Theatre Reviews

Colonial Players’ Dead Man’s Cell Phone

Answer this call and you’ll think twice about who you connect with

Madeline Hughes

With a quirky cast of characters and a script full of great one-liners Dead Man’s Cell Phone keep you on your toes guessing and laughing for most of an hour and a half. The plot draws us in with questions we ask about our own mortality and technology.

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– by Madeline Hughes – 6/19/14

2nd Star’s Hello, Dolly!

It would be a shame for one seat to go empty during this run.

Jane C. Elkin

Debuting to 10 Tony Awards 50 years ago, Hello, Dolly! is a rarity among musicals: song and dance blend seamlessly with story, its buoyant innocence saving it from contrivance. Based on Thornton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker, it’s a perfect vehicle for 2nd Star Productions, long recognized for outstanding musicals. The combination of strength in show and talent makes this the best amateur musical production I have seen in 13 years of reviewing.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 6/5/14

Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre’s 42nd Street

Gather under the stars for satins and sequins, top hats and tails and vocal harmonies with that Merry Melodies brand of manic sweetness

Jane C. Elkin

It seems only yesterday we were urged to come and meet those dancing feet … on 42nd Street. But the 2001 revival of the 1980 Broadway hit (both multiple Tony Award winners) debuted as a 1933 Warner Brothers film starring Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers. Now Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre brings back this buoyant musical extravaganza, after a 20-year hiatus, in a show billed as a “bold celebration of the transcendent joys of Broadway.”

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 5/29/14

Colonial Players’ These Shining Lives

Take an intimate look at private lives affected by corporate callousness.

Jane C. Elkin

Colonial Players has kept audiences engaged in a season that has swung from the ridiculous to reality: from a time machine to Death Row, and now from a tabloid fantasy to the Industrial Revolution. In Melanie Marnich’s These Shining Lives, a fictional treatment of a factual tragedy, we meet four victims of radium poisoning whose plight spawned a landmark Supreme Court decision on corporate responsibility and workers’ safety. Despite the legalistic dénouement, this story is less Erin Brokovich than an intimate look at the private lives affected by corporate callousness.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 5/22/14

Another Day on Willow Street

Compass Rose is the first theater to produce this edgy drama

Jane C. Elkin

“Why try something new when we already know what we like?” asks the conservative character in Compass Rose’s current production, Another Day On Willow Street. “Because,” says founding artistic director Lucinda Merry-Browne, “the future of theater depends on new works.”

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 5/15/14

The 39 Steps

Dignity Players exits stage left field, imagination amok

Jane C. Elkin

For nine years, Dignity Players has mounted quality productions on the themes of social justice and equality — morality plays that inspire with occasional forays into seriocomedy — brilliant, thought-provoking stuff. And now, as Monty Python would say, for something completely different: a hilarious send-up of John Buchan’s classic thriller The 39 Steps, which became a 1935 Alfred Hitchcock hit.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 5/8/14

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at The Theatre at AACC

That was pretty cool!

Jim Reiter

Rock musical and Andrew Jackson make a logical theatrical fit when you think about it: arrows cutting people down in mid-sentence; the scandal of marrying a married woman; a “people’s president” who strengthens the power of his office — yet sparks the creation of the Democratic party while crafting his image to get what he wants. There’s a lot of stage-worthy material to be mined from the life of our seventh president, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson reaches deep.

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– by Jim Reiter – 4/17/14

Colonial Players’ Bat Boy

This romanticized Frankenstein story is a shocking musical with a rocking score.

Jane C. Elkin

The story of a Bat Boy living in a West Virginia cave — illustrated with a photoshopped baby picture — amazed America in 1992 when published by Weekly World News, which bills itself as The World’s Only Reliable News. Playwrights Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming shared the popular fascination, and a gothic science fiction began stewing in their minds.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 4/10/14

Twin Beach Player’s Reunites Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys

Can two old geezers find a future past resentment?

Michelle Steel

For Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, Twin Beach Players reunites the biggest comedy team in Vaudeville for a nostalgic performance of their once-famous Doctor sketch. Willie Clark (Jeff Larsen) and Al Lewis (Tom Wines) were the act to catch for 43 years. But 11 years ago, Al walked out, leaving Willie to hold the bag of gags.

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– by Michelle Steel – 4/3/14

Compass Rose Theater’s Romeo and Juliet

Fired by the kind of love that transcends reason and leaves you weak in the knees.

Jane C. Elkin

From the thunderclap of their meeting to their untimely deaths, the power of Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other resonates throughout the play, and throughout history.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 3/20/14

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