Potomac Stages’ goal is to give you both a wide sampling of the productions in Washington, Maryland and Virginia through reviews that help you find the shows that you will enjoy the most, and and a single source of information on each of the theaters in the region.

The FREE email Update gives you a taste of the reviews of shows that are currently playing hyperlinked to the full review.

Potomac Stages' Website provides reviews of many of the current offerings as well as information about every theater and venue in town, with a link to that theater's website. What is more, each of those pages includes a quick guide, grading (on a report card scale) the seat comfort, the sight lines and sound quality, parking, metro access and accommodations for the handicapped (w for wheelchair accessible, v for vision assistance and h for hearing assistance) and even a link to MapQuest already programmed to provide a map showing the theater’s location. The grading scale for parking generally uses "A" to indicate free, onsite or adjacent off-street parking, "B" to indicate onsite or adjacent off street parking that must be paid for and "C" for locations where on-street parking is the only available option. When there is a recording of the score of a musical, a published script of a play, or a published version of a book on which a show is based which we feel would help theater lovers get the most out of a local production, we include a link to an order page in association with Amazon.com already filled out specifying the item. That link is shown in green above the photograph illustrating the review.

We love theater, and hope that by providing as much information as possible about the approximately 200 children's, community, dinner and professional theaters and theater groups in our area, it will be inevitable that you will become theater lovers too.

A word about our reviewing standards

We believe that our function is to provide you, the interested theatergoer, with the information you need to decide whether a particular show is one on which you want to spend your time and your money. Therefore, our reviews are neither literary criticism nor analysis of how the show might be done differently. Nor, for that matter, do we think our readers care much about whether we liked the show. We try to place our emphasis on describing the play and the production so that you will know what is being offered for your attention. The standard we apply is not “is this the best possible approach to the subject?” and we certainly don’t adopt the posture that “if it’s not the best it can be, then it is bad.” Rather, we ask “is this a satisfying production?” In the process we try to assess how well the production accomplishes what it set out to do. If we err, it is on the side of being positive. This is in part because we are aware of how very hard the creators of the shows have worked, and also because we are in awe of their willingness to put their work out for public consideration and – well, because we love live theater.

All of our reviews follow the same format:

• The first paragraph presents an overall assessment of the production.
• The second paragraph, highlighted in boldface type and headed “Storyline” is always a synopsis of what the play or presentation is about.
• There are then three paragraphs in which we elaborate on the assessment, focusing in on the contributions of the author, the cast and the design team.
• The final paragraph lists the author, composer, lyricist, director, choreographer, music director, designers and cast members (as appropriate).

A note about “Running time": We give the time from the announced curtain time to the end of the performance, rather than counting from when the lights actually went down. This gives our readers a better idea of when they will be leaving the theater after any given performance.