Articles
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Tennessee Williams's 'Stairs to the Roof' (second review)
Is drama meant to be taken seriously?
What happens when you treat a dramatic play as farce? Lane Savadove’s production of an early Tennessee Williams play makes you wonder how other great playwrights would fare under his whimsical direction.
Articles
4 minute read
Black Grace at the Annenberg Center
Calisthenics as dance
The choreography in Black Grace's program at the Annenberg was a mixed bag, full of exuberance and young promise, yet lacking the heft of a mature artist.
Articles
2 minute read
Three chamber concerts
And the winner is....
The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the University of Pennsylvania presented three chamber music concerts that deserve awards in three important categories.
Articles
4 minute read
Valery Gergiev conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra
Three Russian war symphonies
Valery Gergiev brought three Russian war symphonies to Verizon Hall, perhaps to make a political as well as musicological point on his controversial current tour. As always, he brought novel ideas dynamically expressed, with particularly good results in Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.
Articles
6 minute read
Musicians from Marlboro II at PCMS
A taste of the surreal, and a "ghostly" presence
These consummate musicians artfully employed the spectral appearance of otherwise hidden connotations to achieve a postmodern surrealism which, rather than disturbing the composers’ intentions, added to the interest and intrigue of the works.
Articles
4 minute read
Iñárritu’s ‘Birdman’ (second review)
A bird’s-eye view
Few seem to have recognized that there’s a reason for handling Birdman’s entire narrative as a single take. That reason is simple: The filmmakers effectively personalize the camera’s perspective — someone, and not just something, is roaming around backstage at the theater.
Articles
6 minute read
Tennessee Williams’s ‘Stairs to the Roof’
Before Williams was Williams
Stairs to the Roof is early Tennessee Williams as you’ve never seen him — a wacky, surrealistic farce. Director Lane Savadove’s stylized physical movements manage to transform a simplistic script into sparkling entertainment.
Articles
2 minute read
Art of the Kano at the Art Museum
Family reunion, once in a millennium
The Kano family dominated Japanese art for five centuries, but their work was never seen outside Japan. So the Art Museum’s current show is a rare treat for Americans, not to mention at least one Kano descendant who lives here.
Articles
3 minute read
Prokofiev’s 'Prodigal Son' at the Pennsylvania Ballet (second review)
Loving the prodigal
Prodigal Son is one of only two Balanchine ballets from the Diaghilev period that survive to this day, no doubt because men and women still grapple with sin, evil, and justice, and because sons continue to rebel and fathers to forgive.
Articles
3 minute read
Prokofiev’s 'Prodigal Son' at the Pennsylvania Ballet (first review)
Going home again
The Pennsylvania Ballet Company has grown into a first-class troupe under Artistic Director Angel Corella, as its midwinter program showed.
Articles
3 minute read