When Olney Theatre Center decided to stage Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s Tony-winning The Diary of Anne Frank this season, Derek Goldman seemed like the perfect choice to direct. “It’s a story that has been with me for most of my adult life,” Goldman says.
Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches at Round House (review)
Recent reports of the death of Angels in America’s relevance are greatly exaggerated. If anything, the recession of the AIDS crisis in America (or, at least, in the mainstream American consciousness) and the gay marriage victory allow Tony Kushner’s masterwork to leap out of its epoch and become truly timeless. As with the English monarchial […]
Jason Loewith and Ryan Rilette team up to direct Angels in America
Twenty-five years ago at the small Eureka Theatre in downtown San Francisco, Tony Kushner pushed forth the first iteration of a play that would become what many feel is not only a great American play but one of only a handful of theatre works which thoroughly captured the zeitgeist of its time. This week Angels […]
My won’t-miss shows for this season
If you’re like me, you’ve already done your Christmas shopping, filled out your budget for the next fiscal year, and made arrangements for your final repose after The Event Which Awaits Us All occurs. Now it’s time for something much more difficult: planning your theater season.
The Pirates of Penzance, Hypocrites’ style at Olney (review)
You might want to hit the bar before you take your seat for The Pirates of Penzance as performed by the Chicago-based theatre company The Hypocrites, now ensconced in the Theatre Lab at Olney Theatre Center. Luckily the bar is part of the set and is open throughout the show, as cast members remind the audience […]
The Hypocrites’ G&S: The Mikado at Olney (review)
Entering the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at Olney Theatre Center for The Mikado, be prepared for balloons. Hundreds of them; many of them being bopped in your general direction. Go ahead, bop them back. Have a seat in one of the circus style rings, right in the middle of the action. Or go play the basketball […]
Odd couple struggle over art in Bakersfield Mist at Olney (review)
The elite and what writer H.L. Mencken called “the booboisie” clash over what is a genuine masterpiece and the higher purpose of art in Stephen Sach’s uproarious and sneakily thoughtful play Bakersfield Mist.
Dial ‘M’ for Murder at Olney Theatre Center (review)
Dial ‘M’ for Murder is not so much a “whodunit” as a “will-he-get-away-with it” thriller. But it kept audiences guessing in the early 1950s in London’s West End and later on Broadway. And it still works.
Olney announces its seventeen event season for 2016-2017
Olney Theatre Center will continue its three-tier approach to programming next season by producing nine full-run plays at Olney, co-producing Tony Kushner’s two-play cycle Angels in America with Round House Theatre in Bethesda, doing brief runs of three plays for young people and three productions by the National Players, and sponsoring a reading of six Pulitzer-winning […]
Round House and Olney Theatres to co-produce Kushner masterwork; Round House season announced
Round House Theatre will co-produce both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America with Olney Theatre this fall, Round House announced yesterday. The joint production will kick off a two-year collaboration between Olney and the Bethesda-based Round House Theatre.
Marjorie Prime at Olney Theatre Center (review)
You can’t trust anything these days, especially memories. Being human, we treat them like modeling clay—stretching, reshaping, pounding and molding our memories until they are the lumpen leftovers of our personal folklore.
Carmen: An Afro Cuban Jazz Musical at Olney Theatre Center (review)
Carmen: An Afro Cuban Jazz Musical, co-produced by Olney Theatre Center and Tectonic Theater Project, takes the tragic heroine of Bizet’s 1875 opera and transports her to Cuba in 1958, when the island nation was on the brink of revolution.