A web of betrayal, scandal, and murder is brewing deep in the heart of Columbia, MD. In their crowd-pleasing production of Chicago, Toby’s Dinner Theatre puts their own stamp on the sordid story of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, transporting audiences from the cozy performance space into a tale of criminal intrigue as big as […]
Xanadu
Xanadu, starring Olivia Newton John, bombed as a movie in 1980. It even won a Razzie Award as one of the worst films Hollywood produced that year. Its fortunes turned upward when Jeff Lynne, John Farrar and Douglas Carter Beane reconstituted it for Broadway, where it won four top Tony Award musical nominations.
Happy Days
The musical Happy Days is a well-designed crowd pleaser for fans of the popular sitcom that ended its run over a quarter of a century ago. If you enjoyed the television show, you will appreciate the chance to revisit the Cunninghams, Fonzie, and friends in an entertaining production at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia. If […]
I Left My Heart – a Salute to the Music of Tony Bennett
“I don’t follow the latest fashion,” Tony Bennett said of his artistic instincts in a 2010 interview with the Winston-Salem Journal. “I never sing a song that’s badly written. Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and others just created the best songs that had ever been written. These are classics, and finally they’re not being treated as […]
Cinderella
Be it the idea of wishes coming true or the hope of finding one’s charming prince or beautiful princess, fairytales possess lasting and almost universal appeal – perhaps none more so than the story of Cinderella. With a charming cast dancing and singing their way through Rodgers and Hammerstein’s popular score, Toby’s Dinner Theatre has […]
A Christmas Carol
The snow is gently falling and carolers are merrily singing in Toby’s Dinner Theatre of Baltimore’s delightful musical production of A Christmas Carol. Based on the Christmas classic by Charles Dickens, this fast paced musical originally ran for more than a decade at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, where it became a must see […]
Rent
If you are one of the millions of Broadway fans who have already seen Jonathan Larson’s brilliant musical Rent (like me!), I can guarantee that you have never seen it done like this. If you missed seeing Rent when it occupied New York City’s Nederlander Theatre from 1996 through 2008 (over 5,000 performances), or during […]
Cats
On the second floor of Baltimore’s Best Western Hotel and Conference Center in a seemingly industrial area off I-95, practical cats, romantical cats, political cats, and allegorical cats are purrfectly dancing and singing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway megahit CATS presented by Toby’s Dinner Theater of Baltimore.
Nunsense
The nuns from The Order of the Little Sisters of Scaggsville who we meet in Toby’s Dinner Theatre’s production of Nunsense are anything but the stern, strict, knuckle-rapping, humorless disciplinarians you may have heard about.
Playing Patsy Cline
Tiffany Walker Porta on Always…Patsy Cline I’m a big fan of Patsy Cline and when I saw Always…Patsy Cline on press night at Toby’s Baltimore, I was amazed how Tiffany Walker Porta’s renditions of many of Patsy’s hit songs – including “I Fall to Pieces”, “Crazy”, and “Walkin’ After Midnight”, had that unique Patsy “sound”.
The Ladies of Toby’s Hairspray
Three energetic and brilliant actresses – Celia Blitzer, MaryLee Adams, and Jesaira Glover – play Tracy Turnblad, Penny Pingleton, and Motormouth Maybelle [More…] in the rousing production of Hairspray, now rocking the in-the-round production at Toby’s-The Dinner Theatre of Columbia. Here they talk about their roles, their careers, and why Hairspray is such a crowd-pleaser.
Oliver!
Toby’s version of Oliver!—directed by Shawn Kettering—is an economy-style production that cleverly manages to retain much of the original’s infectious charm, due largely to the boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm of its energetic cast.