Open letter to film producer Jeffrey Lurie

Memo to a sensitive film producer: Have I got an opportunity for you!

Producer Jeff Lurie is miffed because the director of his Oscar-winning film neglected to thank him at the awards ceremony. As a small-scale filmmaker looking to crash the big time, I will eagerly perform any requisite display of gratitude in exchange for your support.

Maralyn Lois Polak

Mar 05, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Boris Vian's "Empire Builders' at Walnut Studio 5 (2nd review)

Death of the middle class

Boris Vian's absurdist classic, The Empire Builders, received a timely revival by the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium. Its protagonists, the Duponts, are being dispensed with— much like today's middle and working classes.

Robert Zaller

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Jeremy Gill works at Settlement (2nd review)

Book of hours, book of life

Composer Jeremy Gill placed two of his own works side by side with pieces by two of the 20th Century's greatest composers and tapped into the deeper currents of the classical tradition.

Tom Purdom

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

Rinne Groff's "Compulsion' in New York

The last victim of the Holocaust

Rinne Groff's haunting play springs from her long fascination with the writer Meyer Levin, whose own obsession with Anne Frank provides a compelling coda to the Holocaust.

Carol Rocamora

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Pennsylvania Ballet's "Swan Lake' competition

Truth is stranger? A real-life battle of the swans

In the film Black Swan, two ambitious ballerinas engage in a fierce competition for the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. Now the Pennsylvania Ballet has set up the same scenario for the same ballet.

Jim Rutter

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

McDonagh's "Lieutenant of Inishmore' (3rd review)

Bonnie and Clyde, without the banks

If you like your stage bloody and your humor stuck in the fifth grade, Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore is the play for you. Theatre Exile is to be congratulated on every aspect of this production, except for its choice of a play.

Robert Zaller

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 6 minute read

Jeremy Gill works at Settlement (1st review)

Jeremy Gill's ancient sounds and rituals

Jeremy Gill's music is particularly concerned with sound qualities, to the extent that he'll move his performers to different parts of the hall during the course of a work. It seems to be a signature for this promising young composer.

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Chagall's Paris at the Art Museum

How Chagall got to be that way

Chagall's art is certainly wondrous. It can be joyously wondrous or wondrously sad. For the young artist from Eastern Europe, the effect of Paris at the dawn of modern art must have been nothing short of intoxicating.

Andrew Mangravite

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

McDonagh's "The Lieutenant of Inishmore' (2nd review)

The light side of brutality

Martin McDonagh's gruesome and very funny comedy concerns the stupidity of the culture of revenge— especially the hypocrisy of people who'll cry over a dead cat but won't hesitate to kill their political enemies.

Steve Cohen

Feb 28, 2011 · Articles · 2 minute read

"The Ugly One' at Walnut's Studio 3

Is this Beckett, or Benny Hill?

Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder? This 90-minute play by the German dramatist Marius Von Mayenburg is part Beckett and part Benny Hill. Depending on your taste, you'll either love it or find it mildly annoying.

Jackie Schifalacqua

Feb 27, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read