Theater
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Page 206
An encouraging trend: Theater for grownups
Here come the grownups, or: Theater for thinking people
Until recently Philadelphia's theater community seemed mired in edgy plays about alienated 30-somethings in dysfunctional families. But four recent productions— all intelligent, challenging, profound, even elitist— suggest an encouraging new direction.
Articles
4 minute read
The fury of today's stage heroines
He had it coming: When stage heroines fight back
Today's revived stage heroines like Medea, Lady Macbeth, Desdemona and Hedda Gabler will clearly do anything”“ even the unspeakable, including infanticide and suicide— to preserve their dignity. Apparently the image of a powerless woman is one that we simply can't tolerate today.
Articles
6 minute read
"Watt' at Annenberg: Barry McGovern performs Beckett
Play on words, Beckett-style, or: Is language possible?
Virtually everything Samuel Beckett wrote, in whatever form, is dramatic, but reducing the richness of a novel like Watt to the demands of an hour-long monologue necessarily involves tradeoffs. Nevertheless, Barry McGovern is an exceptional actor for whom Beckett comes as naturally as his own brogue, and the result is like standing under a rare and wonderful waterfall for an hour.
Articles
6 minute read
Sarah Treem's "The How and the Why' by InterAct
Hot and bothered over menopause
In The How and the Why, Sarah Treem rapidly unpacks a world of interpersonal aspersions, thwarted love, feminist struggle and scientific theory. Although her play is dense with themes and ideas, it's a crackling two hours, thanks to Seth Rozin's fast-paced direction and two character-driven actresses.
Articles
3 minute read
Poles, Jews and 'Our Class' (3rd comment)
The sorrow and the pity— In Poland, and Philadelphia too
Our Class, which concerns a World War II atrocity committed by Polish Catholics against their Jewish neighbors, is currently raising questions all over Poland, as well it should. But the Polish church has ignored it— and so, apparently, have my fellow Polish-American Philadelphians.
Articles
8 minute read
"The Whipping Man' at the Arden
Free, black, 21— and kosher too
The Whipping Man concerns the tribulations of a former Confederate soldier trying to run a proper Jewish household with two of his ex-slaves. Playwright Matthew Lopez apparently hopes you'll be too busy gasping at his ironies to notice the holes in his plot.
Articles
4 minute read
Lantern Theater's "New Jerusalem' (3rd review)
Spinoza confronts a 21st-Century jury
In David Ives's play, Baruch Spinoza's very abstract notions test a 17th-Century congregation's tolerance for new ideas, not to mention age-old ideals. But the Lantern Theater production makes it clear that this 21st-Century audience is being tested as well.
Articles
5 minute read
'Our Class' at the Wilma (2nd review)
Once upon a time in Poland: Truth, lies and history
Tadeusz Slobodzaniek's Our Class recounts the 1941 massacre of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors, and the subsequent cover-up that blamed it on the Nazis. That the Nazis had willing collaborators in their extermination of the Jews isn't news; more interesting than the moral disintegration that led to the massacre is the subsequent history of rationalization and denial, which continues to the present day.
Articles
8 minute read
Graham's "Philly Fan' at People's Light
They booed Santa Claus. Or did they?
Bruce Graham's ranting Philly Fan, updated to reflect his city's latest sports tragedies, is sort of like a sports event where the home team always wins.
Articles
2 minute read
'Our Class' at the Wilma (1st review)
Where were you in the war, classmate?
In the devastating Our Class, the Polish Catholic playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek plumbs a monstrous (and true) subject: The lives of ten members of a school class in a Polish town whose Jews were incinerated en masse by their Catholic neighbors.
Articles
5 minute read