178 stories by "Bob Ashby"
"All you have to do is move your little finger, move your little finger, and you can change the world." That line from Stephen Sondheim's Assassins could well serve as an epigraph for Mike D…
Once upon a time, Gilbert and Sullivan staging was " there is no other word for it " stodgy. The D'Oyly Carte opera company dominated G&S performance from the late 19th century until its…
In The Lives Left Behind, the Silver Finch Arts Collective presents four short, one-act, chamber operas, each by a different composer and librettist. The instrumental music for all four piec…
Monica Dionysiou gives audiences a bravura hour of solo storytelling in her Aphrodite's Refugees, which is based on the experiences of her family during the warfare that consumed Cyprus in t…
What becomes of the children of famous (or notorious) people later in their lives is fertile ground for fiction as well as documentary storytellers. One of the best of the genre is E.L. Doct…
Sunday morning, before I drove from my home in Western Maryland to see Convergence Theatre's production of A New Nation, I noted the following in a letter to the editor of my local newspaper…
A main point of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow is that the oppression of people of color in the U.S. cannot be explained as a matter of mean-spirited bigots lashing out at African-Ame…
Andromeda Breaks, written by Stephen Spotswood and directed by Nick Martin, takes the initial form of a police interrogation. At the outset, Andromeda (Billie Krishawn) sits handcuffed to a …
Secrets of the Universe (And Other Songs), a new play by Marc Acito having its world premiere at the Hub Theatre in Fairfax, explores the friendship between two 20th century greats in very d…
D.C."area audiences are notorious for their too-free-and-easy awarding of standing ovations. But last night's prolonged, enthusiastic, standing, whooping, hollering, response to Olney Theatr…
The Kennedy Center advertises its Broadway Center Stage series as presenting shows in a "semi-staged concert format." For Frank Loesser's 1961 satire of mid-20th century New York corporate l…
What must their mothers have been like? Certainly, cousins Daphna and Liam (Sophie Schulman and Noah Schaefer), the antagonists in Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews, now playing at Herndon's NextStop…
The 1950s Brooklyn waterfront setting of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge has long since disappeared. The container revolution, beginning in the 1970s, ended forever the traditional lo…
World's Fairs " those gaudy showcases of civic and national pride, corporate promotion, new technology, consumerism, over-the-top temporary architecture, sideshow entertainment, and an occas…
The original full title of the show now playing at the Cumberland Theatre was Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Emphasize that final word. Gypsy Rose Lee was none too particular about the facts of …
Fanaticism grows in a society fractured along fault lines of political and religious authority, property, status, gender, generational change, and belief, creating a fertile climate for pers…
Recipe for a vexing evening of musical theater: combine cuteness, sweetness, quirkiness, clever and funny dialogue, and a sprinkling of amusing and melodic songs. Add a heavy dose of sentime…
Stephen Sondheim himself felt some uncertainty in categorizing Sweeney Todd, the 1979 show that many regard as the masterpiece of his long and spectacular career. In his annotated book of ly…
There are few perfect things in life, let alone in theater. But Providence Players' The Front Page comes darn close. Every aspect of the production is first-rate. The newspaper world created…
Fierce. No word short of that can fairly describe the characters' commitment to their consuming passions, and the actors' commitment to their roles, in Theater J's harrowing production of Ka…
There are potholes in the road not taken. So discover many of the characters in Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn, now being presented by the Maryland Ensemble Theater (MET) in Freder…
"There is nothing whatever beneath my exterior." So proclaims a character in Death by Design, now playing at the Aldersgate Church Community Theater (ACCT) in Alexandria. How right he is, no…
Frederick's Other Voices Theatre puts a very large cast and a complex technical scheme to excellent use in its production of the 1971 Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock operetta Jesus Christ …
The theme of a man and a woman who can't live without each other and can't live with each other is as old as theater. Often enough it has been played for comedy, as in the couples in Noel Co…
The audience for Workhouse Theater's production of Avenue Q (music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Mark, book by Jeff Whitty), loved every minute. And what's not to love? The 2003 Tony A…
