Save the Earth. Kick a little ass. Rip out a spleen (or a spine). And do it all with a power-pop ballad in your heart. That is The Toxic Avenger: The Musical, and, in Rorschach’s hands, it is in-toxic-ating, exuberant fun. Melvin Ferd III (Ricky Drummond), a skinny kid from Tromaville, New Jersey, wants to […]
Review: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe at Imagination Stage
To leap, bound, and twirl through Narnia is to enjoy the storied fantasy world anew, watching the Pevensie children learn the value of sacrifice, friendship, family, love, and, of course, the triumph, of good over evil through dance. Imagination Stage has turned C.S. Lewis’ 1950 beloved children’s novel—The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe—into a […]
Review: Lovers’ Vows. Will they? Won’t they? A delightful farce from We Happy Few
Abstinence and sex. Sex and abstinence. They’ve long vexed the masses, from noble to peasant as far back as the 1700s, when British writer Elizabeth Inchbald translated a German play roughly titled Love Child and called it Lovers’ Vows. Jane Austen—yes, the Jane Austen—mentions Lovers’ Vows in “Mansfield Park,” keeping the play, which was scandalous then for its open discussion […]
Review: Disenchanted! Suitably madcap, Princess-worthy performances at Creative Cauldron
All the charm in Creative Cauldron’s Disenchanted! is homespun, from madcap performances to powerful voices and kitschy props. But the script lobs too much hate at the House of Mouse (while staying just this side of copyright) to buoy or sustain the funny. Which is unfortunate, cause it has enough dirty wit and wink wink moments to […]
Review: School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play at Round House
“Jubilant!” Strange word to describe a play about skin tones, a mean girl with a foul mouth, and the lasting affects of colonialism. Yet, no other word works when it comes to School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, which takes a page from that other Mean Girls, as maybe you guessed, to navigate the […]
Review: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at Creative Cauldron
Creative Cauldron doesn’t shy away from the big and bold, and producing the Broadway version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast embodies that to the hilt. Amidst its small modest space, the Disney masterpiece that launched a thousand ships becomes an intimate, authentic telling. It’s splendid. Surely, we all know the story: long, long ago […]
Review: Singin’ in the Rain makes a splash at NextStop
Singin’ in the Rain seems like the type of beloved movie that shouldn’t be made into a stage version, with its perfect 1952 film, directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and named by the AFI as the Greatest. Movie. Musical. Especially when you have a cast of eight, and an orchestra of two. Unless the […]
Review: Escape from Peligro Island, super fun regardless of which adventure you choose
Economy or first class? Glasses or inhaler? Go right or go left? Rather, stay or go at all? I say go—go fast to Escape from Peligro Island: YOU Create Your Own Adventure, a delightfully funny, fully satisfying choose your own adventure production now at Imagination Stage. [adsanity_rotating align=”aligncenter” time=”10″ group_id=”1455″ /] Callaway Brown (Dallas Tolentino) is […]
STOMP review: still a glorious, cacophonous slam bang of a show
The National’s stage has an air heavy with anticipation. Trash hangs across a large set that is part tin shack, part jungle gym. It’s as if Marie Kondo has Kondo-ed a junkyard. Everything a place. Everything a meaning. Everything a purpose. To make glorious, cacophonous, musical sound. Beats layered on beats, all from the unlikeliest […]
Review: Winnie the Pooh at Adventure Theatre MTC. Fun for the under 8’s
Pooh Bear is a fuzzy, golden puff full of positive wonderment whose honey addiction still roils little bellies with laughter at Adventure Theatre MTC’s Winnie the Pooh, a sweet stroll through the One Hundred Acre Wood with old friends. They have so much to do in one day. Rabbit (Stephen Murray) has hatched a plan to […]
Review: columbinus at 1st Stage
Twenty years on. And the horror of April 20, 1999 has not only not dissipated, but it also seems to have continually intensified with each mass school shooting. Virginia Tech. Sandy Hook. Parkland. Countless others that run together like one big blob of shameful gray in America’s collective mind under the mental banner of “another Columbine.” Since […]
Finding Neverland review. J.M. Barrie discovers his Peter Pan in this charming musical
Seems poetic that The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up is well over 100 now and still as impish as ever in Finding Neverland. Peter Pan, the eternal boy, sprung from the mind of Scottish novelist and playwright J.M. Barrie during the Victorian era. And he has endured, from becoming a Disney stalwart to being featured in […]
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