All stories by Susan Galbraith on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Kennedy Center (review) by Susan Galbraith

Big News at the Kennedy Center. Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater rocked the place last night.. And no one rushed to exit the Opera House auditorium (as they often do at the KC) until …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:06PM
Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Rinde Eckert performs RIN: Tales from the Life of a Troubador at The Kennedy Center (review) by Susan Galbraith

To the degree that a creative artist can draw you into his world and make you follow him regardless, to merge with his very humanity, that is the measure of his worth. By this measurement, R…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:54PM
Thursday, February 2, 2017

Mariinsky Ballet’s The Little Humpbacked Horse at The Kennedy Center (review) by Susan Galbraith

Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has created a dance-theatre piece that is part ballet, modern, and Russian folk dance with plenty of comical pantomime to share the much-beloved folktale of hi…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:12AM
Thursday, January 26, 2017

American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake at The Kennedy Center (review) by Susan Galbraith

As I walked up the steps into Kennedy Center’s Opera House for the season’s opening of American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake, my heart was fluttering as if for a first love. As indeed it…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:04PM
Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Kennedy Center classical season announced: Aida will lead off Washington National Opera’s season by Susan Galbraith

Washington National Opera announced its programming for the 2017/2018 season on Monday, almost three months earlier than usual. The upcoming season is all part of Kennedy Center’s continue…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:36PM
Monday, January 16, 2017

The Dictator’s Wife at Washington National Opera (review) by Susan Galbraith

Watching an opera take its first life breath is witnessing a high-risk birth. There were some serious devotees on hand at Kennedy Center’s Family Theatre to support Washington National Ope…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:04PM
Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Someone is Going to Come from Scena: smart and compelling theatre (review) by Susan Galbraith

Monday night, Jon Fosse’s play felt like a blast of early Pinter with some hoary frost of Edward Munch thrown in for good measure.  You know: a threesome locked for eternity in jealous t…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24AM
Monday, September 26, 2016

The Marriage of Figaro from Washington National Opera (review) by Susan Galbraith

  As the dimming lights turned the deep red walls of the Kennedy Center Opera House into darkness, the spiky celestial chandeliers seemed to glow with unusual brilliance, welcoming us i…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:04AM
Thursday, September 8, 2016

Urinetown: The Musical from Constellation Theatre (review) by Susan Galbraith

It takes a lot of balls but maybe not much brain to call a musical “Urinetown,” and the joke is made several times in the show just what a terrible name it is.  But that’s the point.�…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:48AM
Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Jason Loewith and Ryan Rilette team up to direct Angels in America by Susan Galbraith

Twenty-five years ago at the small Eureka Theatre in downtown San Francisco, Tony Kushner pushed forth the first iteration of a play that would become what many feel is not only a great Amer…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:39PM
Friday, August 19, 2016

The Tempest, STC’s free for all (review) by Susan Galbraith

For the past 25 years, Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has memorably gifted our community by remounting one of its recent favorite productions in free performances.  These used to be per…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:13PM

Opera in Washington – The 2016-2017 Season by Susan Galbraith

– Notes from the talk delivered by Susan Galbraith at The Smithsonian on August 16th – On a good day in the Greater Washington area there are more than 15 opera companies of vari…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:13PM
Wednesday, August 3, 2016

The Crucible at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

In 1692, Tituba and a gaggle of Puritan girls frolicked by night in the woods outside Salem and allegedly conjured up the devil, an event that embroiled the witnesses and a whole township in…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:28AM
Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Sweeney Todd at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

 Is it true, as Stephen Sondheim insists, that mostly audience expectations dictate whether a work is to be experienced as an opera or a musical?  When pushed, however, he is equally adama…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:51AM

The Thieving Magpie at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

 Well, this one’s for the birds! Full disclosure. I love a production that is steeped in fanciful storytelling.  My background as a former teacher of theatre-movement makes me a sucker f…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:20AM

La Bohème at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

In a season where we’ve been hammered by political name-calling and divisive fearmongering, the threat of climate change and global terrorism, and protests and gun violence in hometowns ac…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:15AM
Friday, July 22, 2016

Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosity from Cirque du Soleil (review) by Susan Galbraith

Under the magic of its yellow-and-blue striped tent, Cirque du Soleil has brought what may be its most rare and delightful show to date.  Kurios reminds us that little and “oldie” can b…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:55PM
Friday, July 15, 2016

22 Boom! (review) by Susan Galbraith

 22 Boom! sounded like a sure Fringe favorite. Advertising that it does 23 plays in 70 minutes, it promised something like a Fringe buffet. Light, clever, crisp entertainment, and funny, …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:00PM
Thursday, July 14, 2016

Do Not Disturb (review) by Susan Galbraith

  Do Not Disturb is big as Fringe shows go -an ambitious chamber opera in fact, with 11 singers, 5 instrumentalists, plus stage and music directors. As in his previous work, the “hor…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:14AM
Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Romanov (review) by Susan Galbraith

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know the American musical has been redefined and re-colored by the talented Lin-Manuel Miranda and the phenomenon of Hamilton. Well, Danny Bair…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:32PM
Monday, July 11, 2016

The Apocalypse of Darkness (review) by Susan Galbraith

You might think with a name like The Apocalypse of Darkness you’d be served up a screamingly funny horror flick send up, but creator/director Emanuel Wazar is deadly serious. Apocalypse i…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:16PM
Friday, July 8, 2016

Once Upon a Bedtime (review) by Susan Galbraith

If Robert Louis Stephenson’s Storybook world were cooked up together with a fairy tale opera like Cinderella and spiced with the comedic talents of Carol Burnett in Once Upon a Mattress, …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:40AM
Monday, June 27, 2016

Evita at Olney Theatre Center (review) by Susan Galbraith

 As the story goes, when composer Andrew Lloyd Webber first sent his original recording of the Evita songs to Hal Prince to get the producer involved, Prince responded, “Any musical that …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:00PM
Wednesday, June 15, 2016

A moveable Romeo and Juliet from Chesapeake Shakespeare (review) by Susan Galbraith

Shakespeare is an adventure with the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company and especially when staged as a moveable feast in the Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park. Using the ruins of a once t…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:22PM
Monday, June 6, 2016

Ada/Ava, chamber music and a coda for Spoleto Festival USA 2016 by Susan Galbraith

Sometimes the best of the “best in art” sneaks up on you. So it was with Spoleto Festival USA’s 2016 season.  Maybe this year it had to do with the fanfare around the Festival’s “…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:45AM
Friday, June 3, 2016

Spoleto’s Alyson Cambridge on playing Bess by Susan Galbraith

Soprano Alyson Cambridge, who began her career here in Washington, DC and has gone on to perform on some of the major opera stages of the world including Washington National Opera. She is …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:21PM

 Ireland 100: Alarm Will Sound’s The Hunger by Susan Galbraith

Alarm Will Sound presented a concert version of the opera The Hunger by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy at the Kennedy Center Wednesday night. It is a most curious mash of video interviews …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:21AM
Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Spoleto makes a gorgeous Porgy and Bess for Charleston (review) by Susan Galbraith

This year’s big fortieth anniversary event at Spoleto Festival USA was the long-anticipated new production of George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, as a celebration of the city that ga…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:15AM
Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Spoleto Festival USA 2016 celebrates its 40th anniversary (review) by Susan Galbraith

Last time I was here in 2013 I was swept into the flurry of opening celebrations, including the noontime grandstand with mayoral speeches and brass band and the late night garden party for s…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:08PM

The Little Match Girl (review) at Spoleto Festival USA by Susan Galbraith

Have you ever sat beside a lake at night and listened to the sounds? Or stood on an urban street corner in inky blackness or more exactly in a snowstorm where the world becomes unfamiliar in…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:18AM
Monday, May 23, 2016

The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly (review) new magic from the Emerald Isle by Susan Galbraith

Louis Lovett is a teller of stories. From Ireland he is and he is simply grand. I have it on good authority from two smallish people and one not so smallish I met at the Kennedy Center last …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:26AM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 11, 2024: Oh, Mary! - Lyceum Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre
TBA: Titanic
TBA: Ragtime