Smokey Joe’s Cafe
February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Winter holds a certain charm before the holidays, with turkeys and caroling and gifts and gift-wrapping. But then comes months of gray skies and tax season. The soul begins to demand summer. Toby’s Dinner Theatre of Baltimore is packing a pocketful of summer, delivered in the form of Smokey Joe’s Café. [Read more...]
A Skull in Connemara
February 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Though Martin McDonagh’s A Skull in Connemara, is set in Leenane, Ireland, it’s hard not to think of a front yard in Hampden during Halloween. In Todd Rosenthal’s set for CenterStage, the grey (plastic) headstones stick up at awkward angles, creating a cheap Hollywood gothic. Then the lights go down, and as they do, the gravestones start to look real, and the shadows add a weird dimension: a drab palette of exhaustion. [Read more...]
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (revisited)
January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I caught a matinee of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying this week, and as I watched young Nick Jonas prancing about as J. Pierrepont Finch in the current Broadway revival of the Frank Loesser-Abe Burrows master work, I suddenly had a revelation about the recent and current Broadway scene. [Read more...]
Wit
January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Margaret Edson is that rare bird, a playwright whose first play, Wit, earned a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. That alone makes her unique, but she becomes more so when we realize that she has never had another play produced and is “committed to teaching, now”, but unlike the heroine of her play, who as teacher specializes in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, she confines her work to exposing kindergarten children to the joys of reading and the written word.
Fifty Words
January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A night off. No kids, no responsibilities. Just a husband and wife, Chinese takeout, and a bottle of wine.
This rare “just the two of us” evening proves to be a dark night of the soul in Michael Weller’s taut Fifty Words, a piercing examination of how in the hell any relationship survives, much less endures. Director Donald Hicken brings out both the vitriol and vulnerability of Jan and Adam, played with bristling force by Megan Anderson and Clinton Brandhagen. [Read more...]
Porgy and Bess
January 23, 2012 By 1 Comment
The battle has begun.
I’ve been reading followup columns from the critics of the New York Times and other prominent commentators admitting that some of their nitpicking reviews of the current revival of Porgy and Bess are not consistent with the reaction they have been receiving from their readers. [Read more...]
The Road to Mecca
January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Athol Fugard, South African playwright, had been writing plays for 20 years when The Road to Mecca was first mounted in 1988. Clearly a personal diatribe against the platitudes inherent in so much of organized religion, he should have known by the time he wrote this play that a debate between two opponents a play does not make. [Read more...]
Gleam
January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Gleam hits a glorious stride at Centerstage in Baltimore, mainly because of the well-tuned script by Bonnie Lee Moss Rattner in the capable hands of director Marion McClinton. [Read more...]
New year, big deal for Baltimore
January 6, 2012 By 1 Comment
I started writing this article as a retrospective of Baltimore theatre in 2011. But I couldn’t help thinking a little bit about what Baltimore is looking at in 2012. In Baltimore, thanks to the Orioles, (and in DC, thanks to the Nationals), we’re sick of hearing that next year Could Be the Year. But things are changing fast. It’s the year of the Apocalypse, true enough. But even so, before doomsday arrives (early Spring) Baltimore is going to be making a serious play to become a nexus for theatre in the DC region. [Read more...]
Accidentally, Like a Martyr
December 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I don’t usually take you along with me when I go trouping off/off Broadway, but I’m making an exception because last evening I stumbled on a special treat and as it will run through January 7th, you might just catch it if you plan to be in New York during this next week. [Read more...]
