All stories by Mike Bevel on BroadwayStars

Monday, December 11, 2017

Interview: “You and my mother can purchase sweaters for obese people to your heart’s content”–A Conversation with Cameron Folmar by Mike Bevel

David, the character Cameron Folmar plays in The Santaland Diaries (now at Drafthouse Comedy Theater in DC through December 23), struggles with compartmentalizing his identity as a Macy’s …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:03PM
Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Review: ‘Twelfth Night’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company by Mike Bevel

We learned, shortly after taking our seats, and learned unexpectedly, not having known this before, but how could we, that, apparently, it is traditional to eat sauerkraut, the krautier the …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:52AM
Thursday, November 16, 2017

Review: Pinchas Zukerman Performs Bach at The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra by Mike Bevel

We learned, shortly after 8 p.m., that half the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was stuck on 495. Traffic unites people with weak social bonds; it gives us something communal to commiserate abo…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:13AM
Monday, November 13, 2017

Interview: Charm City Fringe Festival Founders Michael Brush & Zachary Michel by Mike Bevel

This year’s Charm City Fringe Festival was packed with exceptional fringe shows for ten days in the heart of Baltimore’s Bromo Arts District. DC Metro Theater Arts was able to ca…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:26PM
Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Interview: Michael Brush & Zachary Michel of Charm City Fringe Fest 2017 by Mike Bevel

DC Metro Theater Arts was excited to speak to Charm City Fringe Festival founders Zach Michel and Michael Brush last week at the Lexington Market. We enjoyed a nice chat over crab cakes and …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:05PM
Monday, November 6, 2017

Review: ‘Barriers’ at Charm City Fringe Festival by Mike Bevel

Barriers, conceived by Trajectory Dance Project, a Baltimore-based dance ensemble, is a beautiful series of five pieces focusing on human connections, and how those connections can break dow…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:30PM

Review: ‘Clinically Happy’ at Charm City Fringe Festival by Mike Bevel

“It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.” — Naomi Shihab Nye, “So Much Happiness” If there’s anything other people feel entitled to exp…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:50PM

Review: ‘Amok Monologues: All Pucked Up’ at Charm City Fringe Festival by Mike Bevel

“Everyone has at least one story that can break your heart.” — Claudia Shear, “Blown Sideways Through Life” Fringe festivals offer a bumper crop of one-person …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:02AM
Sunday, November 5, 2017

Review: ‘The Big Thank You’ at Charm City Fringe Festival by Mike Bevel

“and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing” — Anne Sexton, “Welcome Morning” Every day for a …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:32PM

Review: ‘Don’t Come In’ at Charm City Fringe Festival by Mike Bevel

It’s best to start with the description in the catalog: Love is scary. And it just might kill you. Stubborn lovers Em and Missy, unable to express their true feelings for one another, …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:31AM
Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Review: ‘Safe as Houses’ at Pinky Swear Productions by Mike Bevel

What do we do when a storm rages? We fold the laundry. We try to understand our daughter. We clean a table that wasn’t dirty to begin with. We don’t think about what’s bein…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:01AM
Sunday, October 15, 2017

Review: ‘The Woman in Black’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre by Mike Bevel

I’ve seen one ghost in my life – a woman in a 1980s housecoat on the veranda of a beach house in North Carolina. She stood with her hands on the rail, looking out at the ocean. T…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:03PM
Friday, October 13, 2017

Review: ‘I’ll Get You Back Again’ at Round House Theatre by Mike Bevel

There’s a lot going on in Sarah Gancher’s I’ll Get You Back Again, now at the Round House Theatre through October 29: A bitter stand-up comedian and her struggles to recon…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:19AM
Monday, October 9, 2017

Review: ‘Our Town’ at Olney Theatre Center by Mike Bevel

Thornton Wilder’s New Hampshire creation, Grover’s Corners, sits on some of the oldest rock in the world: “a shelf of Devonian basalt” crossed with “vestiges of…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:08PM
Monday, September 18, 2017

Review: ‘I Killed My Mother’ at Spooky Action Theater by Mike Bevel

Andras Viskey’s I Killed My Mother, now in production at Spooky Action Theater, is a challenging bit of business. Its wordless opening is several minutes of wordless wandering by vari…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:34PM
Sunday, September 17, 2017

Review: ‘Clover’ at Ally Theatre Company by Mike Bevel

But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters, they want to know which tools; They never ask why build. — Anne Sexton, “Wanting to Die” Laura Rocklyn and Ty Hallm…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:35PM
Monday, September 11, 2017

Review: ‘Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train’ at 1st Stage by Mike Bevel

Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, now in production at 1st Stage, opens while the audience is still finding their seats. On a raised platform, in the round, Angel Cruz…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:15PM
Saturday, September 9, 2017

Review: ‘Noah: Apocalypse’ at LiveArtDC by Mike Bevel

We will now consider Amanda Quain’s latest play, Noah: Apocalypse, currently playing through September 18 in a bar in Petworth. “Is it a sequel?” my friend, Jeff, asked, a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:33PM
Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Review: ‘Neverwhere’ at Rorschach Theatre by Mike Bevel

In 1582, a village parson heard the deathbed confession of a man named Richard Barley, who had married his butter churn. Barley claimed he had been bewitched into matrimony by a fairy called…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:04PM
Sunday, August 27, 2017

Review: Silver Spring Stage 2017 One Act Festival, Weekend Three by Mike Bevel

One-act plays are tricky beasts. Playwrights must balance tension with plot and story. Too little tension, and the audience is left bored, slogging through countably interminable minutes unt…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:31AM
Saturday, August 12, 2017

Interview: Montana DeBor, Mark Harding, Gwynne Flanagan Cox, and Elise “Teddy” Sipos from Sweet Spot Aerial Production’s ‘Smoky Mirrors’ by Mike Bevel

“My faith is a great weight hung on a small wire.” – Anne Sexton Each performer in Sweet Spot Aerial’s Smoky Mirrors places great faith in materials: fabric, rope, chains, muscle. Th…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:37PM
Friday, August 11, 2017

Review: ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ featuring Tom Teasley at Constellation Theatre Company by Mike Bevel

When The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari hit German movie screens in 1920, it baffled and delighted audiences who had primarily been entertaining themselves with annual Film Festivals of Fred Ott’…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:44AM
Saturday, August 5, 2017

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ at Wildwood Summer Theatre at the Arts Barn by Mike Bevel

Spring Awakening (co-created by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik and now playing at the Arts Barn in The Kentlands) has a circular tragedy to it. Teens, struggling through youth and confusion a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:10PM
Thursday, August 3, 2017

Interview: Performers from the Upcoming ‘Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed!’ – Part II by Mike Bevel

Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed! was inspired by James Taylor’s Shocked and Amazed: On and Off the Midway, the world’s leading journal on weirdness in enter…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:00AM
Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Interview: Performers from the Upcoming ‘Atomic Doll Productions Presents: Shocked and Amazed!’ – Part I by Mike Bevel

Catching Up With Atomic Doll Productions! Sideshows and carnival acts have always offered normies a safe space to vicariously scratch that thrill itch. It’s equal part “I want to watch a…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:22AM
Sunday, July 23, 2017

Review: ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ at the Summer Dinner Theatre of Montgomery College by Mike Bevel

In 1850 Oregon, Adam Pontipee (a velvety-voiced Da’Von Moody) has come to town to trade some furs and look for a bride. We know he’s a romantic because his opening song is “Bless Your …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:40PM
Saturday, July 22, 2017

Review: ‘to tell my story: a hamlet fanfic’ at The Welders at Silver Spring Black Box Theater by Mike Bevel

Maybe the only way the play Hamlet could ever make sense is to filter it through a teenaged girl perspective. Watching a 30-year-old man galumph and philosophize his way through Elsinore –…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:10PM
Monday, July 17, 2017

Review: ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill’ at Anacostia Playhouse by Mike Bevel

“These are my friends,” Billie Holiday (Anya Nebel) tells her accompanist (LeVar Betts), gesturing at the audience. It is March of 1959, and Holiday will be dead in four months. She’s …

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:33PM

Review: ‘Oblivion’ at Unexpected Stage Company by Mike Bevel

“Games have rules,” Brooklyn-parent Dixon (Zach Brewster-Geisz) tells his wife, Pam (Mindy Shaw). They’re playing Boggle, Dixon has tried to play “Slurpee,” and both are a little w…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:07AM
Sunday, July 16, 2017

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘My Lack of a Social Life’ by Mike Bevel

Douglas Stafford is a very talented juggler. If that is an interest of yours, if you like juggling, and you’ve got an hour, then you may like this show. Stafford is pretty good as a magici…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:29PM
Thursday, July 13, 2017

2017 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Kara Sevda’ by Mike Bevel

Let’s get this part out of the way quickly: Lisa VillaMil’s Kara Sevda (at Shopkeepers through July 22) is an exhilarating piece of theater, masterfully and assuredly directed by Kat Haa…

SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:25PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards