Cathy Quigley's "Female Trouble' at the Fringe Festival

Profiles in courage

Who on earth would want to attend a performance about endometriosis? Let us now praise Cathy Quigley, who brought this painful condition to the stage with a combination of courage, aplomb and ingenuity.

Alaina Johns

Sep 17, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

"Aspects of Love' at the Walnut

Oh, grow up!

Aspects of Love is a musical about love among the incurably immature. It's impossible to take it seriously, as Andrew Lloyd Webber intended. But it almost works as a Gallic sex farce.

Steve Cohen

Sep 17, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

"Wars & Whores' at the Fringe Festival

When Henry IV met Pete Seeger

Wars and Whores is an unpretentious musical version of Shakespeare's Henry IV, with the story performed straight and the songs composed in a hootenanny style, that nevertheless manages to remain true to Shakespeare's play.

Steve Cohen

Sep 17, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Lessons for Philadelphia from the Bard Music Festival

How to resuscitate Classical music: Ten lessons from the Bard Summer Festival

Thousands of visitors flock to Bard College every August for Bard's famous summer music festival. What's the big draw, and what lessons can Philadelphians learn from Bard's success? The real attraction is the promise of intellectual discovery.

Karl Middleman

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 8 minute read

"Traces': Dazzling spectacle from 7 Fingers

Something completely different (and without a safety net)

The brilliant dancer/acrobats of 7 Fingers seek a new form of performing art. Their Traces— part circus act, part dance theater, part cabaret— is a dizzying, dazzling spectacle that defies definition.

Carol Rocamora

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

John Madden's "The Debt' (2nd review)

Truth, lies, cinema: An Israeli paradox

In John Madden's The Debt, an Israeli commando team decides to fudge the botched kidnapping of a notorious Nazi war criminal as a killing. “What price truth?” is the question posed. But, beneath the surface of an action thriller lurk even darker and more existential issues.

Robert Zaller

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 7 minute read

Sports and music: a common link

Why musicians don't keep score

Long before I became a composer, I played soccer. In the process I learned a useful lesson: In sports as in music, the ultimate goal isn't perfection; it's humility and humanity.

Kile Smith

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

John Jasperse's "Canyon' at the Fringe Festival

Confronting the inexplicable

John Jasperse's unorthodox Canyon seeks to alter the way we view performance, not to mention our states of consciousness. He jars our expectations of experience and reality, especially in temples of art on avenues of the arts.

Jonathan M. Stein

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

"WHaLE OPTICS' by Thaddeus Phillips

Flights of underwater imagination

When it comes to communicating across space and time, humans can learn something from whales, and vice versa. In another of his unpredictable flights of imagination, Thaddeus Phillips breaks new ground as an artist.

Jonathan M. Stein

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

Guna Mundheim's watercolors at Gross McCleaf

The secret life of flowers

Unlike most floral watercolors, Guna Mundheim's works are never visually boring. A closer examination reveals that even more is going on here than a cursory glance might have revealed.

Andrew Mangravite

Sep 13, 2011 · Articles · 2 minute read