Baltimore Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 3

Review: BABEL At Contemporary American Theater Festival Probes the Dilemmas That Could Be Presented By Eugenics
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 18, 2022

Babel, which invites us to contemplate a world, apparently in the near future, in which the human genome is so well understood that every person’s – and fetus’s – potential, including the potential for antisocial behavior – is determinable, and if a child cannot be “certified” while in utero as meet...

Review: A Chaotic THE FIFTH DOMAIN at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 18, 2022

The play is an ungodly and irremediable mess, but it does demonstrate the importance of the proposition for which the central character was willing to put his career at risk, i.e., that more care needs to be taken, by industry and government alike, of secrets – their own and everyone else’s....

The Ending of Humanity at the Bottom of the World? USHUAIA BLUE at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 17, 2022

This is more a theater piece than a play, Caridad Svich's choral meditation on the plight of the earth and the humans who inhabit it....

Review: Giving A 'Karen' the Scrooge Treatment: WHITELISTED at Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Jack L. B. Gohn - July 17, 2022

This is playwright Chisa Hutchinson's their outing at CATF. I liked both of her previous entries, and she continue to wax both original and amusing, without slighting the serious messages she always delivers....

Review: THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL at Toby's Dinner Theater
by Cybele Pomeroy - June 28, 2022

What did our critic think?If you don't have cable, watch SpongeBob Squarepants nor any clue why SpongeBob should be a Broadway musical, no worries. Everything is made clear for those entering Bikini Bottom for the first time. It's packed with family theater elements: bright colors, important themes,...

Review: World War Two MUCH ADO? Who Knew?
by Jack L. B. Gohn - June 23, 2022

What did out critic think? The essential attribute of the play, the combative romance of Benedick and Beatrice (Dylan Arredondo and Anna DiGiovanni), is the only truly sacred element of the play. Dylan Arredondo and Anna DiGiovanni, give these principals a full-throated presentation, Arredondo leani...

BWW Review: FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS at Audrey Herman's Spotlighters Theatre
by Timoth David Copney - May 31, 2022

Five wise-cracking southern belles come to know way more about each other than they intended as bridesmaids....

BWW Review: AIN'T TOO PROUD at The Hippodrome
by Timoth David Copney - May 04, 2022

For audience members of a certain age (like moi), jukebox musicals are much more than an evening’s entertainment. Sometimes they are a Soul Train dance down the days of our youth. Such is the case with Ain’t Too Proud, The Life and Times of The Temptations. Now playing in Baltimore at the Hippodrome...

BWW Review: Awash in Ideas and Fun: DREAM HOU$E at Baltimore Center Stage
by Jack L. B. Gohn - April 29, 2022

Dream Hou$e is awash in ideas, about Latinx identity, about generational wealth transfers, about gentrification, about memory versus history, about personal authenticity, about priorities, about the inherent value of things, about the TV biz, etc., etc., etc. You wouldn’t expect a package of all the...

BWW Review: A Great, Problematic Ride: HENRY V at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Jack L. B. Gohn - April 25, 2022

To put the biggest problem in contemporary terms, terms which doubtless occurred to many members of the audience besides just me: Is this a play about Zelensky or is it a play about Putin? You can characterize it as the story of a small army’s gallant victory against a much larger and better-equippe...

BWW Review: ROCKY at Toby's Thinks Outside The Boxing
by Cybele Pomeroy - April 14, 2022

New talent joins Toby's regulars to present ROCKY THE MUSICAL at Toby's in Columbia. Inspired by an actual 1974 boxing match, the unknown Rocky Balboa 'goes the distance' against superstar Apollo Creed, proving to himself, his lady love and all of Philly that an underdog can have teeth. Music and ly...

BWW Review: PRETTY WOMAN at The Hippodrome
by Timoth David Copney - April 06, 2022

Pretty Woman, The Musical has shimmered onto the stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome and landed squarely on it's Jimmy Choo'd feet. A bold and brassy tune fest, it's an homage to the 1990 film starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and this version's cast is definitely up to the inevitable comparisons....

BWW Review: A RAISIN IN THE SUN at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Timoth David Copney - February 08, 2022

...it is as fine a theatrical treatment of this oft-produced - not though not oft enough - play as I’ve ever seen...

BWW Review: Thoughtful, Satisfying THE PROM at the Hippodrome
by Jack L. B. Gohn - January 19, 2022

there's hardly a joke that misfires, hardly a dance step that doesn't thrill, and hardly a song that doesn't connect. It all works together, and the audience will leave utterly sated. Not to miss....

BWW Review: Pulitzer Prize winner THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH Is a Romp at Everyman Theatre.
by Charles Shubow - December 20, 2021

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BWW Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT CHESAPEAKE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
by Timoth David Copney - December 06, 2021

God bless us everyone for this lovely start to the Holiday Season of theatre...

BWW Review: FIRES IN THE MIRROR at Baltimore Center Stage: Really Listening To All Sides After A City Explodes
by Jack L. B. Gohn - December 03, 2021

Fires in the Mirror is Anna Deavere Smith's now-classic theatre piece about the Crown Heights, Brooklyn disturbances of 1991, the singular point of which is that it's impossible to know exactly what to think about those events either....

BWW Review: What's Gonna Happen is a Hilarious Time: TOOTSIE at the Hippodrome
by Jack L. B. Gohn - December 01, 2021

In the oft-repeated words of the character Sandy, sung in a hilarious patter-fest at strategic points in the musical of Tootsie, playing this week only at the Hippodrome, 'I know what's going to happen.' What's going to happen is that you will attend the show and have an uproarious good time....

BWW Review: Catharsis and Spangles: DREAMGIRLS, ArtsCentric Style
by Jack L. B. Gohn - November 29, 2021

Let’s stipulate that book writer and lyricist Tom Eyen and composer Henry Krieger were not Sondheim. What they gave us in Dreamgirls was serviceable, not brilliant, the result of a long development process largely aimed at repairing holes in the melodrama. The result: the company that puts on the sh...

BWW Review: IRVING BERLIN'S WHITE CHRISTMAS FLURRIES INTO TOBY'S IN COLUMBIA
by Cybele Pomeroy - November 16, 2021

In the tradition of ‘40s musicals, WHITE CHRISTMAS tugs heartstrings and brightens spirits. The timeless music of Irving Berlin combined with the dedication and talent of Toby’s yields a family-friendly show sure to give you cocoa-and-fireplace feelings no matter the weather...

BWW Review: STILL AN AWFUL LOT OF FUN: WAITRESS AT THE HIPPODROME
by Jack L. B. Gohn - November 07, 2021

Building on Adrienne Shelly’s sometimes grimly hilarious and frequently heartwarming 2007 movie of the same name, and realized for the musical stage by Broadway’s first all-female creative team in 2016, Waitress has been almost continuously on Broadway, apart from a COVID break which ended when the ...

BWW Review: Perhaps a Little Too Short?
by Jack L. B. Gohn - October 24, 2021

Mark Scharf is a master of the 10-minute play, except, perhaps, where he tries to use it to explore large themes....

BWW Review: Suicide Isn't Painless, But It Can Be Funny: EVERY BRILLIANT THING at Single Carrot Theatre
by Jack L. B. Gohn - September 04, 2021

There can be rational decisions to end one’s own life, but when such decisions are driven by most kinds of depression, which by definition are not rational, no one else, especially no one else touched by it, can make sense of it. And no string of “Whys” will bring us closer to an explanation. But co...

BWW Review: STEEL MAGNOLIAS at Everyman Theatre
by Jack L. B. Gohn - August 27, 2021

Audiences need each other as much as the performers need audiences; in the aisles we feed off each other's energy, helping each other get the jokes, experience the pathos, and admire the performances. Steel Magnolias, is an excellent way to make our return, with plenty of jokes, plenty of pathos, an...

BWW Review: JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at Players On Air
by Timoth David Copney - July 26, 2021

What's the buzz? Lemme tell you what was a'happenin' last weekend at the performing arts space in the old North Carroll High School in Hampstead. Players On Air presented a revival of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Jesus Christ Superstar and those hallowed halls were rockin!...