293 stories by "Jayne Blanchard"
Want to replicate the experience of seeing the pre-Broadway tryout of the musical version of Beetlejuice in the comfort of your home? Just pound down 19 espressos with a pound of candy chase…
The white-hot rage and caustic bitterness against de-industrialization, unemployment, minorities, and immigrants, not to mention races and religions other than white and Christian, may have …
Racy photographs stoke the mayhem and comedy of local playwright D.W. Gregory's world premiere play, Dirty Pictures, but its true catalyst lies in finding beauty in the ordinary and overlook…
Hold onto summer heat and humid emotions just a little while longer with Baltimore Center Stage's juicy production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The lies we tell ourselves so we can sleep and th…
Dancing at Lughnasa casts a spell before the actors utter a word. Irish music peppily plays as you enter the theater and drink in Yu-Hsuan Chen’s painterly set–with sinuously twi…
The last place you'd think to go for a little peace and quiet is the theater. But that's what happens in Round House Theatre's production of Bess Wohl's 2015 off-Broadway hit, Small Mouth So…
Dave is a musical for our times. A snapshot of our current political climate swathed in red, white and blue, the world premiere musical with music by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), a book by the…
Break out the Bedazzler and falsies and shimmy into your Spanx. It's high season for drag in downtown Bethesda, thanks to the fierce and funny The Legend of Georgia McBride, playwright Matth…
"Butter. Sugar. Flour." These three words are sprinkled like incantations throughout the 2016 musical Waitress, a tasty, buttermilk tart and bright woman-powered show that features Sara Bare…
"We'll wait and see." Normally, words of prudence and patience. Â In the context of Karen Hartman's intense epistolary play, The Book of Joseph, the words are a chilling death sentence. Th…
Theater is traditionally thought to be a place of communion, a meeting of like-minded souls who crave a good story. Playwright Annie Baker turns that expectation on its head, along with so m…
Many languages are bandied about in Brian Friel's Translations"Greek, Latin, Gaelic, the king's English, to name a few"creating a rich linguistic tapestry central to the play's theme of cult…
Those pigs. Can't trust them, can't ignite a revolution without them. Why can't they just be content with being what they are–bacon? Pigs, propaganda, the proletariat and politics prol…
Of all the reasons to love Baltimore, perhaps the most sumptuous are the Cone sisters"iron-willed Dr. Claribel and the softer, more social Miss Etta"and specifically, the stunning collection…
That a play set in an auto parts stamping factory is part of the Women's Voices Theater Festival is reason enough to see Skeleton Crew, Dominique Morisseau's fine, emotionally feral play tha…
Ah, the 1%. If you can't join 'em, berate 'em. That's the thought behind Theresa Rebeck's cynical, screwball-funny, comedic bed-hopping The Way of the World, a fresh adaptation of William Co…
The giddy sense of discovery takes hold of you during Lauren Gunderson's plays about unsung women throughout history. This fall's theater highlight was certainly Avant Bard's luminous produc…
Amid a year of callousness, a message of kindness is joyfully delivered in Toby's Dinner Theatre's production of Miracle on 34th Street: The Musical, touchingly directed by Shawn Kettering. …
Before he was Shakespeare with a capital "S," he was just plain Will (Nicholas Carriere), an ordinary guy"a fledgling playwright, somewhat disheveled, a bit of a skirt-chaser, and frantic fo…
What wonderful serendipity in Baltimore this October. On one side of Fayette Street, the Hippodrome Theatre recently hosted the musical The Color Purple with heroine Miss Celie realizing …
Emilie is like a perfectly icy glass of champagne laced with bitters. Avant Bard's scintillating production of Lauren Gunderson's play about Enlightenment-era scientific genius and mistress …
You think you're in for a reenactment of a historical night of American theater, but then The Cradle Will Rock gets rolling and before long you're plunged into a musical production from Iron…
When the expressive Erin Granfield sings about Iowa, drawing out each letter and syllable, you learn everything you need to know about her character's quiet restlessness and pent-up longing.…
What keeps our butts in the pews? Is it faith, fellowship, fear of hellfire, or infatuation with the charismatic preacher up at the pulpit? Lucas Hnath's play The Christians feistily examine…
David Henry Hwang's Tony-winning play, M. Butterfly, was an electrifying treatise on gender and East-West tensions and tragic preconceptions when it premiered in 1988 with John Lithgow and B…
