113 stories by "Jill Kyle-Keith"
Not everything made big is made better. And not everything on a large Broadway stage is improved by a cavernous space. Sometimes the best gifts are in tiny boxes. So it is with Studio The…
Brownie and Lolli Go To Hollywood, a tale of two girls off to fame and fortune via burlesque, sounds like an amusing evening’s romp on paper, but up close, that paper’s pretty th…
Set on a stoop in a Staten Island neighborhood, The Good Death covers a lot of ground: Alzheimer’s, caregiving, mental illness, the American Jewish experience, euthanasia, marria…
We’ve all been there. That boozy party where someone tells a great story. The crowd is enraptured, laughs at all the right spots, and you’re with them, too- til you realize you j…
On December 4, 1956, two young musicians  dropped in on a recording session at Sun Record Studio in Memphis, for what turned into an iconic night of jamming and jawing that changed …
Great Googly Moogly! Did you know there are monkeys loose in Glen Echo Park? Not only monkeys, but a giant snake, some rhinos, and some huge buzzy insecty things. It’s a veritable jung…
Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Taming of the Shrew is an extraordinary production, one of the most original and well thought out presentations of Shakespeare I’ve seen in years. D…
Next Stop Theatre Company’s City of Angels is grand – a swan song to film noir and its backstage action, a gem of a show that won multiple Tony Awards in 1989 including Bes…
If everything means nothing, and art can be a smear on the wall – DADA speaking -what, then, defines and separates art from indecipherable noise? It’s a question Pointless Th…
There’s a saying: All roads eventually lead home. Though as Moses found out, that journey can sometimes take a few decades longer than expected. It all started innocently enough. Tw…
A large cast of eccentric characters and a convoluted plot involving mistaken identities, a traveling troupe of itinerant actors, sailors, a deserted wife, a lascivious pastor and a virtuous…
Alas, poor Shakespeare. As it turns out, you don’t really need language to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet. In Synetic’s electric retelling of the star-crossed lovers’ t…
Tennessee Williams, midway through his career, wrote the quintessential Southern family drama: filled with scheming relatives, family wealth, and an unspoken secret, it won the Pulitzer Priz…
A friend of mine judges Asian restaurants solely on their sweet and sour soup: mess that up and not much else that follows will matter. But deliver a soup that evenly balances the swe…
Imagination Stage’s A Year with Frog and Toad is exactly what the title implies: two friends have adventures during the four seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter- and a long slee…
For those of you already stuffed to the gills with sugary-sweet Christmas extravaganzas, might I offer a little holiday antidote to the saccharine overload? David Sedaris’ memories of …
In the mood for a little supper club and music, circa 1935? Then put on your fur and pearls, and have the chauffeur drive you to The Source, where The In Series is currently performing its G…
Sometimes Christmas can seem like a rerun of itself: if you like ballet, you see The Nutcracker each year. Melodrama? Ah, that’s always Dickens’ Christmas Carol. If your taste ru…
Cole Porter is clearly one of the best lyricists in the history of musical theater, and Kiss Me Kate is by far one of his best works. The words jump and skip across the page and meet his mus…
In the theater, when something you love is done well, there’s a sense of euphoria as you leave: “thank goodness they didn’t mess it up.” That is indeed the case, I am…
It was a Dark and Stormy Night. (insert sound of typewriter keys clacking here). Actually, the evening I saw Happenstance Theater’s Cabaret Noir in Baltimore, we had springlike tempera…
All of us have shows we haven’t gotten around to seeing yet. We all have our lists- yes, yes, we’ll board a Bolt Bus to NYC soon, gotta get to that one, hear it’s good. Pro…
"Give the Public What It Wants". This mantra of theatrical management goes back a long, long time, and long before he became the Elizabethan age’s Boy Wonder, William Shakespeare wrote…
Edgar Allan Poe. A creepy, dark cellar with low ceilings and candlelight. The ghosts of the past haunting a long-dead writer of the past. What’s not to like? Annapolis Shakespeare Comp…
Broadway has it tough these days. It is so hideously expensive to mount a show- especially a musical- that to write an original show with all-original musical and lyrics, spend the years it …
