293 stories by "Jayne Blanchard"
Local theater lobbies just got a bit colder with the passing of Alan Friedman, 71, on September 19. Along with his husband Lou Altarescu, Alan was a fixture in the Washington theater sce…
We've seen "Jaws." We all know what an innocent fishing expedition can become. The stakes are more emotional than predatory in Audrey Cefaly's intense and steamy one-act, The Gulf, returning…
Rep Stage's gracious production of Stephen Temperley's Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins makes you miss many things. Piano players in restaurants and cocktail loung…
Longstanding and highly regarded theater critic and arts writer Nelson Pressley of The Washington Post announced his retirement on August 31 on Facebook. His last piece ran in the Sunday Pos…
Somebody cared enough about a young black girl killed by a white cop in the powder keg summer of 1969 to give her a story. Nothing much was known about the girl"just her name, age and how sh…
Third time still charms with Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's game-changing, blood-drumming 2015 musical about Alexander Hamilton, whom he describes in his syncopated, ear-worm lyrics as a "$1…
The door slam heard around the world. Has there ever been a more memorable exit than Nora Helmer banging the door closed on her life, marriage and children in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House"o…
A medical emergency. If that's not song and dance material, I don't know what is. But under composer William Finn's tunefully neurotic steerage, serious brain trauma becomes a bright, fresh …
How many me's can you fit in one teenage body? Jacqueline Marie Butler (Erika Rose) ponders this question and endeavors to find her place in the world in Queens Girl in Africa, D.C. playwrig…
2933 Ericson Street may prove to be as potent and prescient as August Wilson's 1839 Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh's Hill District, the setting for many of his epic plays and the place where Aun…
It seems somehow written in the stars that Michael Kahn would choose the world premiere of Ellen McLaughlin's The Oresteia as the final show of his towering tenure as Artistic Director a…
If there was ever a time for old-fashioned spoofy fun, it's now. Your chance to goof off comes courtesy of Rep Stage's joy-buzzery production of The 39 Steps, directed by Joseph W. Ritsch wi…
If someone told you to run down to the Lansburgh Theater to see a three-hour play about back-channel diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Army (PLO), you'd pro…
Like my mama used to say, just because somebody asks for something doesn't mean you have to give it. In the case of the Alliance for New Music-Theatre's exemplary Black Pearl Sings!, it's a …
Toby's Dinner Theatre has been transformed into a cathedral for its towering production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, including some of the most powerful and moving choral work you are lik…
Full disclosure: Â As a mere slip of a girl I used to read Bullfinch's Mythology and Edith Hamilton's Mythology for fun and enlightenment and when I couldn't sleep I would populate the Gre…
If breakups were only confined to the couple in question, life would be easier. Throw friends, children, potential new partners into the mix and it really takes a village to visit Splitsvill…
"This play changed my life," proclaims shtetl tailor-turned-stage-manager Lemml (Ben Cherry) in Paula Vogel's incandescent Indecent, and as you look up in wonder at the candle and stage-lit …
How can one play make you low in spirit but high on life? In less than two hours, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 takes you on a whip-smart ride between sadness that race and class issues remain…
If there was ever a time for a bit of cheek, it's now. We could all use some impudent humor, especially of the female variety. And there's no better place than the august Folger Theatre, whe…
We quickly learn that Everything Is Wonderful is Amish shorthand for "Shut your pie hole, I beg you." But you wouldn't want to miss a single plainspoken word of this magnificent, wholehearte…
La Vie Boheme is not mort. On the contrary, it is shiny and perky as all get out. That could be a problem for those who consider Rent, the late Jonathan Larson's groundbreaking 1996 rock mus…
Furloughed? Sick of snow? Cheer up. You could be a member of the People’s Temple. The Reverend Jim Jones (Lance Bankerd) and his tragically devoted followers are back from the jungles …
“Laugh or cry; it’s up to you,” my mother used to say. At Baltimore Center Stage’s stirring production of acclaimed playwright Marcus Gardley’s play A Wonder In…
Bright as a boutonniere, Everyman’s production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is a strutting peacock of a show that portrays the mores of Victorian society with…
