Articles
6207 results
Page 518
Headlong's "more' at Live Arts Festival (1st review)
Is it art, or just movement?
When dancers rearrange furniture and operate a microwave oven, is it choreography? The cumulative experience of Headlong's new and very poignant piece of dance theater left me feeling both invigorated and disturbed.
Articles
4 minute read
Center City Opera's "ConNextions'
When good music happens to weak librettos
Two new operas are impressively played and sung in a double-bill by Center City Opera Theater. But The Always Present Present is plagued by awkward vocal writing, and Darkling suffers from a static story.
Articles
3 minute read
"Nuda Veritas' at Fringe Festival
When women just don't get it
Four women pose all the right questions in their quest to explain women's inexplicable behavior. But thanks to their obfuscations, I actually knew less about women when I left the theater than when I entered. Playwright Melissa James Gibson could learn a thing or two from Tennessee Williams, not to mention evolutionary psychology.
Articles
4 minute read
Gombrowicz's "Operetta' at Live Arts Festival (1st review)
Satirist without a country, in search of an audience
The Polish émigré satirist Witold Gombrowicz never lived to see the gleeful mayhem of his Operetta onstage. This is a fresh production with some priceless performances, although American audiences may not know what to make of much of it.
Articles
4 minute read
Berczynski's "Life Is a Dream'
The depths of narcissism
In her latest one-woman exploration of narcissism, the gorgeous exhibitionist Aleksandra Berczynski engages in less complaining and more pondering about the unfortunate aspects of her existence.
Articles
4 minute read
"Edgar Allan Poe Comes Alive' at Fringe Festival
Poe as Rip Van Winkle
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, and Scott Craig Jones is Poe reincarnated. Too bad he chose to bring Poe into the present, instead of taking the audience back into Poe's past.
Articles
2 minute read
Pig Iron's "Welcome to Yuba City!' At Live Arts Festival (2nd review)
Shooting fish in a barrel
Dexterous characterizations and vivid costumes make Welcome to Yuba City! the funniest show in this year's Live Arts/Fringe Festival. But most of its humor derives from poking derisive fun at exaggerated stereotypes.
Articles
4 minute read
Whit MacLaughlin's "Fatebook' at Live Arts Festival (1st review)
Actions and consequences in cyberspace
Whit MacLaughlin's Fatebook asks rhetorically: What actually happens in cyberspace? The answer eludes him, but in the process his 15-person troupe provides one of the most unique and immersive theatrical productions I've ever experienced.
Articles
4 minute read
Melanie Stewart's "Kill Me Now' at Live Arts Festival
'They Shoot Horses' meets 'The Gong Show'
Choreographer Melanie Stewart and writer John Clancey seize on the pop-culture mania of dance contest shows to examine the sadistic role of competition in our society and in capitalism. To make their point, they enlist the audience as co-conspirators.
Kill Me Now. By John Clancey; choreographed by Melanie Stewart. Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre/ Live Arts Festival production September 4-7, 2009 at Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St. (at South St.). 215.413.1318 or www.livearts-fringe.org/details.cfm?id=8371.
Articles
4 minute read
Pig Iron's "Welcome to Yuba City!' at Live Arts Festival (1st review)
Way out West: A finely tuned ridiculousness
Pig Iron's Welcome to Yuba City! lampoons the absurdity of America's Western mythic culture while simultaneously displaying respect and affectionate empathy for its values— no easy feat in comic theater of this sort.
Articles
4 minute read