Sunday, February 12, 2017
Today’s audiences need farce. Wild men chasing beautiful women through many doors, visual running gags, women dressed as men, and vice versa, all enhanced by a desperation throttled perfor…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:17PMSaturday, January 28, 2017
Atlanta 1948: “Negro Policemen to Patrol City Streets—They are ordered not to arrest white people” This is an actual headline featured in the multimedia of Bristol Riverside’s Drivin…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:16PMSaturday, December 10, 2016
Close harmony, the singing style popularized in World War Two by the Andrews Sisters, is formidably difficult to do well. Did you ever wonder why great close harmony teams frequently had th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:55PMFriday, December 2, 2016
Fifty years is a very long time for an arts group to exist in this changing world and economy, but Freedom Theatre is celebrating its golden anniversary with a reconceived production of its …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:37PMSunday, November 27, 2016
Every city has a Clybourne Park. “It starts one house at a time,” as one of the characters states. In act one (1959) it is a neighborhood that will soon have its first “colored” fami…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:37PMMonday, November 21, 2016
The miraculous Andrea Marcovicci briefly returned to Philadelphia. One of the grandest divas of cabaret, Ms. Marcovicci seemed to own the fabled Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel for over 25…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:15PMSaturday, November 12, 2016
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade is perhaps the world’s longest title …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:47AMThursday, November 3, 2016
Greek Tragedy ably performed by 17 year olds? Is such a thing possible? Read on. The play is Sophocles’ Antigone, which is probably the best dramatic examination of the conflict we …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:44AMMonday, October 10, 2016
Imagine the shock of the Provincetown Players of 1920 when they received the script for The Emperor Jones. The play contains a monumental role for a “negro” actor, and hundreds of roles…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:50AMThursday, September 29, 2016
A thunderbolt hit Philadelphia last night in the form of the play Rizzo. The quake was made memorable not only by the superb playwriting of Bruce Graham and the multi- megaton production by …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:39PMThursday, September 22, 2016
The mists of ancient history paint the birth of theater as religious ritual that gradually transmuted into drama.The Ancient Greeks always considered attending a play festival as a religious…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:36PMSaturday, September 17, 2016
“Gaslighting” is actually a word. My dictionary describes the verb as “a form of psychological abuse in which false information is provided to the victim with the purpose of ma…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:09PMSaturday, September 10, 2016
Electile Dysfunction is a very funny show. Act II Playhouse is performing quite a community service, since the current election news ranges from ridiculous to terrifying. Laughter is certai…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 06:24PMFriday, August 19, 2016
Do you know your neighbors? Even their names? Years ago, (before the internet, video games, and cable TV), people routinely visited their neighbors, to share cups of sugar and companionship…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:45PMSunday, July 31, 2016
“Why, oh, why do the wrong people travel When the right people stay at home.” From Sail Away by Noel Coward This opening lyric sets the tone for On the Road Again, a cabaret show written…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:06PMSaturday, July 30, 2016
Atlantic City came to the Philadelphia area last night and it was a rare treat. Those who primarily know Rebecca Shoemaker and Michael McGeehan from their videos from Caesar’s Palace or th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:01PMMonday, July 25, 2016
Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope is a musical that’s not produced very often – but in its day, it was a huge hit. Opening on Broadway in 1972, it ran for over 1,000 performances and ear…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:19AMSunday, July 24, 2016
The man in black has come to Malvern. It’s a long way from The Grand Ole Opry, but People’s Light has imported a cast that seems to have grown up in that world, with musical instruments…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:04PMWednesday, June 22, 2016
Broadway today is the era of musical/cartoon/film/remakes. We should, therefore, be grateful for anything that attempts a reasonably adult theme: in this case, how our decisions will create …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:43PMSunday, June 19, 2016
Feed the Beast! Money, power, fame! It’s all here, along with a touch of sleazy sex in the world premiere of The Harassment of Iris Malloy. Who exactly is being harassed becomes the myste…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:06PMSaturday, June 18, 2016
If you are a musical theatre fanatic, like me, with a mammoth record collection, then you have always wanted to see Jamaica. Well, cross that off my bucket list. Freedom Theatre has done it …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:07AMThursday, June 2, 2016
Power. Election. Power. Primaries. Backroom Deals! Power! It’s election season again, and the media is overflowing with comment and analysis. After the surprise of the 2008 election and th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:35PMSaturday, May 28, 2016
Exactly 100 years ago, a group of Irish poets, musicians, writers and dreamers seized the Dublin Post Office, (yes, that’s right, the Post Office) in an ill conceived attempt to surprise t…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:01AMSaturday, May 21, 2016
The Broadway Musical flowered in the years following World War II. Many of the musicals produced during this “golden age” remain treasures of our lyric theater. One of the best will al…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:40PMFriday, May 13, 2016
A phoenix arises! The New Freedom Theatre is back with a solid professional production. After many seasons of darkness, except for their acclaimed theatre school, the lights are on again wit…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:59PMSunday, May 8, 2016
School shootings are inexplicable. A high school used to be an open welcoming location. Today they are locked-down prisons, intently suspicious of any unusual activity. Any play that tries t…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:06PMSaturday, April 23, 2016
“Crimes of Passion” have always stimulated audiences, and America in the 1920’s had one of the great ones. Ruth Synder killed her loathsome husband with the help of her boyfriend. Both…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:10PMFriday, April 15, 2016
One hundred years ago a group of Irish poets, musicians and classical scholars rebelled against English rule. The “Easter Uprising” was cruelly subdued by the occupying British, but this…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:52AMMonday, April 11, 2016
Bravo to the Stagecrafters of Chestnut Hill. Their production of Clifford Odets’ The Country Girl captures all the hidden complexity of this powerful and difficult to achieve drama. Odets …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:57PMSunday, April 3, 2016
One thing was abundantly clear as the youthful Quintessence Theatre Group cast took its curtain call to the cheers of a packed house: these players had fun. Fun you ask? Isn’t this The T…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:02PMFriday, March 25, 2016
Walnut Street Theatre rocked with laughter tonight. The Pirate King, Black Stache, was arguing with his mate, Smee, concerning a severed. . .oh well you have to see it. It was like old time …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:51AM 
