New York

Review: ‘Gruff!’ at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre

Part of the first Summer Family Theater Festival at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, Gruff!, a co-presentation by Vital Theatre Company and Doppelskope, is everything that great children’s theater should...

Review: ‘A Real Boy’ at 59E59 Theaters

In the world premiere of A Real Boy, presented by Ivy Theatre Company in association with Athena Theatre at 59E59, playwright Stephen Kaplan significantly reimagines Italian writer Carlo Collodi’s...

Review: ‘Georama’ at the New York Musical Festival

The rise and fall of the largely forgotten 19th-century American artist John Banvard is the subject of Georama, an irresistible bio-musical by West Hyler (book) and Matt Schazt (book, music, and...

Father, Son, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Interviews with Producer/Director Harry Dietzler and Director Jeff Dietzler of Upper Darby Summer Stage

Harry Dietzler, the executive and artistic director of Upper Darby Summer Stage, one of America’s oldest and most successful theater programs for young adults, founded the Summer Stage in 1976 as a...

Review: ‘Wicked’ at the Academy of Music

From its origins in L. Frank Baum’s1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to its adaptation in MGM’s blockbuster 1939 film The Wizard of Oz to its annual TV broadcast on CBS beginning in 1956 (which...

Review: ‘Guys and Dolls’ at Bucks County Playhouse

Guys and Dolls is a paragon of American musical theater. Considering its blend of interesting characters, clever story and glorious songs by Frank Loesser, it deserves more frequent revivals on...

Review: ‘Annie’ at Westchester Broadway Theatre

Westchester Broadway Theatre is currently presenting Annie, and this production, directed and choreographed by Mary Jane Houda, is enjoyment and smiles from start to finish. In 1970 Martin Charnin was...

Review: ‘Chicago’ at ArtsCentric at Motor House

The city of Chicago is “Hog Butcher for the World… City of the Big Shoulders,” as poet Carl Sandburg wrote just over a 100 years ago. Much the same could be said of certain elements of the press,...

Review: ‘Barefoot in the Park’ at The Candlelight Theatre

Six days do not a week make. These famous words of nonsense, uttered by the young wife Cory, will tell all serious theatergoers that they are in the domain of Neil Simon and his oft-performed...

Review: ‘New York – The Melting Pot’ at Soulpepper on 42nd Street

The first in Soulpepper Theatre Company’s three-part musical celebration of the history of diversity in New York – The Melting Pot pays tribute to Lower Manhattan, from Battery Park to Chelsea....

Movie Review: ‘Landline’

Landline, the latest from Gillian Robespierre and Elisabeth Holm, the creative team behind Obvious Child, opens with the sounds of… rutting, I guess is the word I can use in a family publication. The...

Review: ‘Night Tide’ at the New York Musical Festival

Ancient sea lore meets Sixties beach party in Night Tide, a new musical parody by Taylor Tash (book and lyrics) and Nathania Wibowo (music), based on Curtis Harrington’s 1961 B-movie thriller of the...

New Records: Listening to ‘Groundhog Day’ and ‘Hello, Dolly!’

New Records is our column about recordings of shows and concerts. It’s a companion to the reviews that regularly appear here on DC Theater Arts. This month we take a look at albums from two more shows...

Review: ‘Hairspray’ at Fredericktowne Players

A transformation is underway in Frederick Maryland’s local theater community. Nowhere is that more evident than inside the JBK Theater, watching the Fredericktowne Players (FtP) latest production of...

Review: ‘Alligator Pie’ at Soulpepper on 42nd Street

Adapted from the verses of beloved children’s book author and poet Dennis Lee – known to generations of fans as “Canada’s Father Goose” – Soulpepper Theatre Company’s ensemble-devised Alligator Pie,...

Review: ‘Cage’ at Soulpepper on 42nd Street

The avant-garde work and Zen convictions of 20th-century American composer John Cage are the inspiration for Soulpepper Theatre Company’s ensemble-devised piece Cage, performed in this month’s...

Review: ‘Matthew McConaughey Vs The Devil’ at the New York Musical Festival

Deserving recipient of an Academy Award for Best Actor, or modern-day Faust who sold his soul to capture Hollywood’s biggest honor? Emilie Landmann (book), Carrie Morgan (book and lyrics), and...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Lost Teeth’

How far are we willing to go to seek happiness? That’s the intriguing premise of Jona Tarlin’s Lost Teeth, a world premiere production from New York City’s Blowout Theatre Company which has a...

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Laramie Project’

One of the most frequently performed plays in America today, The Laramie Project, is now on view at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, where the bare stage of the Lang Theatre has been transformed, for...

‘Hamlet’ at Laurel Hill Cemetery: An Interview with Rosey Hay and Rudy Caporaso of the REV Theatre Company

Every year, the REV Theatre Company fills Laurel Hill Cemetery — Philadelphia’s resting place of the rich, the powerful, and the famous — with an almost cult-like following of theatergoers, who see...

Review: ‘1984’ at the Hudson Theatre

One of the most fascinating items on the Broadway scene is the current production of a British import, 1984. Co-adapted from the 1949 novel of George Orwell by Duncan Macmillan and Robert Icke, it...

Review: ‘Marvin’s Room’ at Roundabout Theatre Company

Scott McPherson wrote Marvin’s Room, a play about illness, family ties, and death when he was just a lad of 30. As a gay man, he was of course aware of the AIDS epidemic that had been ravaging the gay...

Review: ‘Of Human Bondage’ at Soulpepper on 42nd Street

The first-ever stage adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, written by Vern Thiessen and directed by Albert Schultz for Canada’s Soulpepper Theatre Company, is also the recipient of the...

Capital Fringe Preview: ‘J-Swizzle’s (and D-Man’s) Epic Awesome Swaggy Broventure for Sweet Rhymes’ by Emma Choi

Between Hebrew classes and surviving middle school, best friends Jared “J-Swizzle” and Daniel “D-Man” dream of becoming the biggest rap stars in the universe. It will take a magical quest that...

Review: PBS Presents ‘A Capitol Fourth’

Every year PBS puts on a spectacular show with A Capitol Fourth and has the most talented people involved performing and behind the scenes. This year features The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd, Jim...

Review: ‘Napoli, Brooklyn’ at Roundabout Theatre Company

In Napoli, Brooklyn, playing at Roundabout Theatre Company through September 3rd, Playwright Meghan Kennedy gets us started with a mimed prologue in which a family sits at the dining table, enjoying a...

Review: ‘On the Town’ at Gateway Playhouse

Smash hit On the Town has sailed into the Gateway Playhouse. Originally opening on Broadway in 1944, this popular musical is also quite well known for its 1949 film version starring Gene Kelly, and...

Review: ‘Zanna Don’t (the Reboot)’ at Theatre Horizon

For the latest show in its 42nd and Main Concerts series, Theatre Horizon tackled Zanna, Don’t!, an offbeat musical that ran Off-Broadway in 2003 and has had productions all over the world since. That...

Review: ‘Finding Neverland’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

Those who’ve forgotten Peter Pan are destined to repeat it in Finding Neverland. The U.S. national tour now at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre until July 2 makes for a dreamy midsummer night’s...

Capital Fringe Preview: A Guided Tour of ‘Last Ditch Playlist’ by Brad Baron

Last Ditch Playlist is about two men, Aaron and Wes. They’re probably just broken up. So we flash backwards and forwards in a whirlwind of Aaron’s memories to figure out exactly where he stands. While...

Review: ‘The Crusade of Connor Stephens’ at the Jerry Orbach Theater

Gun violence, socio-religious intolerance, same-sex marriage, and gay adoption are some of the current hot-button issues that tear apart a family, polarize a community, and create a media frenzy in...

Film Review: ‘Abacus: Small Enough to Jail’

The fallout of the financial crisis is still being thrashed out in full public view, which makes for a terribly difficult documentary subject; we are a long way from knowing where most of it actually...

Review: ‘Pippin’ at Princeton Summer Theater

So many men seem destined To settle for something small, But I won’t rest until I know I’ll have it all… Stephen Schwartz’s lyrics for “Corner of the Sky” sum up everything that the title character of...

Review: ‘The Imbible: Day Drinking’ at New World Stages

Feeling overwhelmed by the demands of work, everyday chores, and the incessant pings of your digital devices? Then don’t just find the time, but make the time, for getting together, catching up, and...

Review: ‘Death Comes for the War Poets’ at The Sheen Center

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of America’s involvement in World War I in 1917, and The Sheen Center has recognized it with the stellar world premiere of Death Comes for the War Poets...

Review: ‘American Idiot’ at Beyond the Page Theatre Company at West Potomac High School

A guitar solo sounds, the band joins in, and the stage is set for a very talented group of performers at Beyond the Page Theatre Company of West Potomac High School. Who knew that the rebellious...

Opinion: ‘Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, and the Fine Art of Dissent’

It’s a classic art-imitating-life-imitating-art situation: to make a production relevant, the director decks out the cast in modern dress to create the illusion that Shakespeare was writing about our...

Review: ‘Evita’ at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

The life of Eva Perón is the stuff legends, and rock operas, are made of: a rags-to-riches story of a poor illegitimate child from provincial Argentina, whose ambitious determination, seductive...

Review: ‘Dreamgirls’ at ANKH Repertory Theatre and The Finest! Performance Foundation

Dreamgirls, with book and lyrics by Tom Eyen and music by Henry Krieger, was one of the very first shows I saw on Broadway, back in the 1980s. It was memorable then and it remains memorable now in the...

Review: ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

“May I return to the beginning?” runs a beloved lyric to the song “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, now back for the summer at Toby’s — The Dinner Theatre of...

Review: ‘Cry-Baby The Musical’ at Drama Learning Center

Baltimore’s John Waters takes another swipe at Eisenhower-era conformity in Cry-Baby: The Musical, making its area premiere now at the Drama Learning Center in Columbia. The show had a short Broadway...

Review: ‘An Enemy of the People’ at Wheelhouse Theater Company

Economic self-interest, an ‘inconvenient truth,’ a ruthless politician, a whistleblower, ‘fake news,’ closed-door meetings, a bureaucratic cover-up, the refusal to work together for the common good,...

Review: ‘Fun Home’ at the Forrest Theatre

Winner of five Tony Awards in 2015 – including the first-ever Best Musical honors given to a show written entirely by a team of women – Fun Home, with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine...

Review: ‘Morning’s at Seven’ at Old Academy Players in Philadelphia

Alone. Lonesome. Free. These three words appear often in Paul Osborn’s classic Morning’s at Seven, now on view at Old Academy Players in East Falls. This play has become a staple of regional and...

New Records: Listening to the Music of 3 Tony-Nominated Shows

New Records is a new column that discusses recordings of theatrical shows. It’s a companion to the theater reviews that appear here on DC Theater Arts. This week, in connection with the Tony Awards,...

Preview: Toby Orenstein Tailors ‘Dreamcoat’ for a Dream Cast at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

To help mark its 45th year in business, Toby’s — The Dinner Theatre of Columbia is serving up something special in its new revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. No less than five...

Rockwell, Warhol, and Warhola: A Conversation with James Warhola about Three Generations of American Illustrators at the Norman Rockwell Museum

Though a generation apart in age, Norman Rockwell (1894 New York City-1978 Stockbridge) and Andy Warhol (1928 Pittsburgh-1987 New York City) captured the tenor of their respective eras of 20th-century...

Review: ‘And the Tony Goes to…’ at The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC

Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, concerts never lack for inspired high concepts and ingenious themes. Whether featuring love songs, cowboy songs, nostalgia songs, or...

Review: ‘Mary Poppins’ at 2nd Star Productions

A show that’s “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” on every level. There has never been a nanny quite so magical – or musical – as Mary Poppins, a character created by author P.L. Travers in eight...

Review: ‘Motown The Musical’ at the Academy of Music

Bringing Detroit’s soulful music to the masses was the goal, and Berry Gordy showed he was ready for the challenge by creating the melodies of Motown. Written for the stage by Gordy (adapted from his...