All stories by Bob Ashby on BroadwayStars

Monday, September 23, 2019

Review: ‘The Finger’ at Venus Theater by Bob Ashby

Ambiguous loss that binds two people together while pushing them apart. Incompatible paths of grief that alienate each other’s only source of connection. The dominating presence of someone…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:58PM
Sunday, September 22, 2019

Review: ‘Cats’ at The Kennedy Center Opera House by Bob Ashby

Andrew Lloyd Webber catapulted to unprecedented West End and Broadway success with his musical extravaganza Cats, based on a 1939 collection of light verse by the otherwise modernist poet, T…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:42AM
Sunday, September 15, 2019

Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ by The Arlington Players by Bob Ashby

After a highly successful animated film, a long-running Broadway show, a live-action movie version, various spin-offs, and innumerable theme park, cruise ship, and school productions, the Di…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:41PM
Saturday, September 14, 2019

Review: ‘Helen on Wheels’ at Best Medicine Rep by Bob Ashby

The central character in Best Medicine Rep’s (BMR) DC-area premiere of Cricket Daniel’s Helen on Wheels, Helen Wheeler (Liz Weber), is a 74-year old Oklahoma widow full of vim, vigor, an…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:36PM
Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Review: ‘Legally Blonde’ at the Keegan Theatre by Bob Ashby

In this summer of our discontent – what with unchecked climate change, racist politics, and mass murders – a bit of cheer in the form of a frothy tale of a privileged white girl who, thr…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:08PM
Sunday, July 28, 2019

Review: ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ by Baltimore Shakespeare Factory by Bob Ashby

Baltimore Shakespeare Factory’s (BSF) production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Tom Delise, delivers the “merry” promised in the title. The wives – Alice Ford (Emily Clas…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:04PM
Monday, July 15, 2019

Review: ‘The Few’ by Unexpected Stage Company by Bob Ashby

The American interior West has long been a favored setting for stories about loneliness. The visual emptiness of vast open spaces – think of your favorite John Ford film – and the emotio…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:16AM
Sunday, July 14, 2019

Review: ‘American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables’ by The Hub Theatre by Bob Ashby

Playwright Sam Hamashima is described in his program bio as working in the “collision  between his queer identity and his Japanese-American identity.” In American Spies and Other Homegr…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:28PM
Monday, July 8, 2019

Review: ‘A Welcome Guest: A Psychotic Fairy Tale’ by Michael Weller at Contemporary American Theater Festival by Bob Ashby

Eat your heart out, Christmas Carol. Hang up your dancing shoes, Nutcracker. Change the channel on reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s Christmas in July in Shepherdstown, as the Contem…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:41PM

Review: ‘Antonio’s Song/I Was Dreaming of a Son’ by Dael Orlandersmith and Antonio Edwards Suarez at Contemporary American Theater Festival by Bob Ashby

The Antonio in question is Antonio Edwards Suarez, the writer (with Dael Orlandersmith) and actor in this one-man autobiographical piece, part of the Contemporary American Theater Festival i…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:11PM

Review: ‘My Lord, What a Night’ by Deborah Brevoort at Contemporary American Theater Festival by Bob Ashby

My Lord, What a Night, a new play by Deborah Brevoort at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, explores the relationship between two 20th-century greats…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:52PM
Sunday, June 30, 2019

Review: ‘Matilda’ at Olney Theatre Center by Bob Ashby

A young hero in her own story who redeems the lives of others around her, the title character in the musical adaptation by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin of Roald Dahl’s novel Matilda uses h…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:45PM
Monday, June 17, 2019

‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ by the Rude Mechanicals at the Greenbelt Arts Center by Bob Ashby

Tennessee Williams famously wrote fragile female leads: Laura, delicate and easily shattered; Blanche, already defeated before she is forced to rely upon the kindness of strangers. Not so wi…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:14PM
Sunday, June 9, 2019

Review: ‘Princess Ida’ by The Victorian Lyric Opera Company by Bob Ashby

Princess Ida, now being presented by The Victorian Lyric Opera Company (VLOC), is something of an odd duck in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory. It has three acts, the dialogue is in blank …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:21PM
Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Review: ‘A Misanthrope’ at WSC Avant Bard by Bob Ashby

The audience didn’t stop laughing all night. Between Matt Minnicino’s rhyming couplet- filled, witty, knowing, sometimes bawdy adaptation (or, as he would have it, “distillation”) of…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:51PM
Sunday, June 2, 2019

Review: ‘Stonewall 50’ by Rainbow Theatre Project by Bob Ashby

In the midst of Pride season, and in the 50th anniversary year of the Stonewall riots that defined the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, Rainbow Theatre Project presents a look at…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:04PM
Monday, May 27, 2019

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre by Bob Ashby

All the familiar characters are there: Lizzy Bennet, her sisters and parents; suitors Darcy, Bingley, Collins, and Wickham; the de Bourghs and Charlotte. The basic plot lines and period sett…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:20PM
Monday, May 6, 2019

Review: ‘Gypsy’ by St. Mark’s Players by Bob Ashby

Rose Hovic is one of the most riveting characters in the history of musical theater, inspiring allusions to the most renowned figures in dramatic literature. Gypsy’s lyricist, Stephen Sond…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:52PM
Sunday, April 28, 2019

Review: ‘Annie’ at Reston Community Players by Bob Ashby

Reston Community Players (RCP) serves up a tasty dish of that ultimate Broadway comfort food, Annie. Cooked up by Thomas Meehan (book), Charles Strouse (music) and Martin Charnin (lyrics) in…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:23PM
Saturday, April 20, 2019

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ by Boundless Theatre by Bob Ashby

It is a joyful occasion when a new, vital theater company opens, and the advent of Boundless Theatre in Frederick is a welcome addition to the Western Maryland arts scene. Their inaugural pr…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:13AM
Sunday, April 14, 2019

Review: ‘A Comedy of Tenors’ at Olney Theatre Center by Bob Ashby

Things are getting silly at the Olney Theatre Center these days. Very, very, silly. Very skillfully silly, in the production of Ken Ludwig’s A Comedy of Tenors. A follow-on to Ludwig’s h…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:24PM
Sunday, April 7, 2019

Review: Curse of the Starving Class at Maryland Ensemble Theatre by Bob Ashby

When we first see the Tate family in Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, now playing at Frederick’s Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET), they are already doomed, they just don’t ful…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:30PM
Saturday, March 30, 2019

Review: ‘My Fair Lady’ at Way Off Broadway Dinner Theatre by Bob Ashby

“She sweeps out,” says George Bernard Shaw of Eliza in a stage direction at the end of Pygmalion, leaving Henry Higgins alone and feeling self-satisfied. As Shaw said emphatically in his…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:34PM
Thursday, March 21, 2019

Review: ‘Into the Woods’ at Ford’s Theatre by Bob Ashby

I have loved Sondheim’s Into the Woods since seeing its original Broadway production. Three decades on, Ford’s Theatre’s current version carries the tradition forward proudly. For anyo…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:00PM
Monday, March 18, 2019

Review: ‘Fallen Angels’ at NextStop Theatre Company by Bob Ashby

If there’s could be a single word to describe NextStop Theatre Company’s production of Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy, Fallen Angels, it would be symmetry. Emily Lotz’s delightfully reali…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:21PM
Monday, March 11, 2019

Review: ‘Queen of Basel’ at Studio Theatre by Bob Ashby

Christy Escobar’s mesmerizing, compelling, utterly brilliant, performance is the centerpiece of Studio Theatre’s world premiere production of Hilary Bettis’ Queen of Basel. In Bettis�…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:47PM
Sunday, March 10, 2019

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at Greenbelt Arts Center by Bob Ashby

Your mother no doubt told you not to discuss religion or politics over dinner. In Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, now playing at the Greenbelt Arts Center, the exchanges among the characters duri…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:36PM
Sunday, March 3, 2019

Review: ‘Oil’ at Olney Theatre Center by Bob Ashby

There are a few shows – very few – which on first viewing have left me breathless. The original productions of Sweeney Todd and Copenhagen come quickly to mind. To this small list add th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:15PM
Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Review: ‘Finding Neverland’ at the National Theatre by Bob Ashby

The touring company of Finding Neverland (book by James Graham, music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Elliot Kennedy) is making a mercifully brief stop at Washington’s National Theatre. Spin…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:51PM
Monday, February 18, 2019

Review: ‘Radium Girls’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre by Bob Ashby

The horrific and – not too strong a word – evil events recounted in Maryland Ensemble Theatre’s production of D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls were, as the play underlines, a major, sensa…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:30PM

Review: ‘Thunder Knocking on the Door’ at Creative Cauldron by Bob Ashby

Thunder, in this case, is one Marvell Thunder, a supernatural, shape-shifting, competitive trickster who has surrendered a good bit of his humanity to act as the spirit of the blues. Played …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:33PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards