author: Jake Schwartz
Anyone need a shave? Why not come on down to Fleet Street? Or even better – why not come down to Rockville Musical Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
We need to start by saying Director Karen Fleming does a PHENOMENAL job with this production. The show was a well-oiled machine, and while the run time was nearly 3 hours: it didn’t feel that way at all.
How is our prayer going to stop the next senseless shooting?
How. Is our prayer. Going to stop the next senseless shooting?
It’s not a typo or a mistake that the question has been repeated. I ask it again because it is an unanswered question that continues to haunt millions of Americans each and every day. And while using a stage, a play, a performance, or a theatrical experience as a profound echo chamber for the real message that needs to be heard may not amount to much,
During
the late 1800s in London, England – in a climate of prudishness and classism – especially
among the aristocratic elite – playwright Oscar Wilde turned social convention
on its ear by penning his farcical tour de force, The Importance of Being Earnest – subtitled, “A Trivial Play for
Serious People.” Director Bill Hurlbut is currently taking on this scandalous comedy
of manners at the highly lauded Silver Spring Stage, but instead of keeping it
in the Victorian era,
It’s 1965 and your music career hasn’t quite turned out the way you thought, the pope’s come to town, your freshly drafted son has gone AWOL, your mistress is trying to drag you down to the street side to see his holiness, and your wife has gone bananas, or rather is Bananas. And then the nuns arrive. It sounds like a zany barrel of laughs, but there’s a much deeper and unsettling darkness happening inside the walls of Artie Shaughnessy’s apartment in Sunnyside,
According to the Oxford Living Dictionary the meaning of Cancer is “A disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body”. Sounds so simple right? A nicely put definition for a disease that is anything but nice and simple. This is the backbone for Margaret Edson’s Wit, a dark comedy that won her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999, which is currently playing at Silver Spring Stage under the direction of Jeff Mikoni.
You feel the feverish chill of something suspenseful about to happen. There is a prickle at the hairs on the back of your neck, a tingle that flickers up your spine, and the ever so sudden jolt of your entire body when you hear anything sounding remotely close to a gunshot. You’ve contracted a terminal case of Thrilleritus malignus! And your only hope for a cure is going to see Silver Spring Stage’s production of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap.
What is language if not an act of faith? Take a leap into the language of the theatre and you’ll find yourself pleasantly pleased with Silver Spring Stage’s current production of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive. Directed by Joseph Coracle, this tender tale of words and love finds the soft spot of your heart and whispers the language of true understanding. A carefully crafted touching drama with an exceptional cast guiding the story through an ocean of linguistics,