All posts by Mark Briner

Ragtime in concert at Maryland Theatre Collective 📷 Matthew Peterson

Ragtime at Maryland Theatre Collective

Reviews November 1, 2023 Mark Briner

At the turn of the 20th century, a new music emanating from African-American urban communities began creeping into mainstream culture for the first of what eventually became many times over the course of the century. But in 1975, E.L. Doctorow used this musical form as a metaphor for not only the infusion of African-American influences into the white musical world, but for the changes in emerging racial presences that forced drastic social and class struggle,

Footloose at Annapolis Summer Garden

Reviews August 4, 2023 Mark Briner

In the summer of 1984, a little movie with a big soundtrack took the world by storm and launched a young up and coming leading man (for whom at the time you’d be pressed to find movie connections of two degrees) into the stratosphere as the ubiquitous megastar Kevin Bacon. Filling out the cast with veteran actors like John Lithgow and Dianne Weist along with breakout performances from young actors like Lori Singer and Sarah Jessica Parker,

My Fair Lady at The National Theatre

Reviews April 7, 2023 Mark Briner

The Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe classic My Fair Lady rolled their second leg of the post-Covid national tour into the National Theatre in DC. Originally conceived for Lincoln Center under the masterful eye of Bartlett Sher, the most accomplished director in the business for breathing new air and contemporary relevancy into beloved but dated musicals. Having had great success with such classics as The King & I, South Pacific, Fiddler on the Roof,

Melanie Moore (left) as Scout and Jacqueline Williams (right) as Calpurnia 📷Julieta Cervantes

To Kill a Mockingbird at The Hippodrome

Reviews March 15, 2023 Mark Briner

Sixty years ago Harper Lee penned what has become perhaps the quintessential American coming of age novel, the enduring and beloved staple of middle school American Literature curriculums To Kill a Mockingbird, which became in turn one of the most enduring and beloved movies of all time starring Gregory Peck, winner of the Academy Award for his endearing, human portrayal of antihero Atticus Finch trying to make a difference in the morality of the deep South.

Zurin Villanueva performing Higher as ‘Tina Turner’ and the cast of the North American touring production of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. 📸 Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Tina at The Hippodrome

Reviews November 16, 2022 Mark Briner

Tina Turner is arguably the most inspirational story in the history of rock and roll. Small town country girl with a big voice becomes part of a rock and roll institution. But success seemed stacked against her between an emotionally abusive mother and the most physically abusive husband this side of OJ Simpson, as she flees everything at the height of her career to start over with nothing, making perhaps the grandest comeback in rock and roll history.

Sweet Charity at Cockpit in Court

Reviews July 27, 2022 Mark Briner

Most shows feature a tried-and-true pattern of opening with a traditional “I Want” song, which details the leading character’s hopes and wishes for the rest of the story. Sweet Charity, currently playing on the main stage at Cockpit In Court at CCBC Essex, Directed by Cockpit veteran Eric Potter, is an entire show full of hopes and dreams and wants and desires, most of which are quickly dashed for the taxi dancers at the Fandango Ballroom,

Footloose at Phoenix Festival Theatre

Reviews March 4, 2022 Mark Briner

In the summer of 1984, a little movie with a big soundtrack took the world by storm and launched a young up-and-coming leading man for whom at the time you’d be pressed to find movie connections of two degrees into the stratosphere as the ubiquitous megastar Kevin Bacon. Filling out the cast with veteran actors John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest along with breakout performances from young actors like Lori Singer, Christopher Penn, and Sarah Jessica Parker,

Scharf’s Shorts at Spotlighters Theatre

Reviews October 26, 2021 Mark Briner

Friday night, October 22, 2021, was a very big night for a small but important theatre, one of a select few that are the very soul of Baltimore theatre history. After nineteen months of darkness thrust upon them due to Covid-19 lockdowns and mandates, The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre, that diminutive little workhorse in the step down basement on St. Paul Street, opened again with a light fanfare and a comfortable crowd of faithful patrons to kick off their 59th Season.

Next To Normal at The Kennedy Center

Reviews January 31, 2020 Mark Briner

The
Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage series drastically shifts gears but
continues to strike gold with their current production of Tom Kitt and Brian
Yorkey’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal. They have enjoyed great success for the last three
seasons mining a pleasing blend of golden age musicals like How to Succeed in Business Without Really
Trying and The Music Man and
modern age classics like In the Heights and The Who’s Tommy,

Latin Histsory for Morons at The National Theater

Reviews November 22, 2019 Mark Briner

Actor/writer/one-man-force-of-nature John Leguizamo
entered the National Theatre opening night to thunderous applause, which he
immediately attempted to quell. “We can’t waste any time,” he interjected, “We
have to unteach everything you’ve learned so far, and that’s a lot of shit to
undo.” He was not wrong, in the next two hours proceeding to offer a strong
opposition to the whitewashed revisionist history we’ve all been taught in high
school. Expertly guided by Tony Taccone’s taut direction,

Footloose at The Kennedy Center

Reviews October 12, 2019 Mark Briner

In the
summer of 1984, a little movie with a big soundtrack took the world by storm
and launched a young up-and-coming leading man for whom at the time you’d be
pressed to find movie connections of two degrees into the stratosphere as the
ubiquitous megastar Kevin Bacon. Filling out the cast with veteran actors like
John Lithgow and Dianne Weist along with breakout performances from young
actors like Lori Singer, Chris Penn, and Sarah Jessica Parker,

The Addams Family at Street Lamp Community Theatre

Reviews October 3, 2019 Mark Briner

The
little black box theatre that could, Street Lamp Productions in Rising Sun, closes
out their 4th season with a fan-favorite show that had a short life on Broadway
but has quickly become a modern classic staple of community and regional
seasons, The Addams Family, directed by Jamie and Andrew DiMaio.

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom

Marshall
Brickman and Rick Elice’s book may be short on Addams’ culture (with 80 years’
history of rich Addams pop culture to draw upon—the original New Yorker comic
panels,

Heidi Schreck in What The Constitution Means to Me. Photo: Joan Marcus

What The Constitution Means To Me at The Kennedy Center

Reviews September 15, 2019 Mark Briner

Like the play being revieweditself,
this review is by necessity going to be different. No cute opening paragraph.
No clever parallels. No history lesson to set the stage. Let me start right out
by saying that in 2019, this play couldn’t be more important. After two
off-Broadway incarnations and a Tony-nominated Broadway debut last spring
(winning the Obie Award for best new American play, the New York Drama Critic’s
Circle for best American play, and the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for best new
play as well as a Pulitzer nomination along the way),

Into The Woods at Beth Tfiloh Community Theatre

Reviews August 20, 2019 Mark Briner

Stephen
Sondheim is synonymous with darkly themed, intricately scored, chamber pieces
that hold a mirror up for the audience to self-reflect. On the surface, the fairy
tale wrappings of Into the Woods seem to defy that with brightly colored
costumes, unusually bouncy tunes, and a familiar cast of characters voicing a
plethora of wishes and dreams. But do not be fooled, because Sondheim, with
book writer James Lapine, has drawn his on-the-surface quaint fable not from Walt
Disney’s stable of technicolor,

Vinegar Tom at Spotlighters Theatre

Reviews May 30, 2019 Mark Briner

Sometimes, it’s all in the
timing. When the circles of life coincide with your best efforts, everyone
wins. There is a history of shows that premiered to little or no hoopla, but
when revived later in a different political or social climate, felt way more
relevant and meaningful. The most popular example is Kander & Ebb’s classic
musical Chicago. Opening in 1975
under the direction of Bob Fosse and starring dual leading legends Gwen Verdon
and Chita Rivera,

The Who’s Tommy at The Kennedy Center

Reviews April 28, 2019 Mark Briner

After two solid seasons, it’s
established that the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage series is a major
component of the Baltimore/DC theatrical landscape. Acquiring first rate
Broadway and Hollywood talent in intensely-assembled one week runs of home-grown
musicals in “concert” form that frankly rival and even exceed many current
national touring productions has brought unique, exciting new possibilities for
musical theatre to our region. They have given us superior mountings of
classics like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and The
Music Man.

A Bronx Tale at The National Theatre

Reviews March 27, 2019 Mark Briner

As a
performance piece, A Bronx Tale has
had maybe an even more colorful history than the events that inspired it. Back
in the late 80’s, Calogero Lorenzo “Chazz” Palminteri, a young, struggling
actor with big dreams met with a series of closed doors. Intent on making his
own luck, he realized that as a child he had a unique experience, and developed
a one-man show based on those events. The result was the critically acclaimed
1989 off-Broadway hit A Bronx Tale,

Pygmalion at Spotlighters Theatre

Reviews February 28, 2019 Mark Briner

In
ancient Greek mythology, the shy artist Pygmalion expressed no interest in
women, but when he created a statue of Galatea so fair he fell in love with it,
he made sacrifices to the goddess Aphrodite to give him a woman as beautiful as
his sculpture. She does him one better by bringing the marble Galatea to life
as his reward. In 1912, master Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw used that metaphor
of taking the basest elements of the earth and sculpting them into a real lady
in a very literal sense in his masterpiece Pygmalion.

Finding Neverland at The National Theatre

Reviews February 27, 2019 Mark Briner

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom
Jeff Sullivan and Conor McGiffin in Finding Neverland
Photo: Jeremy Daniel

Literally finding Neverland
entails locating the second star to the right and continuing straight till
morning. Fortunately, a significantly easier path to Finding Neverland entails only a brief 75-minute jaunt to the
National Theatre in Washington, DC where the current NETworks national tour is
camped out for a swashbuckling week of family friendly entertainment.

Rock of Ages at The Hippodrome

Reviews February 16, 2019 Mark Briner

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom

First and foremost, there is
no freaking monkey. It is important to know right off the top that this
national tour of the 2009 Broadway smash hit, written by Chris D’Arienzo,
paying homage to the big hair bands of 80’s pop/rock radio is nothing like
the horrendous, bloated travesty of a movie by Adam Shankman that was more
offensive than his previous ruination of cult classic Hairspray.

The Music Man at The Kennedy Center

Reviews February 9, 2019 Mark Briner

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom

What started out as a bold new
idea last year has realized itself as an exciting new staple of the
Baltimore/DC theatrical scene. The Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage
concert series, which features top notch Broadway and Hollywood talent in
quickly-assembled one week runs to add special event variety to their already
busy tour and concert seasons, once again strikes gold (or perhaps more
accurately, brass—an entire marching band’s worth) in their jubilant current
production of Meredith Willson’s Tony winning classic The Music Man.

In The Closet at Third Wall Productions

Reviews January 23, 2019 Mark Briner

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom

It’s a
subject that has been explored since the dawn of written language. From sources
as disparate as the Sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus in Ancient Greek mythology, to
Shakespeare’s classic Seven Ages of Man speech, all the way to Albee, and even The Cher Show, man has expounded on the
concept that any situation in life is filtered through the age and experience
of the character passing through.

Little Shop of Horrors at The Kennedy Center

Reviews October 27, 2018 Mark Briner

After their inaugural season struck gold with the latest reworking of Chess, a jubilant celebration of In the Heights, and a megawatt production of Pulitzer Prize winner How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, all of which rivaled or improved upon their latest Broadway incarnations, The Broadway Center Stage concert series at the Kennedy Center has set a high standard with their ambitious and impressive pop-up musicals.

The Addams Family at Phoenix Festival Theatre

Reviews September 26, 2018 Mark Briner

Phoenix Festival Theatre at Harford Community College closes out their 2018 season with a fan-favorite show that had a short life on Broadway but has quickly become a modern classic staple of community and regional seasons, The Addams Family, directed by Liz Boyer-Hunnicutt and James Hunnicutt.

It’s easy to see why New York critics reacted so harshly. Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book is ultimately unsure of what it wants to be.

Always… Patsy Cline at Free Range Humans

Reviews August 14, 2018 Mark Briner

Once Upon a Time, in a land before MTV and CMT, artists had to work their way to the top and pay their dues. When radio playlists weren’t laid down and dictated from corporate but left to the discretion and tastes of disc jockeys, determination, talent, and a ton of miles on your worn out car could earn you the fans and the prestige to become a bona fide star. Such is the tale of the legendary Patsy Cline.

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean at Cockpit in Court

Reviews July 26, 2018 Mark Briner

In the final days of the summer of 1955, a definitive cultural event rocked teenaged America when screen idol James Dean was killed in a car accident at the age of 24. Having starred in only three major films (Rebel Without a Cause. East of Eden, and Giant), he defined the prototypical rebellious, misunderstood teen and resonated with American youth unlike any actor ever. Despite his minimal time in the public eye,

Bullets Over Broadway at Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre

Reviews June 1, 2018 Mark Briner

Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre opens their 2018 season with a bang—literally—in the madcap musical version of Woody Allen’s Academy Award winning film Bullets Over Broadway. When an up and coming playwright is paired with the financial backing of the underworld, expect all the standard screwball hijinx of the Roaring 20’s told with the sounds of the Jazz Age hit parade. Armed with a book by Woody Allen (adapted form his Academy Award nominated original screenplay with Douglas McGrath) and a score,

In The Heights at The Kennedy Center

Reviews March 24, 2018 Mark Briner

In 2008 (or to some theatre youngsters, 7 B.H. –Before Hamilton), an up and coming Lin-Manuel Miranda took Broadway by storm with a contemporary look inside the Latino communities of Washington Heights in a groundbreaking work that featured the stories of his streets utilizing urban musical styles from salsa to rap. Ten years and two Tony Awards later, his story of women and minority business owners struggling to get ahead and “dreamers”

The Humans at The Kennedy Center

Reviews January 18, 2018 Mark Briner

Be it Christmas, Thanksgiving, Passover, or Festivus, the family convening for an annual anticipated holiday ritual that begins with good intentions, love, and thanks for all those gathering, but will inevitably devolve into a miserable airing of deeply-buried, lifelong grievances is one of the most tired and overused tropes in the cannon of American theatrical comedy or drama. When creativity comes to a halt, have a family dinner to force the blowup. Steven Karam’s 2016 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning The Humans,

Manifesto! at Happenstance Theatre

Reviews October 30, 2017 Mark Briner

Dada: (noun) an avant-garde art movement of the early 20th century centered in Zurich, New York, and Paris developed in reaction to Word War I, consisting of artists who rejected logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, promoting instead anti-bourgeois ideals through irrationality and nonsense.

For those who the parameters of the art form seem slightly vague (or for those who just plain slept through that particular art history class),