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Castellan as Biedermann: Give the audience slapstick, or shivers? (Photo: Earl Wilcox.)

Max Frisch's "The Arsonists' (2nd review)

Rod Serling, where are you?

Contrary to its promotion as an “absurdist romp,” Max Frisch's The Arsonists is a moral play with several morals. It deserved better than this heavy-handed trivialization.

Gresham Riley

Sep 10, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

A radical refashioning of the audience experience. (Photo: Suzanne Delaney.)

Applied Mechanics' "Overseers' at Fringe Festival

Minding everyone else's business

Overseers concerns a revolt in a totalitarian society. Its creators at Applied Mechanics are themselves rebels against the tyranny of theatrical boundaries.

Jim Rutter

Sep 10, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Stanger (left): Nightmare without escape. (Photo: Aaron Oster.)

Luna Theater's "How to Disappear Completely' (2nd review)

The British playwright Fin Kennedy's How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found is not so much a primer on vanishing as a meditation on the cruel impossibility of oblivion, especially in a virtual Internet world where things and people live forever.

Alaina Johns

Sep 06, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

Sugg as Sir Toby (left): The play's the thing? Or is it the music?

Pig Iron's "Twelfth Night' at Suzanne Roberts (1st review)

Pig Iron plays Shakespeare (and passes the pickled herring test)

This rollicking production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, an unusually mainstream choice for the customarily avant-garde Pig Iron, got a deservedly wild reception at this week's opening, from the pickled herring to the boisterous final dance.

Alaina Johns

Sep 06, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Eric Singel's "The Wedding Consultant' at Walnut Studio 3

If you've seen one wedding….

Writer/performer Eric Singel rounds up every warmed-over wedding joke known to Western society to prove that weddings are indeed universally similar affairs”“ even gay weddings.

Alaina Johns

Sep 06, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Rude Mechs as Burden disciples: So you think you're dedicated to theater?

"The Method Gun' at the Fringe Festival

Eat your heart out, Jesus: What Stella Burden's disciples did for art

The obsessive acting coach Stella Burden once drew five young actors together for nine years to rehearse the bit parts of A Streetcar Named Desire. She went crazy in the process, but her method— as portrayed in The Method Gun— revealed the profundity that often lies behind madness.

Jim Rutter

Sep 03, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

Castellan, Quinn: Above all, the need to be liked.

"The Arsonists' at the Fringe (1st review)

A play about Obama (written before he was born)?

When arsonists arrive to burn down your house, should you invite them to dinner and try to dissuade them? Max Frisch's The Arsonists (formerly called The Firebugs), written in 1953, speaks of moral responsibility and action in the face of personal threat. It doesn't seem the least bit outdated in this Fringe Festival offering.

Marshall A. Ledger

Sep 03, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Luna Theater's "How to Disappear Completely' (1st review)

Stop the worldâ€” I want to get off (again)

Fin Kennedy's How To Disappear Completely is part meditation on selfhood and part how-to guide to changing your identity. Unfortunately, it succeeds at neither.

Jim Rutter

Sep 03, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

The Schuylkill, as runaway slaves might have seen it. (Photo: Angie Youkyung Chung.)

Movement Brigade's "Constants'

A river into our past

In this nighttime theatrical adventure, Alie Vidich's Movement Brigade harnesses the Schuylkill River nightscape to connect Philadelphians to a lost history of our surroundings.