Washington Post - Recommended
"...It features not just one remarkable performance, that of Mary Bridget Davies, looking uncannily like Joplin and producing a version of the Joplin screech that starts somewhere around the singer’s ankles, wends its way up into the back of her throat and shoots off into the farthest reaches of Arena’s Kreeger Theater. The two-hour, 20-minute production also showcases the variety of vocal gifts of Sabrina Elayne Carten, who materializes as some of the blues greats Joplin here claims as inspirations: Bessie Smith, Odetta, Nina Simone, Etta James."
DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"...It was fitting to watch One Night with Janis Joplin last night at The Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage, because 42 years ago to the day the legendary blues rocker died of an overdose at the age of 27. I had heard the show was the closest one could get these days of seeing Janis Joplin in concert. That was enough to make me want to see to run and see it! I was pleasantly surprised the show was much more than a recreation of a Janis Joplin concert. It was a fitting tribute to the groundbreaking singer and it also celebrated the artists who influenced Janis – including Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith, Odetta, Nina Simone, and Big Mama Thornton."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
"...The production never gets as dark as one might suspect given the singer’s real-life troubles and ultimate demise, though it foreshadows her inner turmoil. We never see Joplin at rock bottom, but Johnson does paint a portrait of the singer’s contradictions. Davies’s Joplin is simultaneously self-empowered and crushingly lonely; she says no man can provide the high that performing does, but still clearly aches for human companionship and connection. Never is this subtle sadness as apparent as during the show’s vocal climax. “Don’t you leave me all alone, stay with me, baby,” she wails. “I can’t make it on my own, stay with me, baby.” If only we could."
ShowBizRadio - Highly Recommended
"...The production provides a glimpse of the 60s world and the life and history of a singer who her biographer, quoted in the program, described as “a very fierce, very beautiful bright light that burned out way, way too quickly.” But come to this show for the music: it’ll knock your socks off."
The Georgetowner - Recommended
"...The opening night performance had an electric feel to it, a wobbly-time-machine feel, and an almost total willingness on the part of the audience to join in, dive in and swim in the pool of rowdy, rock and blues driven music that carried the evening along. There was, even before things got going, an air of anticipation, with people—a good many of them of that baby-boomer generation which embraced Joplin, the girl from Port Arthur, Texas, with gusto in live performances and with record sales."
Curtain Up - Recommended
"...At Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theater, Mary Bridget Davies, who even looks like Janis Joplin, gives an excellent impersonation of the head-scratching, hair-tossing rocker. Her voice is strong (and over-miked) and her renditions of the hits Joplin wrote —“Turtle Blues,” “Down on Me,” and “Kozmic Blues” —are both strident and stirring. Her best number in life and in this show remains “Me and Bobby McGee,” written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster. Sadly though some of those great lyrics are blurred as Davies almost swallows her mike."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"...The writer/director of the show, Randy Johnson, created an evening of theatre in the truest sense of the word. The story of the evening does not follow the tragic trajectory that Joplin’s own life followed. Although it touches on the narrative, its main focus celebrates Joplin’s musical roots in the Blues and on her ecstatic relationship with performance itself, as a place of release and a moment of transformation."
DCTheatreScene - Recommended
We are at The Fillmore, and the night is full of sex and danger (set and fabulous lighting by Justin Townsend). The great Aretha Franklin (the magnificent Sabrina Elayne Carten) has just taken us ninety percent of the way through a free-sweating, foot-stomping version of “Spirit in the Dark” when she has an announcement to make. “I have a surprise for you,” she says. “Backstage there’s a woman by the name of Janis Joplin. And if you call loud enough for her, she might just come out.”
