All stories by Susan Galbraith on BroadwayStars

Monday, January 27, 2020

Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns at Arena Stage, a harrowing Afghan drama by Susan Galbraith

Carey Perloff’s opening scene of the staged adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s shattering novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, moves with breathtaking beauty. Two women in one direction and a m…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:03PM
Tuesday, January 21, 2020

2020 trends in Opera: DC area opera companies are confronting race, sex and gender discrimination by Susan Galbraith

It was a rare pleasure to share the stage at the Smithsonian Institution’s S. Dillon Ripley Center less than a week ago with colleagues who are also in the business of reviewing the perfor…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:48PM
Friday, January 17, 2020

Opera review: Glory Denied, a heartbreaking story of the Vietnam War and its aftermath by Susan Galbraith

For many of us in the audience of UrbanArias’ new production, Glory Denied, the Vietnam War is not distant history.  Like the characters in this opera by Tom Cipullo, we carry that war in…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:42PM
Monday, January 13, 2020

Review: Three new operas showcased in WNO’s AOI Festival 2020. Is the development process working? by Susan Galbraith

2020 marks the 8th year of Washington National Opera’s showcase of new compositional teams working in the most specialized art form of opera in a rollout of three twenty-minute operas. It�…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PM
Monday, January 6, 2020

Review: Le Cabaret de Carmen. In Series kick-starts the new decade with an LGBTQ Carmen by Susan Galbraith

In 1981, the once enfant terrible of stage and screen, Peter Brook, then seasoned into arguably the most formidable theatre director in the world, took the opera world by storm with his radi…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:36PM
Friday, December 20, 2019

Review: Bartlett Sher’s My Fair Lady, a fresh, loverly production with a curiously unsatisfying end by Susan Galbraith

Everyone has a special memory of their first musical. Mine was My Fair Lady. It had opened in London in 1958 on Drury Lane after taking Broadway by storm, and, as a young child living there,…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:03PM
Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Review: I Take Your Hand in Mine. Anton Chekhov in love by Susan Galbraith

I Take Your hand in Mine is based on the intimate letters written between Anton Chekhov at the end of his life and his wife Olga Knipper. It  has come to the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in t…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:12PM
Monday, December 9, 2019

Review: The 2019 Christmas Revels: Celestial Fools by Susan Galbraith

When singer/musician/educator John Langstaff launched a seasonal celebration of early music in Boston back in 1971, comprised of song and general merriment that would bring community togethe…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:33AM
Monday, November 25, 2019

Review: Keep. A brilliant theatrical tour de force at Studio Theatre by Susan Galbraith

Make no mistake about it, I had this guy pegged in the first two minutes: a bumbling, bald-headed bungler trying to string together a show based on his own hoarding. Worse, an amateur!  My …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PM
Friday, November 22, 2019

Review: Venus and Adonis from Opera Lafayette by Susan Galbraith

Celebrating Opera Lafayette’s twenty-fifth season, Ryan Brown has brought a rare and truly exquisite small gem of an opera to Washington audiences. To do so, Brown has left his more famili…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:03PM

Review: HEARTSPACE the earth that is sufficient from The Welders by Susan Galbraith

How are we to recover from what divides us? How do we maintain hope in the face of catastrophe from climate crisis? Such questions are not new; in fact the clamor of them pounding for our at…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:48AM
Monday, September 30, 2019

Review: The Tempest revival from Synetic Theater “fresh and profound” by Susan Galbraith

Synetic Theater opens its season with a remount of its 2013 hit The Tempest, complete with its stunning watery world creation, amphibian-like cast, pounding AMC decibel electronic score, and…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:24PM

Review: Taffety Punk Riot Grrrls perform Othello by Susan Galbraith

How do you like your Shakespeare? Intimate. Intelligent.  Intrepid. And, I’d also add fully integrated through emotional truth and delivery of the musical richness of Shakespeare’s lang…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:24PM
Monday, September 16, 2019

Review: La Vida es Sueño / Life is a Dream at GALA Hispanic Theatre by Susan Galbraith

Never underestimate the power of a classic to communicate across time, cultures, and language in new and urgent messaging. We have Producing Artistic Director Hugo Medrano, the longest servi…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:18AM
Monday, September 9, 2019

Review: Butterfly takes wing. Timothy Nelson has rescued Puccini’s most famous opera by Susan Galbraith

Every age gets to reassess the value of a work of art relative to its present times, and not just aesthetically but politically. Never more so than today. Sometimes in our society’s self-c…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:03PM
Monday, July 29, 2019

Review: New Jeanine Tesori/Tazewell Thompson opera Blue at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

The Glimmerglass Festival offers a unique opportunity to singers and audiences alike to be around living composers. The “live relationship” creates a work that breathes and where new dis…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:06PM
Friday, July 26, 2019

Review: The Ghosts of Versailles at Glimmerglass Festival 2019 by Susan Galbraith

Glimmerglass Festival has made a bold choice in re-mounting The Ghosts of Versailles, a complicated, multi-layered late 20th-century opera, as part of its 2019 season. Contemporary opera ten…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:42PM
Sunday, July 14, 2019

Review: Elvis Costello’s opera, The Juliet Letters by Susan Galbraith

UrbanArias’ Artistic Director Robert Wood continues to push the envelope of what makes for contemporary opera. In Elvis Costello, the famous Brit pop singer/song writer, he has found a com…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:24PM
Friday, July 12, 2019

Review: The Band’s Visit at The Kennedy Center by Susan Galbraith

The Band’s Visit shows why it’s a multiple Tony Award winner in its stop at The Kennedy Center. It’s a musical that grabs your heart with the most unlikely thing in the world of showbi…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:54PM
Thursday, July 11, 2019

Capital Fringe review: Love in the Time of Climate Change by Susan Galbraith

Rozina Kanchwala nails it: we in the U.S. live in a world of too many choices, where a girl can just ask Google to serve up a song instantly to match her mood. It’s a time when everyone is…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:24AM
Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Review: La traviata at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

A “new” production of La traviata shared the buzz opening weekend at Glimmerglass Festival. Nonetheless, as a co-production with Washington National Opera (and a handful of other opera c…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:42AM

Review: Show Boat at Glimmerglass Festival by Susan Galbraith

Glimmerglass Festival opened its 45th season with a sensational Show Boat. The musical, based on Edna Ferber’s novel about a floating theater on the Mississippi, could have been delivered …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:42AM
Monday, June 3, 2019

Review: The Tale of Serse. Handel’s rarely seen opera gets a stunning production from In Series by Susan Galbraith

Timothy Nelson has ended his first season as Artistic Director of In Series with a stunning and musically gorgeous production of The Tale of Serse. Like George Frideric Handel, the composer …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:03PM
Thursday, May 30, 2019

Spoleto Festival USA 2019: Path of Miracles by The Westminster Choir by Susan Galbraith

There are rare but important artistic experiences that serve as spiritual pilgrimages. This year, in a kind of riches of Grace, we have shared in two at Spoleto Festival. Compagnie Hervé Ko…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:06PM

Spoleto Festival 2019: Inspiring opening ceremony followed by a shocking Salomé by Susan Galbraith

A sun-drenched morning greeted townsfolk and cultural tourists alike for the 43rd no-weather-spoiler day at this year’s Spoleto Festival Opening. People gathered in the street outside City…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:03PM

Spoleto Festival 2019: Globe Theatre’s Comedy of Errors and Pericles by Susan Galbraith

While Spoleto Festival is perhaps best known for its cutting-edge premieres of opera, dance, and theater, it grants special dispensation periodically to productions by English language’s f…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:03PM

Spoleto Festival 2019: Chamber Music and Compagnie Hervé Koubi, dance by Susan Galbraith

How often we, in our silos, get stuck in our own work and schedules. Even more, artists miss opportunities to be fed and inspired by the interplay of other arts forms. If released, dancers s…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:03PM
Thursday, May 23, 2019

Washington National Opera’s glittery Gala 2019. Opera stars share stage with WNO patron John Pohanka by Susan Galbraith

What makes someone a devoted opera fan? Is it the “gilterati?”  If so, there was much in abundance Saturday night when the Washington National Opera hosted its Gala in the Opera House. …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:06AM
Friday, May 17, 2019

The Gathering: Reflections on the disruptive and profoundly moving CrossCurrents experience by Susan Galbraith

There’s exceptional and important theater in Washington that too often gets overlooked. It doesn’t come nicely packaged in season subscriptions or heralding stars from that other theater…

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:42PM
Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Review: Spunk, Zora Neale Hurston’s stories at Signature Theatre by Susan Galbraith

There’s something wonderful when two paintings by different creators “hang” side by side and seemingly begin a conversation. It feels that something rich and more than serendipity has …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:36PM
Monday, May 13, 2019

Review: Tosca. Washington National Opera’s rallying cry “In love or war, what do you stand for?” by Susan Galbraith

Never doubt the sheer power or the relevancy of a great work of opera. All you need for the first are extraordinary musicianship by a conductor, superb singers, and a stage director who can …

SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:24PM

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