Articles
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Danai Gurira’s ‘The Convert’ at the Wilma
Who’s the savage?
Danai Gurira’s The Convert uses the classic story of Pygmalion to explore the clash of religion and culture in colonial Africa. The key players, Gurira makes clear, are not the male warriors but the deceptively strong women who linger on the fringes of the struggle.
Articles
4 minute read
Levinthal & Garvey vs. Goodman at Gross McCleaf
Emotion vs. control
Gross McCleaf’s current show offers an interesting and rewarding confrontation of styles, and also of outlooks concerning how art is created and what it’s meant to be.
Articles
2 minute read
‘The Devil’s Music’ at People’s Light
The night before Bessie Smith died
Miche Braden offers a dazzling performance as Bessie Smith, the singer known as “the Empress of the Blues.”
Articles
2 minute read
Alfonso Cuarón’s 'Gravity' (1st review)
Exploring outer space?
First, check your brains at the door
Like most Hollywood films about outer space, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity gives the universe its due as a boundless, forbidding zone of inhospitable horror. But it fails to suggest anything thoughtful about the raison d’être for exploring space.
Articles
5 minute read
Emerson Quartet at the Perelman
Ambitious and uncompromising
The Emerson Quartet, with its fine new cellist, Paul Watkins, opened the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society’s season with an ambitious program, excellently performed.
Articles
7 minute read
Life lessons from ‘4,000 Miles’ (2nd review)
Grandparents, grandchildren
and nine life lessons from 4,000 Miles
Vera and her grandson Leo are each lost in a journey of aloneness but determined to somehow survive without complaint. In less than two hours 4,000 Miles brings us nine truths too rarely found in theatrical experiences.
Articles
3 minute read
Amy Herzog’s ‘4,000 Miles’ (1st review)
Grandmother and grandson:
An unequal matchup
As superbly portrayed by Beth Dixon, Vera is the sort of sharp and witty old lady we’d all love to have in our family. Her foul-mouthed, immature grandson is another story.
Articles
2 minute read
Joshua Harmon’s ‘Bad Jews’ in New York
What’s a modern Jew to do?
Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews is a hilarious comedy turned dead serious about the Jewish identity crisis in today’s younger generation. If you’re secure in your own religious identity, then beware: Bad Jews will unsettle your certainties.
Articles
5 minute read
‘Léger and the Metropolis’ at the Art Museum (1st review)
Greater than the sum of his parts:
How I learned to love Fernand Léger
Viewed individually, Léger’s colorful work is easy to like and hard to love. Only when I stepped back and took in the exhibit on a grand scale did I finally begin to feel the rhythm of Léger’s lines and the vibrancy of his awesome colors.
Articles
4 minute read
Michael Hollinger’s ‘Red Herring’ at Villanova
In case you missed the ’50s
Michael Hollinger’s Red Herring cleverly juggles a spy drama, romance, a spoof of film noir and a critique of American politics in the ’50s.
Articles
2 minute read