The Light in the Piazza

Produced by The Kennedy Center
Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

            You either love the mother. Or you hate her. But by the end of The Light in the Piazza, you love the mother because she’s transformed into something warmly human. This simple love story is a deep psychological journey about the seasons of love. The characters are [...]

Noises Off

Noises Off
by Michael Frayn 
Produced by Arena StageReviewed by Tim Treanor About twenty-five years ago the relentlessly serious English playwright Michael Frayn (Democracy, Copenhagen) wrote Noises Off, a farce about, well, a farce.  It is a little like discovering that Aristotle also wrote limericks.  (“There once was a philosopher named Plato/Whose cosmology was expressed in the Phaedo/When [...]

Faith Healer

Faith Healer   
By Brian Friel                                                                        
Produced by Keegan Theatre
Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson
 
Irish storytelling is renowned for setting a mood and exploring life’s quirks, aches and heartbreak.  Only a daringly bold company could attempt to capture the plucky pathos of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer because of the demanding skill needed to pull it off.  [...]

The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate ….

The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s production of A Christmas Carol Produced by Starkit Productions By guest reviewer Gary McMillanStarkit Productions remounts the show they produced in Baltimore ten years ago as a British Panto-style production with cross-gender casting. Does the triumphant arrival of the Farndale Avenue’s leading ladies, Thelma Greenwood and Phoebe Reece, [...]

King of Cool

King of Cool - The Life and Music of Nat King Cole
Produced by MetroStage
Reviewed by Debbie Minter JacksonJimi Ray Malary’s return to MetroStage in Alexandria, in King of Cool:  The Life and Music of Nat King Cole is a silky smooth treat.  Having caught his rendition of “Duke” Ellington earlier this year, I was prepared [...]

A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun     
Produced by African Continuum Theatre
Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson
Walter Lee and Ruth Younger go back even farther than Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee. What is it about Raisin in the Sun that keeps its strong, sure-fire appeal for almost 50 years?  And why see this rendition by the African Continuum [...]

The Christmas Foundling

The Christmas Foundling
by Norman Allen (inspired by the stories of Bret Harte)
Produced by Journeymen Theater
Reviewed by Tim Treanor
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,” Robert Frost said famously, in The Death of the Hired Hand, “they have to take you in.”
The very young Tom (Sean McCoy) has to go [...]

The Long Christmas Ride Home

The Long Christmas Ride Home
by Paula Vogel
Produced by Studio Theatre
Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson

Paula Vogel’s Long Christmas Ride Home offers an intriguing glimpse at the fundamental blocks of family relationships.  Master storyteller Vogel uses a disarmingly simple device of a long snowy ride to Grandma’s house for Christmas, youngsters jostling for attention in the back [...]

From Budapest With Love

She Loves Me
Produced by Arena Stage
Reviewed by Ronnie Ruff
Interviews by Joel Markowitz

Revivals of Broadway musicals are huge nowadays and there is little doubt that to be successful, everything needs to click: a good book, a strong score, characters we can care for and good performances.  She Loves Me, the Christmas card sent to us this [...]

She Loves Me

She Loves Me
Produced by Arena Stage
Reviewed by Ronnie Ruff
Revivals of Broadway musicals are huge nowadays and there is little doubt that to be successful, everything needs to click: a good book, a strong score, characters we can care for and good performances. She Loves Me, the Christmas card sent to us this year from [...]