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…
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 her…
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…
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 …
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 a Moli�…
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…
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…
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 Sondhe…
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…
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…
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 highl…
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 fully kno…
"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 pos…
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 anyone unf…
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 realized peri…
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' reimag…
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 during…
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 the Am…
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. Spinni…
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, sensational, …
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 …
Did ever a villain so enjoy his murderously evil ways as Shakespeare's Richard III? In the Shakespeare Theatre's production, Matthew Rauch's Richard teaches a master class in duplicity and m…
The title of Topher Payne's play is, of course, ironic. Set during the early 1950s "Lavender Scare," a purge of gay and lesbian Federal employees coinciding with the Red Scare of that era, t…
Outside, the Polar Vortex reigned. Inside, the jazz was hot and smoky and funny and sexy. Ain't Misbehavin', celebrating the work of Fats Waller, brought his music and the feel of his lif…
Human beings are mysterious creatures: how deeply can we know even those closest to us, or ourselves? What's the cost of knowing? In Bathsheba Doran's 2015 play, The Mystery of Love and Sex,…