A great deal is packed into The Magical Piñata. There's a brief explanation of where Mexico's population comes from; a smattering of spoken Spanish and songs in both Spanish and English; pratfalls; a morality tale; and lots of laugher.

As a reviewer you hear lots of advance hype about a particular show or performer before having your own experience. Much of the time the hype doesn't live up to the end product. Selling over 90 million recordings opera singer Andrea Bocelli was definitely one of those performers who I had heard a lot about before seeing him perform live at Capital One Arena. I of course was familiar with some of his recordings but nothing prepared me for what I was about to witness. Here is a case where the hype not only lived up to the end product it exceeded it at least twenty fold. Bocelli stepped out onstage and flat out held around 20,000 concertgoers spellbound with his ringing tenor in a concert that included some of the most beautiful arias ever written.

Tis the season for Santa Claus, holiday lights, people lining up at three am to get a deal on a 76 inch TV set, and of the course the perennial holiday ballet favorite by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky known as The Nutcracker.

The giggles and guffaws zoom along at top speed, even as the bus breaks down in this genuinely riotous adaptation of Mo Willems' 2003 Caldecott-awarded picture book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Keep. makes you think about a lot of things which does make the two hours go by quickly.

This rap-infused, woke update of Mark Twain's The Prince and The Pauper, a world premiere theater piece for young audiences commissioned by the Kennedy Center, has many charms and much humor, even if it goes more than a little heavy on the agitprop for audiences under the age of 10.

Every once in a while you run across a big dilemma with a production. What happens when everything falls into place except one big thing? For the answer to this question look no further than the latest installment of the Broadway Center Stage series at Kennedy Center Footloose.

The newly opened REACH at Kennedy Center continues the institution's promise set forth by President John F. Kennedy of arts for all.

4615 Theatre Company's Enron, directed by Jordan Friend, is an entertaining, satirical glimpse into a whirlwind scandal.

We are now at the midpoint of summer and you are most likely looking for something a little bit different to do with your kids before sending them back to school. What if I told you that the Kennedy Center is currently producing a World Premiere Commission that is both entertaining and educational? I hope you'd say 'Tell me more!' because I have plenty to say about this brand new musical for all ages called Earthrise. The production was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch.

In order to pull off a successful solo show there are a few things you absolutely need to have.

Master monologist Mike Daisey is known locally for his many performances at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. When you go to a Mike Daisey performance you expect to continue the conversation afterwards. His stuff is that thought provoking and is always spot on.

This past week marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of the iconic entertainer Judy Garland. Can you believe she was only 47 when she passed? Think of the body of work she left us in such a short life.

Throughout theatrical history many great ladies of the theatre have tackled the role of Thornton Wilder's famous matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi in the musical Hello, Dolly! In 2017 a brand new revival of the show hit Broadway starring Bette Midler (with Donna Murphy alternating in) and later on in its run Bernadette Peters. That production is now touring the country with Tony Award winning actress Betty Buckley in the starring role and veteran actor Lewis J. Stadlen as the well-known half a millionaire Horace Vandergelder.

Washington DC's premiere arts education institution The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts presents it's second world premiere musical as part of its Summer Musical Institute for Teens program.

Folger Theatre's Love's Labor's Lost, directed by Vivienne Benesch, compliments the uniqueness of this comedy through a delightfully funny cast and production set during the 1930's.

For 25 years now the percussion spectacular known as Stomp has been making beautiful noise all over the world. This high-octane audible feast is back in town at the National Theatre for a week and the historic rafters are shaking from the melodious vibrations Stomp brings with it.

While short-lived on Broadway, Keegan Theatre's regional premiere of Hands on a Hardbody, directed by Elena Velasco and Mark A. Rhea, proves this musical is on its way to becoming a cult classic.

The art of tap dancing is taken to new heights…literally…in the high octane, high energy worldwide sensation known as Tap Dogs. Not only do the eight male performers do traditional tap routines in this 80-minute industrial extravaganza, they take it to places tap hasn't gone before incorporating, water, scaffolding blowtorches, and more.

With all of the media options at their disposal today, creating theater pieces that will keep young people totally engaged is getting to be more and more of a challenge. Kennedy Center's Theater for Young Audiences (TYA) division's latest attempt at something fresh sometimes succeeds and sometimes doesn't. Most of the success in She A Gem can be attributed to the oh so fly direction of Paige Hernandez and her talented cast and design team. Whether or not the playwright Josh Wilder was up for the challenge is open to debate.

The recording artist/composer/free spirit known as Nellie McKay is not your typical performer to be sure. It's actually hard to even associate her with a particular musical genre because she performed a little bit of everything in her concert at Kennedy Center as part of the Renée Fleming VOICES series.

There are certain performances from Broadway history that can never be replicated, one of which is Robert Preston's star turn as the flimflamming boys band sales man Harold Hill in the 1958 Tony Award winning musical The Music Man. It was a bit of a shock when it won best musical that year because it beat out the revolutionary West Side Story. Ah well, commercialism nearly always wins.

There are many companies presenting Theater for Young Audiences (TYA) shows in and around the DC area. One of the newest is a company that's been around for over twenty years, but has relatively recently branched out into the family entertainment genre.

For many years now, the famed Cirque du Soleil has been combining the two worlds of circus and theater to create some spectacular productions. Anyone that has seen one of their shows in Las Vegas or elsewhere knows that when you attend a Cirque production, it's an unforgettable experience. Cirque has repurposed the music of The Beatles, taken us to a spectacular jungle world and elsewhere in their past productions, but with their latest touring show Crystal the company adds ice skating to their repertoire. Combining traditional circus skills with breathtaking ramp jumps, break dancing, show skating and much more Crystal is not your typical Cirque du Soleil production. It takes place entirely on an ice rink, but for those that remember it, this is not your standard Ice Capades by any stretch of the imagination either.

There are certain theatrical presentations you can always depend on for sheer holiday joy at this time of year. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker is definitely high on that list. The music has spawned many different interpretations over the years, including Duke Ellington's version featuring a swinging saxophone section. The music is also used in many television commercials so even if you didn't know the music was from the classic ballet, chances are you at one point or another have been exposed to The Nutcracker.