Cybele Pomeroy - Page 5

POE'S LAST STANZA is presented in two acts, and features Poe's works, quotations, foibles, proclivities and unhinged outbursts. Kelso and Thompson as Poe and the Barmaid confidently carry the audience through a gamut of emotions while bringing Baltimore's Bard to vibrant, flawed, beautiful human life. If you've ever felt that you'd like to sit down to have drinks with Edgar Allan Poe, please treat yourself to this show, as you'll be doing just that.

PIPPIN does what musical theatre ought to do: hooks you with a great opening number, gives you characters to love and hate, treats your senses with song, dance, costuming, sets and lights and offers fresh perspective on a timeless theme.

THE WELL OF HORNINESS, the current production playing at Theatre Project, has madcap motion, familiar characters, sexy action sequences/active sex sequences and clever, punny wordplay for ninety minutes front to back. It's funny, raunchy, ridiculous and insubstantial. Go. Take your popcorn.

For some reason, people have brought a great many little girls to see WICKED. It didn't seem to me a particularly child-friendly novel, but since the musical stage production shares about as much with Gregory Maguire's novel as Disney's Little Mermaid did with the story written by Hans Christian Andersen, that's probably fine.

I rather wanted to call Glass Mind Theatre's THE DUM DUMS a weird little piece of experimental theatre, but it is, in fact, a plot-driven story, with regular people characters and a beginning middle and end, so not all that 'experimental' after all. It FEELS experimental, but in a good way.

Rich Espy's THE REVELATION OF BOBBY PRITCHARD is a fine example of non-linear storytelling with personable, quirky characters who explore traditional values and non-traditional relationships with snappy dialogue, brisk action, shifting timelines and a story that should touch the heart of anyone who's ever loved anyone. Join Marta, who, with her family, dances with ghosts of her past, striving for a brighter present.

Author's Note: The posting of this review was delayed due to family circumstances. CHICAGO! has moved on from Baltimore. It is my hope my review will be of use to audiences in other cities on CHICAGO!'s tour.

In its first flirtation with dinner theatre, the Sunset Restaurant in Glen Burnie presents POE'S LAST STANZA, offering the Baltimore area an evening with Edgar Allen Poe in his native environment: a tavern.

If you're often delighted at the large casts Spotlighters and director Fuzz Roarke regularly parades across its carport-sized stage, you'll be delighted again. If you're a fan of the musical direction of Michael Tan and the soaring nuanced vocals he coaxes from these large casts, anticipate another treat. If you admire sparse sets that become multiple settings with a word and a lighting shift, you will find praiseworthy versatility and smooth transitions. If you like theatre in the round and practically in your lap, prepare to catch an actor or two.

Local playwright Mark Scharf debuts a new show at Theatre Project. A small fragmented family works at dealing with the inevitabilities of life, finding joy and humor in unexpected moments.

Everyman's new location provides a warm home for the 'cozy' DEATHTRAP. The high production values and seamless performances create an evening of humor-filled suspense.

NEWSIES showcases enthusiastic, athletic, acrobatic dancing- the Company is chockablock with high-end dancers equal to the complications of Christopher Gattelli's choreography, which deservedly earned this show one of its Tony awards.

This season, Glass Mind is producing works that have never before seen the light of stage. This is a noble, perhaps edgy, seriously arty endeavour. It could go horribly, horribly wrong.

If you like MACBETH, there's every reason you'd enjoy Annapolis Shakespeare Company's current production of MACBETH. If you don't like MACBETH but are obligated to accompany someone who does, you won't find much to pick on other than that it's MACBETH. I personally have always felt that the interesting bits of The Scottish Play happen early in the show, and the rest is hand-wringing and an inexorable descent into depravity and madness, and I'd like a word or two with the playwright about that. This is as much as I will say about the script, in the rare circumstance that you might not already know the plot.

If you're from Baltimore, you probably know there's no shortage of shows about the city's unofficial mascot, Edgar Allan Poe, often by impersonators who speak in the poet's voice. You may have seen one or more of them. I think I am personally acquainted with three actors who pay tribute to Baltimore's Bard.

Cabaret Macabre is a fun-filled romp of happy little horrors: merry morbid vignettes and musical numbers abound in this production by Happenstance Theater's ensemble of very capable physical comedians.

I LOVE LUCY Live On Stage delivers, in full color and 3 dimensions, a nostalgic interactive experience of old-fashioned television magic, at the Hippodrome through October 26.

Vagabond Players' production of ART in historic Fells Point is surprisingly funny despite dense dialogue and sparse set- or perhaps because of them.

THE FOREIGNER, an old-fashioned farce with all the classic elements- physical comedy, assumed identities, silly speech and general turmoil- continues through the 18th at Vagabond Players' Little Theatre in Fells Point, Maryland.

An unconventional hour of athletic performance art, depicting the life, dreams and final journey of Amelia Earhart as researched, imagined, written and performed by ariel artist Mara Neimanis.