Articles
6207 results
Page 516
Daisey's 'Last Cargo Cult' at Live Arts Festival
Preaching to the choir
Mike Daisey's humorous monologues offer therapeutic relief to the lefty mainstream. But as a performance artist, he lacks the stagecraft or imaginative language of Spalding Gray.
Articles
3 minute read
"small metal objects' at Live Arts Festival
Grasping at intimacy on a city street
small metal objects ingeniously invites us to eavesdrop on an intimate personal conversation in the context of a crowded urban street.
Articles
2 minute read
Albee's "Zoo Story' at Villanova
The trouble with Edward Albee (and his characters, too)
Edward Albee's The Zoo Story may be historically important as the moment when American theater began to come out of the closet, but the play itself is dated, and difficult to perform convincingly unless played against the grain. In Joanna Rotté's spacious direction, it reveals some forgotten strengths, but also exposes inherent weaknesses.
Articles
8 minute read
Whit MacLaughlin's "Fatebook' at Live Arts Festival (2nd review)
Theater of the future
I approached Fatebook's pre-production preparation with a degree of curmudgeonly skepticism. But I must admit: This show's fashioning of original art out of the newest social media modes of communication is a groundbreaking step into a theater of the future.
Articles
4 minute read
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Gombrowicz's "Operetta' at Live Arts Festival (2nd review)
1960s Polish bombast
This relic of the Soviet bloc seeks to detonate all ideologies, with uneven results for a contemporary audience that rarely sees such anarchic bombast on stage.
Articles
1 minute read
Chamber Orchestra's Haydn concert
A provocative gesture
The Chamber Orchestra opens its season with a program that provokes ruminations: Who was Hubert Schoemaker? Why do we tend to equate fame with importance? And would you rather be an elephant or an antelope?
Articles
3 minute read
"Nathan the Wise' at People's Light (1st review)
A distant mirror in the Middle East
A modern translation of Gotthold Lessing's Nathan the Wise, an 18th-Century German fable about religious tolerance, receives a charming production at People's Light, with the noted stage and screen actor David Strathairn in the title role.
Articles
2 minute read
Roald Dahl's adult stories
Second helpings: Roald Dahl for grownups
Roald Dahl is famous for his offbeat children's stories, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His adult tales, however, are far stranger— graceful and congenial, tightly constructed and as disturbing as Edna St. Vincent Millay's best sonnets.
Articles
4 minute read
James Ensor at Museum of Modern Art (2nd review)
The many masks of bourgeois death
The uncanny art of the proto-modernist James Ensor, in MoMA's first substantial exhibition of his work since 1951, reveals a prophetic artist who anticipated many of the 20th Century's horrors and who still speaks to the wired-up anomie of our present day.
Articles
6 minute read
Rittenhouse Square's fall art show
Art and commerce, happy together
The Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show simultaneously satisfies three constituencies: Folks shopping for something to hang over the sofa, seekers of genuine art, and people-watchers.
Articles
4 minute read