All stories by Roger Catlin on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Commentary: A High Speed Helen Hayes Awards Show by Roger Catlin

To counterbalance the echoey chaos of last year, with the Helen Hayes Awards seemed to have been swallowed up by the party it was having at the National Building Museum, the 31st annual even…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 10:57AM
Sunday, March 29, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘After the Revolution’ at Center Stage by Roger Catlin

With a handful of plays and still in her mid-30s, Amy Herzog may be a slightly premature candidate for a festival of her work. But Baltimore’s Center Stage has forged ahead nonetheless, pr…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 10:44AM
Friday, March 27, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘G-d’s Honest Truth’ at Theater J by Roger Catlin

The cheery cast of the world premiere G-d’s Honest Truth promises, early on, a story that’s “Jewish but not too Jewy.” Theatre J at the DC Jewish Community Theatre would be the place…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 10:44AM
Thursday, March 26, 2015

CT's Becki Newton Playing One Of Four 'Weird Loners' On Fox by Roger Catlin

Those who know Guilford's Becki Newton from her glamorous roles on "Ugly Betty" or "How I Met Your Mother" would not immediately associate the blonde actress with either the word "weird" or …

SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:00AM
Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘Laugh’ at Studio Theatre by Roger Catlin

The title of Beth Henley’s new play sounds like an order; at least a nudge. Laugh is her effort to move away from her more serious works from the stage that have included the Pulitzer Priz…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 03:00PM
Saturday, March 14, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘Doctor Caligari’ at Pointless Theatre by Roger Catlin

There could hardly be a more reverent salute to a great, twisted film than The Pointless Theater’s well-wrought Doctor Caligari, which brings the influential German expressionist film to …

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 04:50PM
Thursday, February 26, 2015

Opera Review: ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ at the Kennedy Center by Roger Catlin

The climactic horror at the end of the Washington National Opera’s production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites has an added jolt — it echoes too closely the beheadings of near…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 12:56PM
Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘Back to Methuselah, Part Two’ at Washington Stage Guild by Roger Catlin

Much respect is due the Washington Stage Guild, which has been systematically producing the plays of George Bernard Shaw for more than 25 years. In that time and in five different locations,…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 06:38PM
Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘Frozen’ at Anacostia Playhouse by Roger Catlin

One of the larger mistakes you could make at the theater is to take a youngster to this Frozen at the Anacostia Playhouse. The grim Bryony Lavery play is not only emphatically not the popul…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 11:12AM
Tuesday, February 17, 2015

New Haven Native Stars In Amazon's Detective Series 'Bosch' by Roger Catlin

For the readers of the 19 novels in Michael Connelly's best-selling detective series, Harry Bosch will not be a new name.

SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:08AM
Sunday, February 15, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘King Hedley II’ at Arena Stage by Roger Catlin

“Black lives matter.” That’s the succinct message that’s arisen from protests of the past several months. It’s a rallying cry, too, from August Wilson’s powerful King Hedley …

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 11:29AM
Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘Last of the Whyos’ at Spooky Action by Roger Catlin

Back in the 1980s, playwright Barbara Wiechmann used to marvel at the bombed out surroundings of New York’s Coney Island. Caught between the ruins of the past and promise of future redevel…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 01:00PM
Saturday, January 31, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘The Widow Lincoln’ at Ford’s Theatre by Roger Catlin

Humans have a regrettable instinct oftentimes to avoid a recent widow – what can one say to the grieving? How to act? This apparently worked against both Mary Todd Lincoln nearly 150 years…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 01:11PM
Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Fairfield Native Stars In truTV's New Series 'Breaking Greenville' by Roger Catlin

When Lucy Biggers of Fairfield graduated from Tulane University two years ago, she looked for the kind of job that would give her a lot of experience.

SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:04PM
Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Theater Review: ‘Bessie’s Blues’ at MetroStage by Roger Catlin

Bessie Smith is having something of a moment in 2015, 121 years after her birth. The celebrated “Empress of the Blues” is not only the subject of a big HBO bio film this year starring Qu…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 07:30PM
Friday, January 9, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Warner Theatre by Roger Catlin

The renaissance of timeless animated Disney musicals occurred during the time of “Beauty and the Beast” more than 20 years ago. There followed the golden age of Disney stage musicals bas…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 01:33PM
Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Theatre Review: ‘The T Party’ at Forum Theatre by Roger Catlin

Natsu Onoda Power’s The T Party had its start as a workshop in the summer of 2013. As such, you’d expect the return of the work “celebrating gender transformation” at the Forum Theat…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 11:43AM
Saturday, December 20, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ at the Kennedy Center by Roger Catlin

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is the musical Bible story Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber put together before they did Jesus Christ Superstar (and Evita and all the theater-…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 12:37PM
Friday, December 12, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Famous Puppet Death Scenes’ at Woolly Mammoth by Roger Catlin

“Please endeavor to care as much as possible,” the program for the Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s Famous Puppet Death Scenes at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre implores. And so we shall. The q…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 12:13PM
Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘The Nutcracker’ at Round House by Roger Catlin

It’s the music and the dancing of The Nutcracker that have made it an annual tradition in cities across America for half a century. The new production of The Nutcracker at the Round House…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 08:48PM
Friday, November 28, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ by Brave Spirits Theatre at Anacostia Arts Center by Roger Catlin

Anybody can put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and many theater companies do, year in and year out. But hardly any pairs the Shakespearean romp with his lesser known The Two Noble Kinsman, …

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 03:29PM
Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘The Gift of Nothing’ at Kennedy Center by Roger Catlin

One of the best thing I did at my last newspaper was convincing them to run “Mutts,” the splendid comic strip by Patrick McDonnell. A simple strip about dogs and cats and the people who …

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 08:42PM
Sunday, November 23, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Five Guys Named Moe’ at Arena Stage by Roger Catlin

What could be better than an evening of the music of Louis Jourdan and his influential jumping jive that paved the road through jump blues to hard R&B and rock ’n’ roll? That’s wha…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 11:10AM
Thursday, November 20, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures’ at Theater J by Roger Catlin

When the Theater J production of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures still hadn’t begun a little after its poste…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 10:03PM
Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Pen’ at Washington Stage Guild by Roger Catlin

Families can be some crazy places. Within these primal institutions, where psychological blocks are built and broken down, everyday nagging and picking can build into some life-imploding pre…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 04:52PM
Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Danny Boy’ at Unexpected Stage Company by Roger Catlin

You’ll be rooting for the central character of Marc Goldsmith’s Danny Boy in the Unexpected Stage Company production at the Randolph Road Theatre in Silver Spring. Not because he’s a l…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 12:53PM
Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Fetch Clay, Make Man’ at Round House Theatre by Roger Catlin

The unusual alliance, in 1965, of boxer Muhammad Ali with Stepin Fetchit, the Depression-era comedian and stereotype, seemed so odd that it certainly deserves an imagined play chronicling th…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 11:47PM

Theatre Review: ‘ABSOLUTELY {perhaps}’ at Constellation Theatre by Roger Catlin

A nearly 100-year old play by Luigi Pirandello would seem to be a dusty old thing to attempt to stage. But dress it up in kicky 60s clothes on a nifty modernist set with vintage Italian pop …

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 01:11AM
Thursday, October 2, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ at Ford’s Theatre by Roger Catlin

There are some plays that are perfectly suited for Washington’s historic Ford’s Theatre and Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy” is one of them. One imagines the spirit of Abraham Li…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 06:15PM
Sunday, September 14, 2014

Opera Review: ‘Fatal Song: The Great Opera Murders’ at The In Series by Roger Catlin

Assembling a nice night of operatic arias for a cabaret production, Kathleen Cahill was struck by a commonality among the women in classic productions: They pretty much all ended up dead in …

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 11:03AM
Friday, September 12, 2014

Theatre Review: ‘Fool for Love’ at Round House Theatre by Roger Catlin

The “MOTEL” sign flickers and sputters its message before showtime, forlorn and unforgiving as the Mojave desert landscape, as it awaits the production of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love t…

SOURCE: Maryland Theatre Guide at 12:02PM

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