Articles Tagged With: Adam Mendelson

Zipporah Brown Gladden (left) as Mattie Campbell and Miley Folley (right) as Jeremy Furlow in Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company ???? Kiirstn Pagan Photography

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Reviews September 23, 2024 Amanda N. Gunther Leave a comment

If you forget your song or how to sing it, you forget who you are. There’s something powerful in that paraphrased saying from August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which is appearing live on the main stage at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, as a part of the Baltimore City-wide “Baltimore August Wilson Celebration.” As the second production in this city-wide festival, committed to producing ten of August Wilson’s works in chronological order (of when they take place,

I Will Eat You Alive at Interrobang Productions ???? Kiirstn Pagan

I Will Eat You Alive at Interrobang Theatre

Reviews January 31, 2024 Angelica Peaco

As a plus sized person, I have spent many years wrestling with my self-confidence and sense of belonging in a world that condemns any body type that is not considered “normal”. Being a fat girl meant that I was different, an outcast, ugly and in certain spaces, unwelcome. I Will Eat You Alive, a new play written and directed by Katie Hileman, brilliantly tackles the societal, familial and personal pressures that fat women like me experience from early childhood through adulthood.

Souvenir at Rep Stage

Reviews September 8, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

What matters most is the music you hear in your head. And as
singing is a kind of dreaming in public, you’ll want to hear the beautiful
music that is being made by Rep Stage as they open their 2019/2020 season with Souvenir,
a fantasia on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins written by Stephen Temperley.
Directed by Joseph W. Ritsch, this delectable play in memory explores the musical
stage life of Florence Foster Jenkins through the vibrant lens of her pianist,

The Glass Menagerie at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews March 31, 2018 Amanda N. Gunther

All theatre companies have tricks in their pockets and things up their sleeves. But Annapolis Shakespeare Company is the opposite of a stage magician. A stage magician gives you the illusion that has the appearance of truth and ASC’s latest production of The Glass Menagerie as directed by Donald Hicken gives you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. There is a hard truth to Hicken’s approach to this play in memory,

Blithe Spirit at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews January 29, 2018 Amanda N. Gunther

A second marriage to a new wife is perfectly acceptable and almost expected when your first wife dies young. It might even go along swimmingly, even if from time to time your late first wife surfaces in conversation. But things tend to go grievously awry when said dearly departed surfaces in her ghostly fatigues right in the center of your drawing room. In the zany high-brow comedy of wit and repartee, Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit is conjured to the main stage of Annapolis Shakespeare Company to kick-start the back end of their 2017/2018 season.

Much Ado About Nothing at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews October 7, 2017 Amanda N. Gunther

Annapolis Shakespeare Company opens its main stage with a lavish, lush, magnificent Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s most genuinely romantic rom-com. Director Sally Boyett has given it a 50’s spin, with a rock-and-roll soundtrack and a spectacular Tuscan villa (by way of California), with a two-story stucco house and terra-cotta dance floor (by scenic designer Jack Golden).

Helena Farhi and Benjamin Russell play Shakespeare’s greatest lovers, Beatrice and Benedick.

The Heidi Chronicles at Rep Stage

Reviews September 13, 2017 Amanda N. Gunther

We are all waiting for the rebirth of wonder. We’re waiting for it in our relationships, in our lives, in our work, in our art, in the theatre. But perhaps instead of waiting we should be doing. Instead of waiting to witness the miracle we should be the miracle. And Rep Stage kicks off the opening of their 25th season by doing just that. Presenting the story of wonder: the woman who can have it all,

Alice and The Book of Wonderland at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews July 31, 2017 Joshua Engel

Annapolis Shakespeare Company inaugurates its new space with a stunning, lavish play, an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which shows off the amazing capabilities of their new venue. Written by Sally Boyett (who also directed it) and Donald Hicken, it mixes Carroll’s novel with a frame story about the book Alice in Wonderland itself, given to Alice by Charles Dodgeson (Carroll’s real name) himself. It intersperses this bit of meta-textuality with a few modern references to,

The Tempest at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews July 9, 2017 Joshua Engel

Directors Donald Hicken and Sally Boyett have created a sparkling Tempest under the stars at the Charles Carroll house in Annapolis. With a spreading tree dominating the scene and a shrub hedge covering the back stage, the hill slopes toward the river for Shakespeare’s watery play. Bring a blanket or a lawn chair… and some bug spray and you’re ready for Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s The Tempest this July.

The early evening and the river bring a hint of cool weather to summer in Annapolis,

Richard III at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews May 24, 2017 Amanda N. Gunther

“The catastrophe of power in the wrong hands.” An apt tag line for the Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s current production of Richard III as it speaks plainly to the Bard’s bloody history-borderline tragedy play and more broadly to situations at hand all around us right up to the currently political regime in the nation’s capital. Directed by Donald Hicken, this sharply rendered and quick-paced rendition of what is arguably the most violent of the history plays in Shakespeare’s canon,

Our Town at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews February 1, 2017 Amanda N. Gunther

Everybody has a right to their own troubles; some people ain’t made for small town life. The quintessential all-American play about the daily doings of small town life, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, marks the inaugural production of Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s new home at 1804 West Street. Directed by Sally Boyett, this theatrical chestnut settles into the turn of the 20th century in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire with a whole mess of Gibbs’ and Webb’s and other small town folk whose stories are important to no one but themselves.

Review: It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews December 8, 2016 Amanda N. Gunther

It’s that time of year when the world falls in love, every song you hear seems to say, Merry Christmas! And no one’s singing or saying it brighter than the good folks over at WBFR: Playhouse of the Air as they prepare for their annual holiday broadcast, this year featuring It’s a Wonderful Life. Fully settled into the hokey yet happy holiday gimmick that is It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play,

Review: POE…And All The Others at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews October 5, 2016 Amanda N. Gunther

He stands amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore, and all that he sees and seems is but a dream within a dream. Appropriate as the autumnal offering and 2016-2017 season starter at Annapolis Shakespeare Company as they roost in residence at Reynolds Tavern just off the city dock shore on Church Circle for the world premiere of Tony Tsendeas’ POE…and All the Others. Directed by Sally Boyett, this newly imagined take on Baltimore’s master of the macabre is an absurd burlesque of memory,

Review: Romeo & Juliet at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews May 3, 2016 Amanda N. Gunther

Dreams are the children of idle brain, but let your mind sit still no longer! It is time for your imagination, your mind, your brain, and every other part of one’s thinker that by any other name reasons just as soundly, to engage with the Bard’s most iconic romantic tragedy. Tightened for core efficiency and pared to its essence, Romeo & Juliet is now the two hours’ traffics upon the Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s stage.

Review: The Importance of Being Earnest at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews March 15, 2016 Amanda N. Gunther

You must be serious about something if you wish to have any fun in life at all, and the thing to be serious about this spring is procuring a ticket to the exceptionally well-performed production of Oscar Wilde’s The Important of Being Earnest. The house is intimate and tickets are likely to be snatched up once word is out at just how resplendent and amusing the current Annapolis Shakespeare Company production is,

Review: Year of the Rooster at Single Carrot Theatre

Reviews December 10, 2015 Amanda N. Gunther

Nothing can hurt you when you’re a rooster. Except another rooster. A blood-thirsty, hormone-pumped, cock-fighting rooster who has defeated the sun. Fight night is tonight, sun! You bring your little chickadee on down to Single Carrot Theatre to see their regional premiere of Year of the Rooster, written by Eric Dufault. Directed by Dustin C. T. Morris, this provocative drama may be the most straight-forward piece of theatre to be mounted upon STC’s stage in years.

Review: It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews December 8, 2015 John Nunemaker

This time of year there is one story that always puts me in the holiday spirit and that’s It’s a Wonderful Life. The story of George Bailey giving everything for the people of Bedford Falls only to have everything he has done come crashing around him when Uncle Billy loses the business’s $8,000 while heading to deposit it in the bank— and on Christmas Eve none-the-less! It is because of this moment that George intends to end his life but when Clarence the angel is assigned to help him;

Review: Voracious at University of Maryland Baltimore County

Reviews November 20, 2015 Amanda N. Gunther

Are you prepared to anticipate pleasure for a casual evening at the theatre? Are you ready to have to have a plethora of ripened sexual innuendo sweep over your senses and crash through your brain in a delicious and dizzying cacophony of brilliant chaos and farcical entertainment? Are you ready to taste the subtle yet eager notes of double entendre served to pristine perfection in a wild and zany new food-focused farce? Then you need to have what the UMBC Department of Theatre is having when they serve up their new production of Susan McCully’s Voracious.

Review: Kerrmoor at Strand Theatre and Interrobang Theatre Company

Reviews November 3, 2015 Amanda N. Gunther

If you don’t believe in your people, that’s a sickness. But it can be remarkably hard to believe in your roots when they crack the ground of backwoods Appalachia in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania. In a riveting new drama with the heavy overtones of a Greek tragedy, area playwright Susan McCully’s Kerrmoor receives its world premiere production as a part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Co-Produced by Strand Theatre and Interrobang Theatre Company and Directed by Eve Muson,

Pondering Playwrights: An Interview with Susan McCully on Kerrmoor

Interviews November 1, 2015 Amanda N. Gunther

The Women’s Voices Theater Festival has surpassed the boundaries of the nation’s capital and meandered over to Baltimore. A city thriving with theatre, it’s an honored opportunity to take part in the festival that has been occurring throughout the 2015 calendar season. In a TheatreBloom exclusive interview, we sit down with playwright Susan McCully to discuss her work Kerrmoor, a Co-Production with Baltimore’s Strand Theatre and Interrobang Theatre Company. Susan McCully is a professor at UMBC where she teaches playwriting and dramatic literature.

Teresa Spencer, Gary DeBreuil, Reed DeLisle, Megan Morse Jans, Jonathan Feuer, James Carpenter, Richard Pilcher, and Renata Plecha in Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s AS YOU LIKE IT

Review: As You Like It at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews October 19, 2015 Joshua Engel

“One man in his time plays many parts,” declares Melancholy Jacques, and that definitely describes Richard Pilcher’s magnificent performance(s) in Annapolis Shakespeare Company‘s production of As You Like It. A mere eight actors pull off four pairs of lovers, two courts of lords, and an array of miscellaneous country bumpkins. Pilcher plays four separate roles, each strong, distinct, and imbued with life. His Jacques is pitch perfect: melancholy without being glum,

Crab the Dog (L- Julie) and Launce (R- Matthew Alan Ward) in The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Review: The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Annapolis Shakespeare Company

Reviews June 1, 2015 Joshua Engel

Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona is, by turns, hilarious and horrifying, and it’s hard to know which of these is more daunting to a director approaching the play. Annapolis Shakespeare Company‘s Sally Boyett conquers both with flying colors. Her 1920’s-inspired Two Gents is sharp, incisive, fearless, and polished.

Proteus and Valentine (Patrick Truler and Joel Ottenheimer) are young friends on the verge of manhood. Proteus loves Julia (Amy Pastoor),