House of Gold
November 10, 2010 By 2 Comments
Not all life-savers are made of sugar. Some are just tart little words. Here’s a classic example, from everyone’s childhood: Don’t take the candy! A life-saving mantra to bear in mind when the sweet-smiling man in the van pushes open the passenger door, pats the cushioned seat next to him, and offers you a ride. [Read more...]
Endgame
November 10, 2010 By 2 Comments
At the beautiful new Cultural Arts Center at Silver Spring, all concrete and lucid glass, there is a room full of junk encased in a cage of twine. On the dust-encrusted floor the scattered remains of a life no longer lived lie rusted and useless: an old globe, the grill from a heater or a fan. Two large wooden dumpsters bump up against the back wall. In the middle of the room there is a chair over which a stained white sheet drapes like an autopsy shroud; underneath the sheet is Hamm (Gordon Adams), the master of the place. He is junk, too. [Read more...]
Cavers
November 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Gertie Stovall is a middle-aged woman who lives alone in a dilapidated farmhouse that is on the verge of foreclosure. She’s a spunky free spirit who is beloved in the community despite her propensity to threaten trespassers with a nonfunctional rifle. When she discovers a massive cave under the property, she believes that it is a gift from God that will relieve her plight. [Read more...]
One Small Step
November 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Few stories can inspire wonder as does the dawn of the Space Age, where in a dozen years we went from launching the first satellite to having men walk on the Moon. This wonder is faithfully revisited in One Small Step, by the U.K. theatre company Oxford Playhouse which made a too brief stop at the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater as part of ON THE FRINGE: Eye on Edinburgh. [Read more...]
The Poet Warriors
November 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The lyrics are no more than serviceable, the story moves in random fits and starts, some of the acting is not of the greatest, and the dialogue is occluded with cliché (“time moves…like molasses in January,” writes Miriam [Arielle Goodman], ostensibly a Harvard graduate, to her war-bound husband), but when these folks open their mouths to sing – and I say this with the utmost of reverence – oh, my God! [Read more...]
My First Time
November 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Whether it be scandalous celebrity tabloids, office gossip, or a juicy overheard conversation, people’s sex lives seem to provide endless entertainment for our nosy, voyeuristic population. Taking full advantage of this basic fact, Tantra Entertainment presents a hilarious and emotional peek into that most private corner of everyday life with their production of Ken Davenport’s My First Time. [Read more...]
Finishing the Hat
November 9, 2010 By 1 Comment
Finishing the Hat – Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim
Everyone who recognizes the title of this book will want to read it … and Stephen Sondheim adds a subtitle just to explain it to the rest. “Finishing the Hat” is, of course, the title of the one song that Sondheim says is drawn from his personal experience as opposed to expressing the thoughts of the character for which it was written. [Read more...]
Gianni Schicchi
November 8, 2010 By 4 Comments
Listen up, because this will probably happen to you some day. You’re sitting around the family manse with your obnoxious relatives, waiting for your super-rich uncle to shuffle off this mortal coil. Everybody’s boo-hooing in the next room, and will continue to do so until the old man kicks. At last the great moment arrives, and you and everyone you’re related to is rich! – until they find the will, and discover that Unc has left every last florin to the stinkin’ holy monks! What are you going to do? [Read more...]
For Colored Girls
November 8, 2010 By 1 Comment
Kudos to Tyler Perry for taking on this revered and seminal work that turned artistic expression inside out with its explosive energy on stage over 30 years ago. Master story teller that he is, Perry dug deep and grappled with the emotional core of the scattered monologues of the treasured text from Ntozake Shange’s award winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf and sculpted them into interweaving stories in this, his latest movie release. [Read more...]
Oklahoma!
November 7, 2010 By 1 Comment
How fitting that Arena Stage settles into its gorgeous new Bing Thom-designed digs with an equally gorgeous and exuberant production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!
Artistic Director Molly Smith has crafted a triumphant show that is at once feisty and forward-thinking and fittingly reflective. After an election season that for Marylanders in particular was dirty and demoralizing, it just feels cleansing to gaze upon a vision of America and Americans that is full of hope, promise and pluck. [Read more...]
