If baseball represents the joy of sport — its season concluding with popped champagne corks and ticker tape parades for the winners and the promise of next year for the losers — then boxing represents its tragedy, the loser lying broken and bleeding on the canvas, the winner often in not much better shape, and […]

Cabaret, the ground-breaking Kander and Ebb musical about sex and show-biz played against a backdrop of the Nazis’ rise to power in Berlin, gets a compelling production at Olney Theatre Center. Director Alan Paul’s shiny new show uses the revised book and tune-stack from the well-regarded Studio 54/Roundabout Theatre revival that opened in 1998 and […]

Blame their parents. Albert and Jennifer Chen are failing at life.  Sure, they both graduated top of their class from Harvard. And, yes, Jen went on to get a medical degree and PhD (both from Harvard) before starting her career as an oncologist. Albert took the “lazy Asian” way out, “only” becoming a software programmer. […]

Mom’s so in denial about having a baby, she’s nine months pregnant and still thinks she’s making it to her ballroom dancing competition in Spain. Shady used car salesman Dad’s hoping to “trade” the new baby in for a boy. We’re only one song in, and we’re starting to get a pretty good window into […]

One of the most fascinating political power struggles in history is being brought to life at Olney Theatre Center with a crackling and electric modernization of Schiller’s masterpiece by their Artistic Director Jason Loewith, who also directs. Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots square off in a (mostly) true-to-life Game of Thrones, and sparks […]

A farce, a farce! My kingdom for a farce! Fortunately, you won’t have to pay such a high price for this one- though, it’s worth it. Ken Ludwig, acclaimed author of Lend Me A Tenor, revisits the over-the-top world of opera and artists in this splendid A Comedy of Tenors, which features some of the […]

British playwright Ella Hickson gets an American premiere of her sprawlingly ambitious and provocative play at Olney Theatre Center. Oil is a play written up as a “nexus of oil, economics, and power.” But if oil is the premise for this for the play, it serves less as a central character and more a backdrop, […]

As a film, the tiny indie musical Once (shot over 17 days for a mere $150,000) was such an unlikely hit that it’s easy to be cynical over whether a big-budget Broadway adaptation could capture the same magic. But Olney’s intimate, stirring production of the show that would go on to win eight Tonys and […]

If there’s one thing you’ll take away from Olney Theatre Center’s Elf the Musical it’s this: the DC musical theater scene has a tremendous talent base. To a one, Elf’s largely ensemble cast give some of the most enjoyable, high-energy and top-caliber performances I have seen in the area.  And the performers in this movie-turned-stage […]

A comedy that mingles romance with politics and it’s not about porn stars and reality show moguls? Please let it be a breath of fresh air, I plea to the theatre gods, as I take my seat for Labour of Love at Olney Theatre Center.

Was ever a message musical wrapped in such a luxurious bounty of romance? Those love songs! Seventy years later, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific still floors us with its lyricism.