It’s hard to imagine a better set design for Henrik Ibsen’s devastating feminist classic than the living room of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion Victorian House Museum. Period furniture and details…

Gender roles play an essential part in much classic literature. How many complex pre-1900 plots would be instantly resolved if a woman could just marry whomever she chose and live…

MACBETH is a violent play, a feature emphasized by the contemporary military garb and extended fight choreography in the worthwhile production by Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company. But the central question which…

Josh McIlvain’s RETURN OF CONFESSIONS OF A PLATE AND SHOE should be put in a time capsule and used by future generations as a how-to manual titled “How-to-produce-the greatest-show-ever.” Okay,…

As the established Philadelphia companies enter their long off-season, the SoLow Festival is providing a welcome dose of idiosyncratic theater at some unusual venues around town. THE VIOLENCE OF THE…

Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie is described as a “memory play”: its plot an extended flashback, its theatrical pretense laid bare. GLASS: SHATTERED, Michael Durkin’s reimaging of this classic of…

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is known today primarily for the word derived from his name: masochism, and for his scandalous 1870 novel VENUS IN FUR, the title of a intelligent and…

“Rare moths, wives pretending to be sisters,” deadly moors, escaped killers, and a legendary hellhound: the plot points of Arthur Conan Doyle’s THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES are ripe for…

It’s a pretty safe bet that you didn’t have a high school teacher as cool as Aaron “Gobanna” Pleasant. By turns musician, radio DJ, and teacher at Philadelphia Mennonite High School, Pleasant wrote KARMA 101 to teach high schoolers about the realities of growing up, making decisions, and higher education.

“One generation’s Orwellian dystopia is the next generation’s comfort-inducing lifestyle.” J. Ferron Hiatt, FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI TOY AND NOVELTY. The six short plays in Luna Theater’s FUTURE FEST (part of the…

Abraham Lincoln’s status as “the Great Emancipator” is a foundational myth of the American nation: a racially loaded narrative explored and satirized by Suzan-Lori Parks in THE AMERICA PLAY, now…

A pleasingly unpretentious comedy, THE HAND OF GAUL is something of a departure for Inis Nua, which generally produces serious works by contemporary Irish and British playwrights. Part of the…

“I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue/ and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and/ casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton/of Picayunes, and…

HENRY V completes Shakespeare’s four-part series on Plantagenet kings of England. No longer the indolent partier, Prince Hal has inherited the English throne, but is haunted by the original sin…

Writers will find much familiar in Theresa Rebeck’s SEMINAR, which brilliantly satirizes writerly blowhards (a proportionally large subset) and the self-seriousness necessary to pursue this art. Burnt-out, self-aggrandizing Leonard (Rufus Collins)…

In most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the characters are overtaken by the swirl of events, following fate to their bloody end. A notable exception is OTHELLO, now onstage at Philadelphia Shakespeare…

Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME (now onstage at the Arden Theatre) is empty and confusing; the action confined, the pacing slow. For all this, it’s a great play: a humorous exploration of…

Peter Shaffer’s EQUUS premiered in 1973, and its age shows. A psycho-sexual exploration of insanity, spirituality, and conformity, it continues to appeal to generations of teenagers who identify with Alan…

After a solid run from upstart Renegade Company, THE AMISH PROJECT is getting a revamped co-production with star indie company, Simpatico Theatre Project. Janice Rowland repeats her virtuoso one-woman performance…

Cutting close to the bone, Lesley Headland’s ASSISTANCE is a protest, as provocative as Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928), exposing the Darwinian-exploitative nature of the 2013 job market. Irony sucker punched…