As I
watched The Last Night of Ballyhoo, written by Alfred Uhry and directed
by Ilene Chalmers, at the Bowie Community Theatre, I had a thought somewhere during
Act I, Scene 4: “This play really is about something.” This is
not to say that I disliked the production before that; even before coming to
that revelation I would have acknowledged the stellar set and the faultless
performances from the cast.
Absolutely Dead, by
Michael Walker, is a rather difficult play for me to review. Whereas Ken
Kienas, director of the production currently running at the Bowie Community
Theatre, writes in his director’s note that he was floored upon reviewing the
play’s ending, I can’t say that my response was at all comparable — and, given
the overwhelming importance of the reveal to one’s impression of a
murder mystery, that had quite a bit to do with my overall opinion of the
production.
Bowie
Community Theatre is concluding its year of the woman with Deborah Brevoort’s The Women of Lockerbie Directed by
Estelle Miller, a fitting end to a season celebrating women. The play itself is
a nod to ancient Greek drama and a requiem for all the innocent lives lost on
PanAm Flight 103 and on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. The production currently on stage at the
Bowie Playhouse is a tour-de-force performance of five spectacular female
thespians.
Who is going to believe a con artist? Everyone, if she [he] is good. – Andy Griffith
In the 18th century, a grifter named Samuel Thompson tried to swindle people out of their money and watches by attempting to gain their confidence. Though in the end he was not highly successful, the New York Herald publicized the story, dubbing him the “Confidence Man.” The term took off and was eventually shortened to simply – “con man.” In 1988,
They’re practically perfect, in every way! Almost practically perfect, that’s what we say! Mary Poppins popping up on the Bowie Playhouse Stage by way of 2nd Star Productions. Directed by Fred Nelson with Musical Direction by Sandy Melson Griese, this charming and quaint little Disney ditty is a lovely offering for the summertime. Anything can happen if you let it and they’re letting anything and everything happen on that stage; well, practically,
Live your life. We never know when it will stop. A fatal disease, a catastrophic accident, none of us know when life will stop. What if you had resigned your fate to life ending? What if you had accepted the fact that you were terminal when suddenly an organ became available to save your life? Would you want to know where it came from? Would you want to know whose heart was beating inside your chest?
The only place in the world where you can truly feel safe is with family. Especially when your family puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional as the Kurnitz family does in the classic Neil Simon, Lost in Yonkers, now appearing at Bowie’s playhouse in the woods to start off the 2016/2017 season for Prince George’s Little Theatre. Directed by Ken Kienas, this touching family dramedy tugs at the heartstrings as two teenage boys find themselves unexpected living with their extremely rigid and strictly traditional German grandmother out in Yonkers,
Mistakes can happen even with the most organized and ordinary of people. The Tomb family are a far cry from ordinary. Almost a modern day Addams Family with all of the doom and gloom that shrouds their secrets, the six Tomb children are marvelously mad and delight in the accidentally intentional misfortune of visitors who arrive at their happy haunt. The marvelously maddened transform into mysterious murderers or murder victims as the bodies pile up faster than Dora can find room for them in her flowerbeds.