Winter Musical Scene Stealing Moments

Jesse Palmer & Mark Chandler .  Joanne Schmoll & Desire DuBose . Roz White . Sandy Bainum & Rowyn Peel. David James . Felicia Curry . Amy Conley, Harv Lester, Katie McManus & Sam Nystrom . Lily Goldberg . Josh Kaufmann & Devin Wrigley .  Zachary Conneen .  Alice Ripley
with comments from director Michael [...]

Edward Albee Interview

At a little before 2 pm on February 24th, I called the phone number which Arena Stage had provided. A thin, cultured, cheery voice said, “Hello?” I explained who I was and asked to speak with Edward Albee. “This is he,” the voice said, and just like that I was on the phone – with [...]

Spooky Action Announces Its New Space

This October, look for Spooky Action Theater in its new 125 seat black box, one of two theatres

in Montgomery College’s  Cultural Arts Center in downtown Silver Spring, MD.  “It’s  going to be state of the art.” Artistic Director Richard Henrich told us. “An acoustically tuned space that will really surprise people.” Although Henrich breaks out [...]

A Bronx Tale

It is easy to praise Chazz Palminteri’s acting ability in bringing nearly a score of colorful characters to life in his one-man show A Bronx Tale.  Equally impressive is his ability to craft such a rich and poignant semi-autobiographical memoir.
Palminteri paints an affectionate portrait of his childhood Bronx, a place where kids grew up on [...]

Kathleen Chalfant Interview

Actress Kathleen Chalfant, perhaps best known for her role as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s Wit (winning her numerous awards including an OBIE), began her career in New York in 1972. She has  played an astonishing range of roles written by playwrights such as Jules Feiffer, Christopher Durang, Eve Ensler, Samuel Beckett, Alan Bennett and [...]

The Music Man

I have always regarded the 1958 decision to award the Best Musical Tony® to The Music Man over West Side Story to be one of the greatest “what were they thinking” moments in theatre history.  Yet after seeing the utterly charming Washington Savoyards’ production of The Music Man,  I get it.

Krapp’s Last Tape

An old man with a corona of gray hair, (Brian Hemmingsen) sits like a sphinx, staring straight out in silence, palms face down on a beat-up desk. Let that image of Krapp nest in your mind. Rest assured, we’re in Beckett’s theatre-of-the-absurd, where every word is cherished, like a profound poem.
As Krapp stirs to life, [...]

Anna K

This workshop production of Anna K provides a unique look at a well-worn tale. The adaptation by Jacqueline E. Lawton, set in 1920’s Paris, drops hints about pivotal social change along with elements of hedonism, early Dada artistic expressionism, and of course, the ever present tug of love and duty.  So many disparate elements would [...]

Story of My Life, Shipwrecked and Ruined

The Story of My Life – Broadway opened its doors to this little musical, giving it maximum exposure after its early days off Broadway in Canada and at the Goodspeed in Connecticut. That may have been a mistake. For I call it “little” in the sense that it has only two characters onstage, virtually no [...]

The Heart of a Dog

The funniest part of this fitfully amusing 1920’s Russian comedy is its premise: a scientist transplants some human organs into the body of a dog, and the dog thereafter becomes an important Party apparatchik. But this is no Soviet Being There; Sharikov (f/k/a Sharik the Dog, played by James Gagne) rises to no position higher [...]

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