Theatre Reviews

Compass Rose Theater’s God of Carnage

Boys will be boys, but their parents can be hell

Jim Reiter

"My whole life is in there!" That’s the quote of the night as Alan becomes tragically detached from a part of his body — his cell phone — in Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning God of Carnage, playing through March at Compass Rose Theater. In his playbill notes, director Steven Carpenter quotes playwright Reza as saying of her plays: “They are funny tragedy, but they are tragedy.” Indeed.

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– by Jim Reiter – 3/2/17

2nd Star Productions’ Peter and the Starcatcher

Peter Pan’s fantastical origins — with crackling one-liners, slapstick staging, flatulence and actors in drag

Jim Reiter

“If you like your Peter Pan with crackling one-liners, slapstick staging, actors in drag and flatulence, then Peter and the Starcatcher is for you. The one-liners are no surprise, since the children’s book on which this 2012 Broadway Tony-winner was based was co-written by humor columnist Dave Barry. What is a surprise is that the broad humor of this production works well, even though the story is a prequel to the angst-filled Peter Pan we all know and grew up with.

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– by Jim Reiter – 2/16/17

Colonial Players’ The City of Conversation

Taking on the rise and fall of your political ideals

Jim Reiter

It’s always good to make an audience think. In The City of Conversation, Colonial Players makes us do just that with a story that is well told, emotional and often laugh-out-loud funny — as well as relevant, with its look at how politics can split families.

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– by Jim Reiter – 1/19/17

Compass Rose Theater’s Camelot

Timeless ideals well told and beautifully sung

Jim Reiter

“Camelot, located nowhere in particular, can be anywhere,” wrote a scholar on Arthurian times. Fortunately for us it resides until January 22 in Annapolis at Compass Rose Theater. Director Lucinda Merry-Browne’s rousing revival takes a scaled-down approach to this Broadway blockbuster, proving that less is more. A cast of 10, a seven-foot grand piano grandly played and a spare set bring this passionate and humorous classic to life.

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– by Jim Reiter – 12/22/16

Twin Beach Player’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Our best family night at the theater — ever

Kathy Knotts

Anight at the theater — or anywhere, for that matter — is always an adventure when you have children in tow. A few weeks ago, our family of four attended a musical production in Baltimore that left me wondering if I had made a big mistake thinking my sons would enjoy the theater. Dad slept through the whole thing, the younger said there was too much singing, and the elder commented all the way through, despite my insistent hushing.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Kathy Knotts – 12/1/16

USNA Masqueraders’ Much Ado About Nothing

Midshipmen take on Shakespeare on youth, war and relations between the sexes

Jim Reiter

Megan Geigner, the new director of the U.S. Naval Academy’s midshipman theater group The Masqueraders, grabbed the helm with deft touch and a focused vision, staging a delightfully energetic version of Shakespeare’s popular comedy, Much Ado About Nothing. She chose the play because it’s about young people, more specifically young people coming home from war, and about gender relations.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Jim Reiter – 11/17/16

Colonial Players’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Like a horrific accident, it makes you cringe even as you brake to see it better

Jane C. Elkin

When outrage-stage author Edward Albee passed away in September, the theater world mourned with a collective gasp, as if his death from old age were just another violent trick designed to snap us out of complacency. The triple Pulitzer prize-winner aimed to make audiences so uncomfortable they would “run out of the theater — but come back to see the play again.” He succeeded most notably with his first full-length production, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The Pulitzer committee chose to grant no prize in 1963 rather than award it to Albee.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Jane C. Elkin – 11/10/16

Compass Rose Studio Theater’s Hamlet

Shakespeare makes a thrilling return to the Dark Ages

Jane Elkin

This month Annapolitans celebrate Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary with not only his First Folio on display at St. John’s College’s Mitchell Gallery but also a fine production of Hamlet at the Compass Rose Studio Theater.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Jane Elkin – 11/3/16

2nd Star Productions’ H.M.S. Pinafore

This comic opera sparkles like sunshine on the sea with all the charm that made it a hit more than a century ago

Jim Reiter

You may have never heard of Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert, but you’ve certainly heard of Gilbert and Sullivan. The two had a run of comic opera hits in England whose popularity propelled them across the pond to America, where that popularity was magnified. Because Gilbert’s father was a naval surgeon, life on the seas and the politics of power were often themes of the librettist. That’s certainly the case with H.M.S. Pinafore, the light yet acerbic jab at patrician politics and love that 2nd Star Productions in Bowie has brought to seafaring life.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Jim Reiter – 10/27/16

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Twin Beach Players’ talented ensemble delivers a Vaudevillian circus of musical theater

Karen Lambert

“Musical comedies aren’t written, they are rewritten,” declares Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Just so, writers Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart of movie and television fame readapted a collection of Greek-themed works already adapted by the Roman playwright Plautus around the turn of the second century, B.C.

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– by Karen Lambert – 10/20/16

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