Paul Morella, backed by the Olney Theatre Center, has done something wonderful with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. He has taken it back to its roots by returning to the novella penned by Dickens in 1843 and brings it to life in the simplest possible terms. He tells the tale exactly as written, as Dickens himself might have done it, embellished only with the most minimal set pieces, some creative lighting and realistic sound effects that blend effortlessly into the storytelling. The result is delightful. [Read more...]

It is 1938, and Europe is settling down to dream the worst nightmare in human history. Georg von Trapp (George Dvorsky), an Austrian hero of the Great War, has lost his wife, and is about to lose his country. He marshals his seven motherless children about in military order, outfitting them in sailor’s costumes (by Jamie Bland and Seth Gilbert) and directing them through the medium of a bosun’s whistle. He is also applying military discipline to his own heart, instructing it to welcome Frau Schraeder (Jenna Sokolowski) into his life, as his new wife and mother to his children. She is clever and beautiful, and he loves her not one whit. [Read more...]

Witness for the Prosecution is a six-course meal of a play, a lip-smacking, eye-rolling, stomach-rumbling grand buffet of – wait for it – vintage fifties, English-style murder, complete with basso-profundo defense barristers, harrumphing prosecutors, astringent judges, silly young secretaries, and a wide-eyed, decent, innocent young defendant – or so he seems. It is the sort of plot-heavy courtroom procedural so full of twists and turns that it might have been dreamed up by – Agatha Christie. And it was! [Read more...]

Grease is one of those Broadway musicals that’s been grown, shrunk, and re-shaped over time so that each version you see can be rather different from the last. The Olney Theatre’s sprightly but not completely satisfying take on the show resembles more recent Broadway and London iterations, circa 2007, with perhaps a snip or two. [Read more...]

Michael Hollinger, who is enjoying a well-deserved revival here (he co-adapted Folger’s Cyrano with Aaron Posner, and his Red Herring had a recent run at Washington Stage Guild), was a violinist before he was a playwright. He thus brings insight and assured realism to Opus, a story about the lives of classical musicians who are, at bottom, ordinary people at play with the gods. [Read more...]

- just-released “Ides of March” reviewed here -

Beau Willimon’s Farragut North is the kind of “built in Washington” drama that DC theater aficionados clearly will enjoy. In addition, for die-hard political junkies, Farragut North, crisply directed by Clay Hopper for Olney Theatre Center, offers a preview of coming attractions in 2012. That’s due in large part to its hyper-focus on of the kind of political ground game that’s already underway in the hinterlands of far-flung Iowa, a state whose overly-hyped, overly-covered early caucuses can often make or break a front-runner’s status in either party. [Read more...]