Theater
2680 results
Page 223
EgoPo's "Marat/Sade' (1st review)
So you want real theater?
Taking up where it left off with last season's Beckett Festival, EgoPo once again thumbs its nose at Philadelphia's conservative theater scene with Marat / Sade. Crash-land this cruel concoction in the enormous Sanctuary space at the Rotunda Theater and you just might find the year's most terribly satisfying theater pleasure.
Articles
6 minute read
"Portmanteau' at the Fringe Festival
Choose your ideological baggage (before it chooses you)
The Applied Mechanics troupe typically encourages audience members to follow its characters. In the fascinating and intelligent Portmanteau, whom you choose to follow says something about your ideological leanings.
Articles
2 minute read
"Freedom Club' at the Fringe (2nd review)
Assassins, past and future
Adriano Shaplin's Freedom Club attempts to link John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Lincoln in 1865 with a radical leftist commune's plot against a president 150 years later. It's an intriguing idea that misses the mark.
Articles
2 minute read
Fringe Festival's "Thom Pain' and "Untitled'
Child as father to the man
Patrons sifting through the Philadelphia Fringe Festival's 180 acts could ease their confusion by trusting the proven talents of Luna Theater and the 11th Hour Theatre Company. Both refreshingly tackle an old theme: how a grown man deals with the lingering effects of childhood trauma.
Thom Pain (based on nothing). By Will Eno; directed by Gregory Campbell. Luna Theater Company production through September 19, 2010 at Upstairs at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St. as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. www.livearts-fringe.org/details.cfm?id=13647.
Articles
3 minute read
"Freedom Club' and Fugard's "Statements' at the Fringe (1st rev
Myth vs. realism in political theater
Must political plays be preachy and boring? The verdict is mixed for these two Fringe Festival productions.
Articles
3 minute read
Mauckingbird's "Midsummer Night's Dream'
Shakespeare meets Lady Gaga
Mauckingbird's imaginative, gender-bending staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream offers a spectacle that the Facebook generation can sink its teeth right into, notwithstanding the limitations of Mauckingbird's scatterbrained approach to Shakespeare's text.
Articles
5 minute read
Iron Age Theatre's "Empress of the Moon'
Men conquer, women suffer. So what else is new?
Instead of delving into the remarkable story of a 17th-Century woman who wrote some of the most popular plays of her era, writer-director Chris Braak trots out the usual feminist complaints.
Articles
4 minute read
"La Cage Aux Folles' on Broadway
The film was so much better
The current Broadway production of La Cage Aux Folles won the 2010 Tony for best revival of a musical. So why was I constantly checking my watch through two hours and 40 minutes of this heavy-handed extravaganza?
Articles
3 minute read
Shakespeare vs. New York's Jews (2nd comment)
Jews 1, Shakespeare 0
I waited 18 hours to see The Merchant of Venice in New York's Central Park. Al Pacino's signature lion's roar was well worth the wait. But director Daniel Sullivan, by dumbing down the script and softening its anti-Semitism, subverted Shakespeare's clear intention.
Articles
5 minute read
Temple Repertory's "Three Sisters'
Fulfillment is out there somewhere
In a Russian garrison town far from the cultural capitals, three sisters dream of a better life. In three hours that end too soon, Temple's staging evokes a world throbbing with a pulse of hope and despair that still beats today.
Articles
5 minute read