Articles

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Monterbrand (right) with Cameron Knight: How to act like a dictator.  (Photo: N. Howatt.)

Brecht's 'Arturo Ui' in Delaware (1st review)

Brecht dissects Hitler (with a little help from Looney Tunes)

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht's 1941 Hitler parable set within a fictionalized Chicago underworld, is easily resistible. But once we hear the all-American “Looney Tunes” soundtrack of our childhood, our defenses are disarmed.

Norman Roessler

Articles 4 minute read
‘Requiem For a Rose’: Heartbeat or serpent? (Photo: Alexander Iziliaev.)

Pennsylvania Ballet's "Program IV'

From the familiar to the experimental

“We Can Do Anything” should have been Pennsylvania Ballet's title for its May performance. In a well-balanced program the company performed works as wildly different and separated by time and choreographic sensibilities as can be imagined.

Janet Anderson

Articles 5 minute read
First Rocky, now this.

What have they done to Joan of Arc?

Joan of Arc's latest crisis

Just when Philadelphia's Metal Maid of Orleans on the Parkway was developing a softer side, some yahoo city bureaucrat had her re-gilded. Now that Robert Montgomery Scott is gone, who will defend art in public places the way Joan defended France?

Anne R. Fabbri

Articles 3 minute read
Krzywicki: Underrated. (Photo: Jeanne Morrissey.)

Variations on Beethoven's Variations, by Network For New Music

If Beethoven could do it….

Inspired by Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Network For New Music called for 25 new variations from 25 present-day composers. The result certainly didn't sound like a single, cohesive work, yet it captured a range of drama, emotion and texture that honored Beethoven's model.

Articles 3 minute read
'Nighthawks Revisited': That's Grooms behind the counter.

Red Grooms paints artists, at Bryn Mawr

Hanging out with Red Grooms and his pals

A new (and free) show at Bryn Mawr offers a chance to mingle intimately with Red Grooms's playful images of his fellow 20th-Century artists, uncrowded with the legions that attend blockbuster events at big city museums.

Jane Biberman

Articles 4 minute read
Pogorelich: Chopin cringed.

The vanishing Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra: On Tour, or AWOL?

Other orchestras go on tour, but few vanish for a month at a time as regularly as Philadelphia's. You have to wonder if our great orchestra is considering a relocation to Tokyo.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 2 minute read
Hodge, Shotkin, Ford: Performance anxiety. (Photo: Mark Garvin.)

1812's "Evening Without Woody Allen'

Don't play it again, Woody

Woody Allen's published stories from the 1970s can make you laugh out loud. So why shouldn't acting them out before an audience produce the same effect? For several good reasons, actually.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Articles 3 minute read
Grofe: Forgotten no more.

Grofe's lost "Café Society' rediscovered

Back to the '30s, for one afternoon

A missing piece of Philadelphia arts history was retrieved and revived when Philadelphia Sinfonia, a youth orchestra led by musical director and conductor Gary White, performed Ferde Grofe's long-forgotten Café Society.

Janet Anderson

Articles 3 minute read
Parsons (right) with Jeff Still: Wrongheaded.

Tracy Letts's "August: Osage County' on tour (2nd review)

Is this a comedy? Really?

The traveling cast played August: Osage County mostly as a comedy. But on Broadway, the cast expressed strong emotions when confronting suicide, addictions, infidelity, child molestation and incest. Wouldn't you, if this were your family?
Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen

Articles 3 minute read
Hayes: On target.

Philadelphia Singers and Bach Festival

Rachmaninoff meets a sticky challenge

The Philadelphia Singers apply their talents to a Rachmaninoff work that combines creative genius with one of the world's most appealing liturgical traditions.
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read