Theater reviews

Theater Review

History portrayed thrillingly

Dignity Players' current production of Vanishing Point introduces us to three of the 20th century's most fascinating female adventurers and achievers: Amelia Earhart, Aimee Semple McPherson and Agatha Christie.

Theater Review

'Lives' takes up cause of workers

Melanie Marnich's These Shining Lives -- a world premiere based on the real-life poisoning of female workers at a watch factory -- is genuinely tragic, but it's also as one-sided and gilded as the faces of its tainted timepieces.

Knowing 'Purple' adds to enjoyment

Staging a musical such as The Color Purple shares many of the challenges of, say, making a movie of Harry Potter. Most of the audience read and loved the book. Or, in the case of The Color Purple, they read the book and they loved the movie.

Theater Review

'Hauptmann': Scenes from an execution

In Colonial Players' current offering of the play Hauptmann, a case can be made to find the Annapolis troupe guilty of producing riveting courtroom drama.

'Cry-Baby' has flash, wit, but no heart

Opportunity knocked last night at the door of the Marquis Theatre, where Cry-Baby is making its Broadway debut. But nobody answered.

Theater Review

A comedy of elders, boomers

Bowie Community Theatre's offering of Andrew Bergman's 1986 comedy Social Security is a welcome addition to the Bowie Playhouse season slate. New to our area, the comic play takes a lighthearted look at nearly insoluble problems confronting many baby boomers and their elders -- the predominant age groups of most theatergoers.

Theater Review

Shakespeare Festival offers uneven 'Tale'

The Winter's Tale may be the only work by the Bard that focuses on the travails and hard-won joys of an enduring marriage.

Theater Review

Lou Diamond Phillips lacks sparkle in 'Camelot'

In the nearly half-century since Camelot was first performed, our national self-image has altered. We no longer are as confident as we were in 1960, that we always use might to serve right.

Theater Review

'Gem' of a journey at Everyman

The tiny boat that Citizen Barlow cups in his hands is made from a sheet of yellow, folded parchment. The craft, named The Gem of the Ocean, would dissolve the second it made contact with actual water.

Theater Review

'Night Music': in key, in sync

Like all of the great romantic comedies, Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music is unsparing in its depiction of human folly.

Theater Review

'High School Musical' is cheerful, energetic, but not much else

The national tour of High School Musical running at the Hippodrome Theatre is urgently in need of a life-giving infusion of bad taste.

Theater Review

A tough time getting at the truth

As I watched Everyman Theatre's production of The Turn of the Screw, I couldn't help thinking about the infamous McMartin Preschool case and the way that the most well-intentioned, pure-hearted adults can instill false - and immensely damaging - memories into susceptible children.