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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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, […]

– 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 […]

I first saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1973 in London before it moved to the west end. It still had some of the enthusiasm and roughness of a school production, which indeed was the source of its first commission of a 19-year old Andrew Lloyd Webber. In some ways, there is a […]

Paul Morella brings A Christmas Carol up front and personal in an inspired, deeply-felt, moving one-man marathon monologue. On opening night, this consummate actor brought a full-house audience to a standing ovation. That’s impressive.