293 stories by "Jayne Blanchard"
Watching Rep Stage's luminous production of The Heidi Chronicles as a spinster of a certain age, you don't know whether to belt out "Mirror, Mirror" from Stephen Sondheim's mus…
Happiness is tucked away in an office park in Columbia, MD. Amid the chiropractors, computer businesses, dance schools and Asian delis is the Red Branch Theatre Company, currently the home o…
Who says theater is not educational? Why, just this past weekend I learned that "bootycandy" is a euphemism for the penis. Vocabulary expanded, thanks to playwright Robert O'Hara and Iron Cr…
The big question in Jazz is"where's the music? This world premiere adaptation by Nambi E. Kelley of Toni Morrison's 1992 book isn't meant to be a song-and-dance show, but still it lacks the …
Nevertheless, she persisted. Persisted, pushed back depression and doubt and the burden of care to accept her legacy of genius. The "she" in this case is not Senator Elizabeth Warren but Cat…
An enterprising Everyman Theatre board member calculated there are 152 laughs in Noises Off. Â Surely, he jests. There is easily three times that number in Everyman's gonzo production unde…
We're lucky to be living where we do. Opportunities abound to see exciting new work, shows in development and emerging major talent. All three fortunes converge in Rep Stage's stirring, sequ…
No longer do we need to shudder to think what Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire and Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf would be like as mothers. The Tennessee Williams and…
An indelible memory from a Michael John LaChiusa musical used to be the sight of Vincent Van Gogh (Jason Danieley) sitting in his bathtub and singing the score for The Highest Yellow in a 20…
After more than a year-long renovation, Baltimore Center Stage unveils its new modern look"spacious, welcoming, sleek and inspirational"with an equally visually captivating and enchanting pr…
The devil need not be a red-skinned gent with a forked tail. He could be Jake Abadjian (Robbie Gay), a gorgeous and charismatic Hollywood star of the blockbuster Dawnwalker movies, playing a…
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is known for her outlandish imagination, creative use of language and boldly askew look at America's past and history. Her mythic riff on Nathaniel Hawthorne's Th…
The opening scene of The Hard Problem, Tom Stoppard's latest play since 2006's Rock and Roll, reminds you of the opening scene from Stephen Sondheim's musical Passion. Two half-naked beautif…
It is September 2016 and like many Americans who slogged through an endless, brutal summer of presidential campaigning, the Gabriel family seems frayed around the edges. Uncertainty, unease …
Here we are again on Election Day 2016, a day many Americans would be loath to relive, except for the obvious. If you are to be born ceaselessly into the past, you couldn't find better balla…
Right now, "the room where it happens" happens to be the Kennedy Center Theater Lab, where Richard Nelson's achingly prescient and intimate trilogy of plays The Gabriels pays a different sor…
A holiday comedy about a family matriarch's failing brain"what could be merrier? In truth, Coleman Domingo's Dot is an absolute delight no matter what time of year. Funny, pungent and fierce…
Now that we're mired in Trump America, there's unexpected profundity to the pop confection Hairspray Live!, the live TV version of the 2002 musical that aired Wednesday night on NBC. If T…
Is there a roof left in Anacostia? Doubtful, now that Black Nativity is back in the community for a third time. A joyful noise is made"and then some"in Theater Alliance's soulful, soul-st…
When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high./ And don't be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm, there’s a golden sky. And the sweet, silver song of a lark. Walk on th…
Fast food, even with artisan bread, is a dead-end job for most people. Low hourly pay, part-time hours to exempt the "sandwich artists" from getting any benefits and brutal expectations"ever…
Enter your 50s and you become invisible. People look right through 50-something women as if you are not there; waiters ignore you and bartenders don't flirt with you; store personnel stare r…
Let's do the Time Warp again! Then again, let's not. The much an-ti-cip-at-ed reboot of the 1975 cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, despite its abundant glitz and glitter, is rather…
“Queenie was a blonde and her age stood still,/And she danced twice a day in vaudeville.” With those hardboiled, magical words, Joseph Moncure March's 1928 Jazz Age poem "The Wil…
Are you an Elinor or a Marianne? We'd probably prefer to think of ourselves as Elinor (Maggie McDowell), gracious, restrained and noble in her suffering. But let's face it, we probably more …
