once we understand what the secret is, we can see that the characters know that if they address it, a long-buried grievance between them w... (more...)
There is a thing Terrance can't let go of, like Lear, like Othello, like Richard II. And if you're a tragic hero and you can't let go when you ought to, then bad things will happen to you and those you are close to.... (more...)
If you come to this show, do not expect to participate in a truly topical think piece about memory in a time of tyranny. You will witness instead a pair of entwined tales about rare mental abnormality and a somewhat overexposed aspect of totalitarianism. It is the telling of the tales, the acting an... (more...)
A show about Reagan that does not explore how his personality gave rise to so much destructiveness is not going to satisfy any well-informed theatergoer. Yet such a show is unfortunately what playwright Michael Weller has given us in A Late Morning (in America) With Ronald Reagan.... (more...)
Not only was the premise intriguing, then, but the treatment, and particularly the talent Stillpointe brought to this performance, seemed quite promising. As hard as it often was to work out exactly what was being said and sung, the characters certainly had the capacity to intrigue us.... (more...)
When a family deals with loss, how can they go about preserving their loved one's legacy with what was left behind? At the Vagabond Players, audiences can witness how Joshua Harmon's award-winning dark comedy BAD JEWS will immerse you on an emotional journey from beginning to end.... (more...)
The bad guy is supposed to proclaim how much he despises American values. But when we boo him, what are we booing? The foreign, the unknown, the threatening, the challenge to our self-righteousness. We don our Make America Great Again hats. But in a world where more and more of us, like the villain,... (more...)
The psychological arcs of history are sometimes lost in the details and dates. THE BOOK OF JOSEPH amplifies those emotional truths as it follows the Hollander family's past struggle to survive World War II and present struggle to deal with the reverberations of a past we both wish to remember and se... (more...)
I cannot think of a more fitting way to say thank you to Baltimore Center Stage Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah than attending SOUL THE STAX MUSICAL which runs to June 10, 2018.... (more...)
Judith Ivey Enjoyably Gives Us CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF As A Love Story at Center Stage
BWW Review: DANCING AT LUGHNASA at The Everyman
Mocking a Personality Cult: PUTIN ON ICE at Single Carrot
Literary Lovers, or Just Canny Operators?: SEX WITH STRANGERS at FPCT Makes You Decide
SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET at Rep Stage - This is SWEENEY like you have never seen it before!!
PASSION at Signature Theatre - A Musical About Obsession and Romance
BWW Review: MAMMA MIA! How Can You Resist This??
BWW Review: DAVE, A World Premiere Musical at Arena Stage - Looks Like It is Destined for Broadway
BWW Review: H.M.S. PINAFORE at Olney Theatre Center - Bring the Kids and Enjoy This Spoof of the Famous Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta
A Work Song Becomes A Play: BERTA, BERTA at Contemporary American Theater Festival
BWW Review: Delicious Fun in THE CAKE at Contemporary American Theater Festival
BWW Review: THE HOUSE ON THE HILL Revisits a Trauma in Tears and Anger and Healing at the Contemporary American Theater Festival
Post-Apocalyptic, Classically-Imagined Tragedy: THIRST at Contemporary American Theater Festival
Great Recall During the Great Terror: MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN MAN at Contemporary American Theater Festival
BWW Review: Resurrecting Teflon Ron: A LATE MORNING (IN AMERICA) at Contemporary American Theater Festival
AIN'T TOO PROUD - THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS at the Kennedy Center - They Were Dancing in the Seats!!
Venue Problems Aside, Stillpointe's URINETOWN Flush With Possibility
BWW Review: THE QUICKENING at Fells Point Corner Theatre
BWW Review: ON YOUR FEET! THE EMILIO & GLORIA ESTEFAN BROADWAY MUSICAL at the Hippodrome Theatre - It Literally Has Audiences OFF Their Feet!
THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS at Signature Theatre - A Stunning Production
CAMELOT at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is Elegant, Charming, and Just Plain Entertaining.
BWW Review: BAD JEWS at Vagabond Players
Wrestling with Authentic Inauthenticity: CHAD DEITY at Cohesion Theatre
BWW Review: THE BOOK OF JOSEPH at The Everyman Theatre
BWW Review: SOUL THE STAX MUSICAL - Baltimore Center Stage Presents World Premiere Until June 10, 2018
