Scrooge the Musical at Artistic Synergy of Baltimore hardly needs an introduction to tell you what it’s all about! It’s the timeless classic Christmas story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which has seen probably more interpretations and remakes than any other Christmas story in history, set to a wonderful score. While you have probably seen countless interpretations (or even other stage productions) of A Christmas Carol over the years,
A thoughtful retelling of Dickens’ classic, with music.
This is the fourth year of Wolfpack Theatre Company’s A Christmas Carol. Director William Leary has updated the off-told story with modern settings and sentiment. For example, we learn that Robert Cratchit Sr. and Andrew Scrooge had formed a beneficial business partnership that young Ebenezer destroys by merging with Marley. This deliberately joins all of the characters as an extended family with its attendant tensions.
I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time! NO WAY, KID! YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT! So instead Santa’s going to bring you tickets to see A Christmas Story at The Maryland Ensemble Theatre this year! Hey, it beats Lincoln Logs or Tinker Toys! Directed by Gené Fouché this non-musical stage adaptation of the classic Turner Entertainment Co.,
Tis the season for businesses to capitalize on the holiday season, and the business of show is no exception. Local theatre listings for December are replete with Dickensian tales, miracles on some street or another, and Red Ryder BB guns. And then there are the companies that stage a piece that is a “holiday show” only insofar as it takes place on or around Christmas, thereby giving them an excuse to deck the set with boughs of holly and play carols in the lobby.
Of all the days in all the year that I’m familiar with— there’s several very important ones leading up to— December the 25th! Correct! And those important days are any days between now and December 17, 2017 wherein The Children’s Playhouse of Maryland has a performance of their holiday musical, Scrooge. Directed by Liz Boyer Hunnicutt with Musical Direction by Charlotte Evans and Choreography by Amanda Poxon, this classic and musical spin on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol will put you in the holiday spirit for certain with all of its spry and spirited youngsters skipping and spinning about!
Are you ready for an adventure? Not your typical fairytale story as Hansel & Gretel wander about through their magically enchanted wood! Synetic Family Theater presents Hansel & Gretel like you’ve never seen it before! Co-Directors Tori Bertocci and Elena Velasco also co-choreograph this fantastical and wondrous holiday spectacular which transplants the classic story of two children lost in the woods into the modern world of Christmas. With a babysitter who is too busy texting away on her smart phone,
Tis the season to stuff your face be it with chestnuts roasting on the open fire, grandma’s pumpkin pie or the Heavy Hors D’Oeuvres that The Interrobang Theatre Company his throwing down this holiday season! In its third incarnation, The Interrobang Theatre Company is proud to present Heavy Hors D’Oeuvres 3: Interrobang’s Holiday Dinner. But don’t be fooled, this isn’t your ordinary Christmas comedy or holiday hilarity, it’s actually some delicious bite-sized semi-dramas that all come together for one intriguing local playwright sampler this time of year.
It’s that time of year when the world falls in love and every song you hear seems to say… buy this toy for Christmas! Purchase that thing for Christmas! Spend, spend, spend for holiday cheer! Armed to the teeth with the true spirit of Christmas and holiday bliss, Toby’s the Dinner Theatre of Columbia is fully prepared to combat Christmas commercialism and slay seasonal cynicism with their superb production of Meredith Willson’s Miracle on 34th Street.
It is the time of year for joy, love, and holiday traditions. One tradition that many people hold dear is a yearly outing to see A Christmas Carol, they pick from numerous theatres all playing the famous production and get their yearly fix of the British miser who changes his ways. It has been a long time since a new adaptation of the famous tale has come around, however at a small theatre in Annapolis that is exactly what has happened.
Ordinarily, the day after Thanksgiving consists of folks sitting around the house with still-loosened belts, eating delicious leftovers, perhaps catching up on missed episodes of favorite TV shows, and/or attempting to recover from the tryptophan-induced comas still plaguing them from the night before. But this year – at least for some – things unfolded a little differently. Instead of relaxing in their living rooms, dozens and dozens of people filled the seats at the Greenbelt Arts Center to watch a visually stunning,
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Final boarding call for all passengers boarding flight STC-2017 to Illyria. All passengers please make their way to Sidney Harman Hall and follow the instructions of the flight attendant.
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The setup is astonishing, and at first a peculiar choice, but Director Ethan McSweeny’s conceptualization of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is nothing but gob-smacking by the play’s conclusion. Not unlike a cinematic psychological thriller,
Gobsmacked! By the rhythm of you! Gobsmacked! By what they can do! Mind blown! How do I react? Silenced by the impact! All true statements when it comes to the high-octane explosive acapella performance happening in The Eisenhower Theatre this weekend at The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Direct from London and led by the ferociously tenacious and fearlessly flawless beat-boxing legend, Ball-Zee— GOBSMACKED lands in time to pump up the volume,
Animals, animals, animals, animals. Animals, Animals, Animals, Animals. ANIMALS, ANIMALS, ANIMALS, ANIMALS! It’s all about those animals, well, actually, you see, it’s all about those wild and incredible animals that Jane Goodall will spend her life researching and understanding as she evolves into being a Naturalist. But first she’s got to eat her breakfast! Bring the whole family for a fun and thrilling adventurous musical all about young Jane Goodall, who would later in life grow to be one of the world’s most renowned Naturalists,
Think about the story of your life, about how you came to be where you are and have the life you have. Got it? Are you ready to share that story in front of a live audience? For most people the answer is probably no and if the answer is anything that might be uncomfortable to audiences it is probably an even bigger no. But for comedian Felonious Munk, the answer is let’s go.
Music is the magic that makes ev’rything sunshiny! And dancing is the thing that makes all your troubles seem tiny! And when you’re sitting watchin’ Crazy For You at Signature Theatre this holiday season, it’ll be all sunshine and smiles with no troubles or cares and you won’t be bothered o’er anything else, I swear! They’ve got the music and it’s magic, and they’ve got the best dancing once could ask for!
Aha! Oui, oui, mah friends! The day we have waited for may be at hand! The Tidewater Players are producing Disney’s Beauty and The Beast. Ah…Beauty and The Beast. Think what that means! They’ll be singing again! They’ll be dancing again! They’ll be dressing up in glitter galore! They’ll be acting again! They’ll be living again! They’ll be entertaining audiences by the score! And The Tidewater Players,
Three blind mice…three blind mice…see how they run…to The Woodbrook Players in the Brown Memorial Woodbrook Presbyterian Church this autumn to see the infamous Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap. Critically acclaimed as The West End’s longest running live theatrical show, The Mousetrap is filled with spine-tingling chills that only Agatha Christie can pen properly for the stage. Directed by Ron Oaks, the show is making its Towson area appearance just in time to put the post-Halloween shivers in the air.
Moriarty was dead to begin with.
Not exactly your average Dickensian start to A Christmas Carol is it?
But these are the facts:
As luck or good holiday fortune might have it,
Archeology is not a science, but an art. It is the art of knowing where to look and what to look for and going to find it. Put on your Doctor Jones hat and join the archeological excursion for extraordinary women’s theatre this fall as The Strand Theatre delves into the ancient past with Bryony Lavory’s Origin of the Species. Directed by Erin Riley, this thought-provoking tale puts a new spin on history and how we as humans,
You are not defined by where you start but by where you end up. And if you end up like Leo Clark and Jack Gable you’re going to need an entire Webster’s dictionary to define just exactly where you’ve ended up. Or how you’ve ended up. Or as whom! The Salem Players present to audiences all over the 21228 (and beyond!) zip-code their fall production of Ken Ludwig’s zany farce, Leading Ladies.
This past Saturday I found myself in a church on Clinton Street, in a hall where one would expect to be voting or watching an Easter pageant rather than seeing a show. Tucked to one side of the room is a stage made of recycled flats and platforms, dressed with sustainably sourced materials; on it, four actors and a first time director mount a production of a nearly thirty-year-old play that was as moving,
Did you know that it’s less than 50 days until Christmas? It is. It is… And did you know that The Bowie Community Theatre is putting on their very own holiday production of A Tuna Christmas? They are! They are, yes they are. Directed bey Ken Kienas, this redneck holiday classic has some wild stereotypes that’ll give you the jingles all over your funny bone and just in time for the coming holiday season!
Once upon a time at a theatre just outside Baltimore a director had a wish, to bring to life a production featuring some of the most beloved fairytale characters of our childhoods. His tale is one full of magic, woe, and cows. Does he succeed or is this just a moment better left in the woods? Well you will just have to read on as I share with you my journey at The Heritage Player’s performance of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapines’ Into the Woods Directed by TJ Lukacsina.
You can only get to where you’re at by way of where you’ve been. And if you’ve been to Rep Stage then you’re at the right place for their production of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. An intimate evening with Lady Day is set before your eyes in the intimate staging of the Studio Theatre inside the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center at Howard Community College. Rep Stage,
You spend your time seated in the audience, looking through the camera lens of your own two eyes every time you watch a show; you almost disappear into the magic that is the portrait of theatre, if the company putting the show on is doing it right. With the ephemeral beauty and ethereal magic that only musical theatre can provide, Kensington Arts Theatre produces a quality production of The Bridges of Madison County— the show’s DC Area community theatre premiere— almost as breathtaking as one of Robert Kincaid’s photographs.
Beauty, truth, and rarity, grace and all simplicity; but what happens when Shakespeare is displaced in favor the sex-worker industry where beauty becomes filth, truth becomes the cold, hard reality of drugs and prostitution, and rarity is the kindness of a stranger from a world outside of unending night? In a visually poetic and evocatively moving new work, The Ravens— making its United States premiere— opens as script number 62 and the final production of Season17,
Charlene V. Smith bookends Doctor Faustus with two magnificent, and very different, speeches. She begins with arrogance borne of intelligence, full of both wit and ennui, seeking greener pastures beyond this world. She ends broken, despairing, hopeless, crying out to heaven and hell. Her performance as Joan Faustus is insightful and incisive, precise and passionate.
The bridge between the two is Hollis Evey as Mephistopheles, who grants Faustus her every worldly wish in exchange for the immortal soul that Joan doesn’t believe she has.
Just another boring upscale dinner party-alcohol flowing freely, chatter, strong opinions, heated debates, and an almost Stepford hostess fluttering around her guests. Right? Well, if you consider helicopter noises, explosions, and fiery lighting boring and normal then absolutely! You will want to make your way to Silver Spring Stage right now to see their latest production led by Director Bill Hurlbut, Omnium Gatherum by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros and Theresa Rebeck. It is a production that will make you laugh one moment,
If you love Shakespeare, you are likely to love SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE as a stage production even better than the movie by the same name. There’s more Shakespeare in it. In fact, it opens with a song version of a popular sonnet, just in case you don’t quite remember all 14 lines. Throughout the show, there are nods and references to a number of The Bard’s works, great swaths of quotations,
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),