In a follow up to last year’s presentation of Angels in America, Part 1, the Maryland Ensemble Theatre has endeavored to complete the series with Angels in America, Part 2, Perestroika. The production of these two pieces is a monumental undertaking creating almost a seven-hour total theater experience.
It’s hard not to write a comparative review. The cast and design team remain relatively the same.
Resolved to never belong to anyone but herself, Edna Pontellier controlled her own destiny.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Picture it. A balmy, breezy, almost tropical evening on Grand Isle. Louisiana Gulf. Cottages. 1890’s. Summertime. Can you feel the sea breeze blowing in? Smell the scent of the water? Can you hear the French Creole dialect running thick like Cajun gumbo through the words that get spoken? You’ll picture it a whole lot better if you slip on over to Endangered Species Theatre Project this April to experience their extraordinary production of Rebecca Chace’s The Awakening.
Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America, was ambitious in 1993, taking on difficult subject matter, and the Maryland Ensemble Theatre is ambitious to take on such a challenging production. ‘Set in the mid-1980s amid the AIDS crisis and the Regan administration, the characters struggle with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell’*. Originally intended for a season three years ago but sidelined by COVID, Angels now marks the MET’s 150th production overall and falls during its 25th anniversary,
Everything’s a version of something else. Try lying for a change, it’s the currency of the world. With taglines like those, one hardly expects the intimate and fascinating dissection of human relationships that one gets with Patrick Marber’s Closer. Appearing now as a co-production between Cogent Theater Collective and Silver Spring Stage, Closer (a play published in 1997 and later transformed into a silver-screen feature of the same name) is produced by Diego Maramba and directed by David Dieudonne.
Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom
Stonefish is an original play by
Erica Smith and directed by David Dieudonne.
Without wishing to spoil, Stonefish
revolves around fraternal twins Mason and Dixon (both played by Amanda Zeitler)
their younger brother Lewis, (Ren Stone) their father Stan, (Sean Butler) and
their piano teacher, Christopher (Matt Baughman.) The play itself deals heavily with grief and
trauma.
There is
little one can say about the plot without spoiling the thread of the story
except in that while it is a clever concept,
It is easy to be afraid of something when you don’t know where it is, because if it’s not there it could be anywhere. But fear not! There’s no need to be afraid of Landless Theatre Company! They’re right here— well— here being there and there being in the black-box-found-space of Best Medicine Rep inside the Lakeforest Mall in Gaithersburg. And they’re putting on a spooktacular children’s affair just in time for Halloween! Landless Theatre Company presents Coraline,
Sardines! You won’t forget the sardines! Or the boxes. Or the bags. Or the words by the time you get finished with Noises Off at The Cumberland Theatre this summer. Directed by Matt Bannister, this zany, maniacal, and marvelous farce will have you rolling in the aisles with gut-bursting laughter from start to finish. Better than Waiting for Guffman, with twice as much hilarity as any backstage antics that cook up as they do during any theatrical engagement,
Content Warning! Midnight Cigarette contains nudity, racist, derogatory and inflammatory terminology, sexual situation, graphic content, coarse language, controversial conversations regarding politics, abortion, incest, rape, domestic violence, and scenes of substance abuse.
So reads the insert in the program of William Leary’s latest play. Set in a coal town with no more coal, Midnight Cigarette revolves around the remains of those still trying to live there. It’s a small town where everyone knows most everything about everyone,
Landless Theatre Company is off to the races! Off to the races! I said, they’re OFF TO THE RACES with their workshop production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Symphonic Metal Version. Directed by Melissa Baughman, with Musical Direction by Andrew Lloyd Baughman and Zachary Pinkham, this symphonic metal version of Rupert Holmes’ musical (based on the unfinished play by Charles Dickens) features new arrangements and orchestrations by The Fleet Street Collective of Landless Theatre Company.
Afraid your children are spending too much time with their video games? So much time that they might just get sucked into them and never return because they can’t beat the evil boss at the final level now that he has control of the keyboard that controls the game? That’s exactly what’s happening to Charlie— a smart, funny, young video game programming kid— in The Amazing Interactive Adventure 2 now appearing live on stage with MET’s The Fun Company!
Tricky and thick and none too quick, in the brains department that is, a servant of two masters finds humor and hilarity in his daily task. The critically acclaimed and highly humorous production of One Man, Two Guvnors has only a few weekend performances left at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre! If the rave reviews weren’t enough reason to go investigate, TheatreBloom has sat down with leading player Thomas Scholtes to hear out a few more hilarious reasons as to why people should come enjoy the production.
Sensational— adj. “extraordinarily good; conspicuously excellent; phenomenal.” The latest production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Kensington Arts Theatre is sensational. S-E-N-S-A-T-I-O-N-A-L. Truly a gift to the musical theatre performance genre, this highly engaging and entertaining musical, with Music and Lyrics by William Finn and Book by Rachel Sheinkin, will put a smile on the audience’s faces. A delightfully comic and touching fun show, this audience-interactive and fully immersive experience is one of the best to cross their stages and an excellent representation of the impressive talent and concepts that are conceived in community theatre.