By: Tim Treanor

The Heiress, Olney Theater Center

Reviewing a show like Olney Theater’s The Heiress presents almost insurmountable difficulties. The purpose of a review is to describe a play’s successes and failures, evaluate them against each other, and come to a reasoned conclusion about the worth of the enterprise. For The Heiress, there are no failures. There are no flaws. It is one dazzling success after another. Director Join Going has scored an amazing accomplishment. Imagine that you’ve somehow stolen into Dr. Austin Sloper’s home, and hidden yourself in a way which permitted you to spy on their intimate lives. As you watch the family confront the crisis which will ultimately cause them to disintegrate, their secret hearts, opaque from each other, are transparent to you. That’s good theater. That’s The Heiress, as performed by Olney.

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By: Ronnie Ruff      Death and The King’s Horseman       WSC 

Death and The Kings Horseman written by Wole Soyinka is thought by many to be his greatest work but it is rarely produced in the United States. The play is an aggressive venture for WSC but they historically have made it a point to choose plays that challenge and stretch their horizons. Death and The King’s Horseman is a story of cultures and how most of the time we can learn something from the seemingly more primitive one. [Read more...]

By: Tim Treanor

The Dybbuk       TheaterJ – Synetic Theater

So: what did you think a collaboration between Theater J and Synetic Theater would be like? After all, the coolly cerebral Theater J has staged productions about the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (Hannah and Martin) and about religious debates against the backdrop of the Inquisition (The Disputation). On the other hand, the wildly kinetic Synetic is committed to providing narrative through the movement of its actors. Synetic has been audacious enough to stage Hamlet without words (Hamlet…the Rest is Silence), for which it won the Helen Hayes Award for best Resident Play in 2003. The surprising answer is that The Dybbuk, in its most fundamental sense, appears to be a musical. Granted, there is not much singing. But, like a well-crafted musical, The Dybbuk tells the story of its characters’ outer lives through dialogue, and shows their inner lives through music and dance. [Read more...]

By: Ronnie Ruff

Midwives  Round House

Sometimes during a life threatening illness people feel the need to unburden their conscience of past mistakes and transgressions. Enter Midwives, the latest production from Bethesda’s Round House Theatre. The play is adapted from the Oprah Book Club selection, written by Chris Bohjalian and adapted for the stage by Dana Yeaton. Bohjalian has created a powerful look at how, stricken with cancer and fighting for life, a New England midwife contemplates her own mortality while confronting ghosts that haunt her every waking day. On a stormy New England night during a troublesome delivery a young woman dies while giving birth with the assistance of a midwife… or does she? Asking for the sharpest knife in the house, Sibyl Danforth (Alma Cuervo) the midwife, proceeds to do an emergency cesarean delivery that she is not licensed or trained to do.

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Velvet Sky
Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson

Who hasn’t had an occasional bout of insomnia, hint of paranoia, or fear of things that go bump in the night? Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Velvet Sky explores all of these psychological elements in the context of an American family with serious and strange issues. From the first magical moments of a graceful, flying pterodactyl that pulls away the opening curtain, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. The masterful set, lights and sound designs all work wonders, ushering us into the mind and world of a woman who hasn’t slept in 13 years. Bethany’s position in the opening scene sets the wary and jittery tone of the entire 90-minute piece before a word is spoken. She sits nervously with hallowed eyes and enters into a dialog with her teenage son Andrew about life’s dangers. Sure, the premise sounds typical enough, but the pristine white set is itself a menacing character with its low ceiling, inward sloping walls and black jagged schism down the middle. No, this isn’t your typical front room or mother-son chat. Dad’s entrance and subsequent bantering with his wife about her health and well-being, again, look typical on the surface but the subsequent events lead us on a psychological chase for safety and sanity.

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By: Ronnie Ruff

Driving Miss Daisy       

NobleHeart Repertory Company

One of the wisest things a small theatre company can do and one of the hardest lessons to learn is not to over reach. It is far too easy to forget the limitations that come with a modest budget and smaller stage. Failure to heed this oft forgotten concept many times leads to the miscalculations and pitfalls that can sink an otherwise fine production.

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