Mauckingbird's "Never the Sinner'

Leopold and Loeb, punished again

Fascinating performances, highly nuanced direction and strong production values manage to infuse tremendous theatrical power into John Logan's otherwise mediocre retelling of the famous 1924 Leopold-Loeb murder case.

Jim Rutter

Aug 15, 2009 · Articles · 3 minute read

Summer camp for show biz hopefuls

Tricks of the trade

Summertime, and many theater companies defray their fixed costs by conducting training camps for aspiring performers. But such camps are not all alike, as a recent exhilarating week-long program in Verizon Hall— more intense and more professionally-focused than the summer training schools run by several of Philadelphia's theater companies— reminded me.

Aug 11, 2009 · Articles · 4 minute read

Greek travesty: Euripides's 'Helen' in London

Euripides has a problem

The rarely performed Helen by Euripides is late Attic tragedy with a comic twist, as the beauty queen of ancient Greece is reunited with her husband Menelaus after the Trojan War. Deborah Bruce's production misconceives its material, and the result, despite Penny Downie's doughty performance in the title role, is neither comedy nor tragedy but travesty instead.

Robert Zaller

Aug 09, 2009 · Articles · 6 minute read

Evan's "The Rock Tenor'

Rocks meets opera meets Broadway

Can rock, classical and Broadway music co-exist? The Rock Tenor ingeniously blends some of the best of each. It's an ingenious concept, brilliantly executed— until Act II, when it runs out of gas.

Jim Rutter

Jul 21, 2009 · Articles · 3 minute read

LaBute's "The Shape of Things'

The goddess and the dork, and what else is new?

Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things purports to offer us a new take on a familiar literary theme: a man or woman trying to change in order to deserve someone else's love. But LaBute adds little to the theme, other than the shock of exquisite viciousness.

Jim Rutter

Jul 14, 2009 · Articles · 4 minute read

"Grease' at the Academy of Music

You can't deny he's greasy

Grease was not the word at the Academy of Music Tuesday night. Instead, the prime attraction was a bit-part “star”— the slimy “American Idol” crooner Taylor Hicks.

Jim Rutter

Jul 11, 2009 · Articles · 3 minute read

Harrower's "Blackbird' revisited

The healing power of theater: Deconstructing Harrower's Blackbird

The playwright David Harrower refuses to discuss the meaning of Blackbird, his riveting drama about the long-term consequences of sexual abuse. Instead, since Blackbird's Philadelphia run in February, he has left that discussion to the rest of us. As a family therapist, I see dramatic parallels between my understanding what a client is trying to tell me and our attempts to grasp this playwright's clues to what his play is really about.

SaraKay Smullens

Jul 07, 2009 · Articles · 7 minute read

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

"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

"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