Colonial Players’ Inventing van Gogh requires an investment. Come mentally refreshed with a primer on the Impressionists, and you’ll enjoy it. Come unprepared with a weary mind, and you’ll likely be nodding off mid-way through Act I, as much of the audience did on opening night. The dialogue can be tedious. Still, I enjoyed this drama, despite several atrocious French accents. After all, what’s not to appreciate about obsession? It’s what drives the great among us...

The Bay Theatre Company hits new heights of hilarity with The Foreigner, Larry Shue’s award-winning comedy about personal transformation and miscommunication. Judging from opening night’s nearly full house, local audiences are finally taking note. It’s about time, too, for Annapolis’ only professional theatre, always solid, has matured into exceptional. Perhaps word has spread that the season opener — Lips Together, Teeth Apart — was recommended as a...

Jake’s Women, 2nd Star Productions’ fall season opener, presents an attractive setting for some fine local talent. But despite a valiant effort on the company’s part, this 1992 Neil Simon comedy fails to grab the audience by the collar and draw them back for more. It was a snoozer in the 1996 film adaptation, even with an all-star cast headed by Alan Alda, and it remains drowsy in this production. José de la Mar is excellent in the lead role as an emotionally distant writer...

In some plays you understand a character by dialogue, and in better plays through actions. But with the best, you know which way the wind blows from the moment a character walks on stage. So it is with Ben Carr and Jim Reiter, the pillars of Colonial Players’ Dog Logic, a dark comedy by Tom Strelich, playing through June 26. As the brilliant but brain-damaged manic with the heart of a dog, Carr has the audience eating out of his hand within the first minute of his opening monologue. He...