Tyson and Jones in 'The Gin Game'

Ageism in the theater? Don't believe it

Cicely Tyson (90) and James Earl Jones (84) are acting up a storm on Broadway. And they’re not the only ones.

Carol Rocamora

Oct 19, 2015 · Articles · 3 minute read

PCMS presents the Borodin Quartet

Heavenly delights

The intimate collaboration between Shostakovich and the Borodin Quartet is one of the most remarkable relationships in musical history, and it would warrant the Borodin a special place in cultural memory even if it had long since disbanded. Instead, it's celebrating its 70th anniversary.

Robert Zaller

Oct 19, 2015 · Articles · 5 minute read

'Goodnight Mommy'

Why do horror movies make us laugh?

Nothing makes us laugh as much as a good comedy — except maybe a good horror movie, when we watch it together.

Alaina Johns

Oct 18, 2015 · Articles · 5 minute read

Dance Affiliates presents Complexions Contemporary Ballet

Bodies, battements . . . breathe!

I left the theater thrilled at having the chance to share a night of dance with dancers who slaughtered every step given to them with a ferocity that at times forced me to pull back in my seat. I also experienced disappointment that the show provided few surprises in its use of well-worn vocabulary.

Gregory King

Oct 18, 2015 · Articles · 2 minute read

Photographs by Dave Heath at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Alone together

Dave Heath's photographs are infused with his characteristic themes: isolation in an advanced, teeming society; life’s disappointment and pain, with the occasional surprise of joy; the struggle for connection; and reconciling ourselves to what can’t be changed.

Pamela J. Forsythe

Oct 18, 2015 · Articles · 6 minute read

Attis Theatre's 'Antigone' at the Wilma (second review)

From Greece with agony

The emotional scale of the Attis Theatre production of Antigone is outsized and overwrought, but that’s the nature of war and tragedy and the Greeks didn’t sugarcoat it.

Richard da Silva

Oct 17, 2015 · Articles · 4 minute read

Attis Theatre's 'Antigone' at the Wilma (first review)

What was before the beginning

It’s not often American audiences can experience the concentrated power of this kind of theater, which vitally restores to its earliest classics a sense of the force they must have had for their original audiences, while opening them, too, for our own secular, desacralized world.

Robert Zaller

Oct 17, 2015 · Articles · 5 minute read

Ayad Akhtar’s ‘Disgraced’ by Philadelphia Theatre Company (second review)

An overdue conversation

Does brutality lie just beneath the surface of civilization? Can we ever deny our heritage, or does it forever define us? And why do we need to hit women to express our rage?

Naomi Orwin

Oct 16, 2015 · Articles · 4 minute read

Ayad Akhtar’s ‘Disgraced’ by Philadelphia Theatre Company (first review)

Is there a therapist in the house?

Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar’s insightful and compelling drama of American Muslim anger, astutely mines the power of ancient prejudices but overlooks the countervailing power of human resilience.

Dan Rottenberg

Oct 15, 2015 · Articles · 5 minute read

Immortal Beauty: Fashion history at Drexel's Pearlstein Gallery

Dressing for (a show of) success

Most of the clothes on display in Immortal Beauty are formal/special-occasion clothing, since that, not day-to-day garb, is what people treasure and preserve. The specificity of what those occasions were serves to illuminate the changes in women’s lives since the Civil War.

Judy Weightman

Oct 13, 2015 · Articles · 4 minute read