268 stories by "Mary Ann Johnson"
“Madeline’s Christmas” is a delightfully gentle musical exploring the magic of Christmas. The staging is innovative, it has puppets, really good voices, beautiful use of li…
Clocking in at just an hour, “My Father’s Dragon” is another family friendly show that will not tax kids' abilities to sit in a seat and watch a live show. In fact, this sh…
This past weekend, the Chesapeake Choral Arts Society presented a beautiful program of seasonal music at Peace Lutheran Church in Waldorf, MD. The icing on this solemn and joyous program was…
‘She The People’ at Woolly Mammoth will make you stand up and roar for women’s rights and experiences. Playing through January 6, 2019, this is a tour-de-force production d…
'Christmas at the Old Bull & Bush' may be a chestnut, but it's a lovely interlude in a season that doesn't seem all that joyous to many; set on the eve of WWI, it reminds us that even in…
Cozy is a word that comes to mind when watching this world premiere by Greg Jones Ellis. While the play does attempt to tackle some big subjects — homophobia, sexism, ageism, religious…
A gong against a brass bowl introduces the acts. Ancient place names that resonate in the bones surround us. We enter a circle and sit almost adrift. For ‘In This Hope: A Pericles Proj…
Lighthearted and fun"that would describe the Damascus Theatre Company’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.” As probably everyone knows, the story concerns Belle who is im…
Is it wrong to be so enamored of a play called blight? Written by John Bavoso, it is a show that has solid writing, some really funny lines, and an assortment of characters that ring true"th…
This Illyria, an adaptation of Shakespeare's “Twelfth Night” by Jonelle Walker and Mitchell Hebert, is not set on the isle, but in a basement nightclub in the 1980s. Befitting th…
Even goddesses get the blues and evidently can fall further"into deep depression. Only when a goddess, or a god, becomes enveloped by the black fog of sorrow, grief and despair, the ramifica…
Can the stories we tell change our lines? Can we really be honest in stories? If we're honest in our stories, can we handle the fall-out? Can we, should we use our stories to try to seduce s…
This is a likable show, with likable leads, and a likable score. It has that cute girl-meets-boy, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-back-girl vibe, all told in a brisk 90 minutes. This is a de…
The first thing that strikes one when entering the theatre proper is how perfect the staging is for Spooky Action Theater’s “New Guidelines for Peaceful Times.” With only a…
When picturing Ichabod Crane, I always pictured a lean, rangy, superstitious schoolteacher. That is not the Ichabod Crane of Synetic Theater's muscular, voluptuous and engrossing retelling o…
“Labour of Love” now playing on Olney's Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab stage is an homage to the battle of the sexes that Hepburn and Tracey made so memorable, with a hearty dose of…
“Nevermore” is a hauntingly beautiful work that posits that without the shipwreck (both a physical and emotional metaphor in this production) of his life, Edgar Allan Poe's work …
“Let the Right One In” is an interesting adaptation of the 2004 novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. It has moments of genuine sadness and a slow-building tension that …
It may be a fictional world, but I want to go live in the town that has Truvy's hair salon, at least for a little while. It may be an idealized world of small-town camaraderie and women's fr…
How thin is the membrane between death and life? Are there times when perhaps the dead can cross over and stand beside us, just for a moment, so that we can sense them, if not see or hear th…
“Heisenberg,” the play written by Simon Stephens, might be named for German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle, but there is one certainty in the show runn…
“How to Win a Race War,” presented by The Klunch, starts off with a noble goal"to take white supremacist writings and fan fiction and to make a joke out of it, thereby robbing th…
“Pramkicker,” now being produced by the Taffety Punk Theatre Company, is a scintillating kick of a story about love, the life choices society so graciously tries to truss wome…
This show couldn't be more timely; surely an act of providence. And as I have come to see as a hallmark of Dominion Stage's moxie, it is fearless in tackling head-on a subject in today's hea…
This past Sunday, Vocal Arts DC presented the final concert of its 2017-18 season, a beautifully executed two-part concert of two song cycles. The first was the world premiere of 'Walden;' t…
