Theater
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Page 243
"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.
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.
Articles
4 minute read
"Coraline' off-Broadway
The joy of quirkiness
Coraline, based on the young adult novel by Neil Gaiman, is musical proof positive that you don't have to be cynical to be sophisticated.
Articles
3 minute read
Shanley's 'Doubt' at People's Light
The courage to stand up (to Meryl Streep)
John Patrick Shanley's Doubt was inspired by the Catholic Church's sex scandals, but it's not a didactic work. People's Light offers a production that respects the play's subtleties and ambiguities.
Articles
2 minute read
PTC's "Grey Gardens' (2nd review)
The lighter side of squalor
In Philadelphia Theatre Company's production of Grey Gardens, Joy Franz as the mother and Hollis Resnik as the daughter preen in such an exaggerated style that they lose our empathy. Theater is a different medium from the cult film on which this musical is based. They should show us, not tell us what we need to know.
Articles
4 minute read
PTC's "Grey Gardens' (1st review)
Endless winter, in a summer town
In a decaying 28-room Easthampton mansion, surrounded by ghosts of their glittering past, a reclusive 80-year-old woman and her equally withdrawn 56-year-old daughter pass their days in bitter mutual recriminations. Everything about this production of Grey Gardens is first-rate, except for the one thing that really matters.
Articles
4 minute read
McPherson's "Seafarer' at the Arden (2nd Review)
When ensemble acting trumps a playwright's overreaching
The characters in The Seafarer may be losers, but the actors who portray them are exceptional. With one important exception, Conor McPherson's descent into the interior of Everyman succeeds.
Articles
4 minute read
McPherson's "Seafarer' at the Arden (1st review)
The Devil always gets the best lines
In Conor McPherson's new play, The Seafarer, Humanity's Oldest Friend visits four bibulous Dubliners on a Christmas Eve to collect an old debt from one of them. Though the play is flawed, the ensemble work of the all-male cast is as good as anything seen on local stages this season.
Articles
4 minute read
Terry Johnson's "Hysteria' at the Wilma
Fun with Sigmund and Salvador
Hysteria won Terry Johnson the 1994 Olivier Award for best new comedy in London, but this fictionalized account of a meeting between Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dali reminds us that the English have always had a different view of what passes for humor.
Articles
4 minute read
"The Producers' at the Walnut
Springtime for Hitler= winter for Wagner
In The Producers, Mel Brooks does to Nazi Germany what the Marx brothers did to Il Trovatore in A Night at the Opera. But Brooks violates the conventional rules of comedy with such glee that you can't help laughing in spite of yourself. The opening number of the Walnut's lavish current production is worth the price of admission alone.
Articles
4 minute read