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Jacques 'undresses' Jenny Lind: All in our minds.

Robert Lepage's "The Andersen Project'

Robert Lepage goes back to basics (and Hans Christian Andersen comes out)

Unlike most of Robert Lepage's high-tech spectacles, The Andersen Project depends mostly on the spoken word and the audience's imagination. This was fine with me, but some audience members seemed surprised and disappointed.

Steve Cohen

Jul 04, 2009 Articles 4 minute read

Dolce Suono's "New Voices'

Setting T.S. Eliot to music (among other innovations)

Dolce Suono and the American Composers Forum present seven world premieres for an unconventional foursome— a good showcase for the variety and sheer likeability of the work that young composers are turning out.

Tom Purdom

Jun 30, 2009 Articles 4 minute read

Goldberg's 'Days': Looking into a distant mist.

"Legacies': The future at Pennsylvania Academy

The future as an afterthought

The Pennsylvania Academy has mounted big shows honoring two of its faculty members. But the future of art is revealed in the works of the 12 former students these old pros have selected for the Alumni Exhibition out in the hallways. They deserve more attention than the short shrift they've received.

Anne R. Fabbri

Jun 30, 2009 Articles 5 minute read

George Romney's living portraits

A forgotten painter's gift: The eroticism of respectability

Even after 200 years, George Romney's portraits exude a freshness that has outlasted his more celebrated contemporaries. So many of his women are impeccably dressed and eminently respectable, yet their femininity seems ready to explode off the canvas at any moment. Paintings by George Romney (1734-1802). On permanent display at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery 278, second floor, 26th St. and Ben Franklin Parkway. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.

Michael Woods

Jun 30, 2009 Articles 10 minute read

Art Museum's admission hike

Killing the golden sucker

The Art Museum recently raised its admission fees, a fund-raising model that is strictly 20th-Century. Then it hired as its new director Timothy Rub, a successful advocate of the 21st-Century model: free admission. Does the Art Museum's left hand know what its right hand is doing?

Richard Carreño

Jun 30, 2009 Articles 4 minute read

Was the surgical mask a stage eccentricity or a sensible precaution?

Michael Jackson and his demons

The man who had everything (except the world's empathy)

Why am I, a classical pianist, so haunted by the passing of a pop music celebrity I didn't even know? Michael Jackson's songs reveal a man who struggled with demons but wanted to change himself and, indeed, the whole world. But he lacked the necessary tools, and the uniqueness of his situation assured that he would never develop them.

Maria Thompson Corley

Jun 29, 2009 Articles 5 minute read

"Spring Awakening' at Academy of Music (2nd review)

Musical therapy for teenagers

Clearly, nothing changes in adolescence since Frank Wedekind first wrote Spring Awakening more than a century ago. As a survivor of that tortured experience, I just wish someone other than composer Duncan Sheik had attempted to write this musical adaptation 40 years ago.

Jim Rutter

Jun 29, 2009 Articles 5 minute read

Christy Atomare, Kyle Riabko: The audience laughe<i></i>d at the wrong times. (Photo: Paul Kolnik.)

"Spring Awakening' at the Academy of Music (1st review)

Adolescence and sex: The cartoon version

The Broadway musical Spring Awakening arrived trailing a slew of awards (including the Tony for Best New Musical of 2007). But this staging amounts to a cartoon version of Frank Wedekind's landmark play about the repressed adolescence in 1890s Germany.

Steve Cohen

Jun 29, 2009 Articles 4 minute read

Diana: The model of a 19th-Century sylph. (Photo: Paul Kolnik.)

Pennsylvania Ballet's "La Sylphide' (2nd review)

Why La Sylphide (yawn) survives

In theory, we're all anxious to see our local ballet troupe perform new and experimental work. The truth is that nothing suits ballet dancers or their audience better than these oldies but goodies with corny nonsensical stories, big sets, plenty of costumes and character parts for witches and zombies and crazy folk of all kind.