Theatre Reviews

Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre’s Rent

Stellar, but still shocking after all these years

Jane C. Elkin

When Jonathan Larson’s rock opera Rent, loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme, debuted 20 years ago to a Pulitzer and Tony for Best Musical, it felt so edgy, so raunchy, so shocking with its cast of young radicals: the addicts, the drag queen, the bisexual, the stripper. Despite evolving societal norms and newer crises eclipsing the AIDS epidemic, this blockbuster still has power.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 7/7/16

Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre’s The Wedding Singer

Back to the ’80s

Jim Reiter

To celebrate its 50th season bringing musical theater to Annapolis, Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre has chosen this summer to stage, in reverse order, The Producers, Rent … and The Wedding Singer. The Producers won 12 out of its 15 Tony nominations, setting the nominations record and joining the short list of musicals winning in every nominated category. Rent was nominated for 10 Tonys and won four, plus the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Wedding Singer … five nominations, no wins and critical yawns.

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Performing Arts

Theatre Reviews

– by Jim Reiter – 6/9/16

Compass Rose Theater’s The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd

First-rate performers, playful choreography, excellent music and an enduring message

Jane C. Elkin

The game of life has no stadium or season yet is rife with winners and losers, superstars and scandals. We all love a good underdog story, and if it can be told in song and dance, all the better. Compass Rose Theater’s The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd is just such a spectacle.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 5/12/16

Twin Beach Players’ Much Ado About Nothing

An impressive troupe of young people takes on one of the most challenging races in theater

Pam Shilling

Producing a Shakespeare play is similar to running a marathon. It’s grueling, frustrating, thrilling and exhausting — and that’s just training. Maintaining forward motion through the entire course is an accomplishment for any age. Twin Beach Players youth production of Much Ado About Nothing has taken on that challenge with great success.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Pam Shilling – 6/23/16

Colonial Players’ Good People

A very good play balancing good fortune with bad luck

Jim Reiter

“To live in poverty is to exist in a war zone,” award-winning Colonial Players director Edd Miller notes in the playbill for Good People. “Not necessarily with bullets and bombs but with situational choices of conscience.” Do choices pull people out of poverty? Determine our lot in life? Or is it luck? Or hard work? Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire and Miller ask us not to decide but to consider.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Jim Reiter – 6/16/16

2nd Star Productions’ Guys and Dolls

A sure bet for a good time

Jane C. Elkin

From auditions to curtain, every theater production is a gamble, but 2nd Star Productions’ Guys and Dolls beats the odds. A period piece lampooning its own subculture, this 1950 Tony winner for Best Musical still feels funny and frisky from the opening Call to Post to the classic Fugue for Tinhorns. It grabs you by the lapels and doesn’t let go as Nicely Nicely Johnson (James Hulcha), Benny Southstreet (Nathan Bowen) and Rusty Charlie (Daniel Starnes) vow I Got the Horse Right Here.

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Theatre Reviews

– by Jane C. Elkin – 6/2/16

Colonial Players’ The Secret Garden

Spread the word about this haunted place of miraculous possibilities where the crippled are made whole, body and soul

Jane Elkin

“I’m sure there is magic in everything,” says the invalid child Colin in The Secret Garden, “only we have not sense to get hold of it.”

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– by Jane Elkin – 4/14/16

Twin Beach Players’ The Miser

Catch the second weekend of fun and frivolity

Karen Lambert

Time-travel nearly 350 years from the court of King Louis XIV of France to Twin Beach Players’ version of Molière’s 1668 comedy of manners, L’Avare. The Miser, as English has it, completes performer/director Jeff Larson’s production of a Moliere trilogy, including Tartuffe and the Imaginary Invalid, spanning 14 years of theatrical performances by Twin Beach Players. Through all, he’s teamed with company president Sid Curl.

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– by Karen Lambert – 4/14/16

Compass Rose Theater’s The Diary of Anne Frank

Life, love and inspiration from a humble hiding place

Jim Reiter

The miracle of Anne’s work is that no matter our background, it feels like she is talking directly to us. Indeed. Those are the words of Steve Tobin, the director of Compass Rose’s beautifully constructed production of The Diary of Anne Frank.

article – Theatre Reviews

– by Jim Reiter – 3/24/16

The Wit Hits the Fanjet, and the Laughs Soar

Colonial Players presents a laugh-filled farce with Boeing, Boeing

Jim Reiter

French playwright Marc Camoletti’s Boeing Boeing made a successful takeoff overseas in 1962, playing for seven years in London. But on Broadway three years later, it stalled after 23 performances. A movie version with Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis was widely ignored. But a 2008 Broadway revival was a hit, and that version has landed at Colonial Players in Annapolis.

article – Theatre Reviews

– by Jim Reiter – 2/25/16

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