A REVIEW BY THE BAD ORACLE People (myself included, of course) enter into relationships with the amusing, alarming fantasy of control.  This time, we won’t let someone else get the upper hand, show our ugly too fast, raise our voices, get jealous, lose perspective.  This is impossible, obviously, because we’re all jittery weirdos one odd Facebook message away from completely

ONE NIGHT STAND SCENE REPORT BY THE TRIM MAGI (Bad Oracle here:  now proudly doing ONE NIGHT STANDS!  These are special reports and/or reviews of one night or one off performances or shows.  We want to celebrate what’s happening in a variety of small arts scenes in Baltimore:  performance art, comedy, burlesque, etc.  For this first one night stand, we

A REVIEW BY THE BAD ORACLE Shakespeare’s King John hasn’t been performed in Baltimore for 237 years.  After viewing it, I can sort of see why.  It’s not a great play, not even Shakespeare was Shakespeare 100% of the time.  It’s not bad, per say, but it’s sort of…floppy.  Admittedly, I would rather put acid in my eye than watch

A REVIEW BY THE BAD ORACLE A big part of watching a show like Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’ Urinetown is playing spot-the-reference (this also has the added benefit of getting really old to your date). If you’re paying attention, you start to realize that it’s packed frame to frame with allusions to other Broadway mainstays: there’s Les Mis, of

A REVIEW BY THE BAD ORACLE “Love is stronger than hate.”  “Make love, not war.”  “Love TRUMPS hate.”  Printed over the beautiful colors of the rainbow flag, spray painted on the pavement of North Avenue next to images of Black children playing, on a shiny poster at the entrance to the Universalist Church.  It’s such a soothing thought.  If you

A REVIEW BY THE BAD ORACLE I was standing in line at the grocery store the other day behind a group of teenagers, and it struck me that literally anywhere can be a theater, if you try hard enough.  There were plot lines, and definitely a lot of hair, and makeup, and typecasting, and projected voices.  At one point there

A REVIEW BY THE BAD ORACLE I would like to start this review with the reason for its existence.  Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi was originally slated to run at Iron Crow Theatre beginning April 6th.  In late March, accusations of professional and sexual misconduct directed at Iron Crow leadership started to come out in the community, accusations that the cast