Lunging onto the stage with the gusto of 1000 aerobics classes, HANDS ACROSS VERONICA sets the tone for a high energy, neon fueled performance. A joint production of Walking Fish Theatre and Nakedfeet Productions, HANDS ACROSS VERONICA is primarily concerned with how women relate to food and deal with their body image,
View More HANDS ACROSS VERONICA (Walking Fish/Nakedfeet): 60-second review
THE WOMAN IN BLACK: A GHOST PLAY is a cleverly constructed stage production by Stephen Mallatratt based on a novel by Susan Hill. It is a story within a story with Arthur Kipps (Dan Kern) seeking the assistance of an actor (Jered McLenigan) to tell his terrifying and sorrowful tale he’s compiled into a five hour manuscript. The actor encourages Kipps to tell the story through acting; the actor playing the role of Kipps and Kipps playing the roles of the people he encountered during his experiences.
View More THE WOMAN IN BLACK: A GHOST PLAY (Act II): 60-second review
Strange games are afoot upstairs at Plays and Players. Not light or fun games, either—we’re talking full-on Don’t-talk-about-our-son-Martha! games here. Murmuration Theater’s new play MAKESHIFT throws us right into the middle of two different stories, and figures we’re smart enough to figure out what’s going on. The show doesn’t dole out much information, and when it does, it’s timed for maximum effect. Once you get enough to realize the show’s central conceit (which is quite nice, and unfolds so organically that I’d hate to spoil it), the earlier scenes come into better focus and make more sense.
View More MAKESHIFT (Murmuration Theater): 60-second review
The three troupe members of the FringeArts-famous Berserker Residents will do pretty much anything to get a good laugh out of the audience. Their recently…
View More THE JERSEY DEVIL (Berserker Residents): 60-second review
Is life sweet when you live in the Louisiana Bayou before an unprecedented storm hits? For Marcus (Eric L. Fleming), life at 16 years of age…
View More MARCUS; OR THE SECRET OF SWEET (Plays & Players): 60-second review
A tongue-in-cheek recounting of some of the sexier moments of King Arthur’s rule, COURTLY LUST attempts to do it all—just like the knights of old.…
View More COURTLY LUST: A KING ARTHUR BURLESQUE (GDP/Walking Fish): 60-second review
In the new FringeArts building, we are presented with what looks like a floating basement, decorated many decades ago, sitting on sloppily placed cinderblocks. Out of pure…
View More THE ELEPHANT ROOM (FringeArts): 60-second review
Philly-based playwright Martha Kemper’s memoir-based LUCKIEST KID is an achievement just this side of brilliant. Playing the protagonist and main speaker in a story of…
View More LUCKIEST KID (White Pines): 60-second review
The stories of the orishas, a pantheon of spirit personalities, has a lasting influence on the descendants of enslaved Africans throughout the Americas (The great…
View More THE BROTHERS SIZE (Simpatico): 60-second review
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…
View More A DOLL’S HOUSE (Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion): 60-second review
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…
View More THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (Mauckingbird): 60-second review
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.…
View More MACBETH (Commonwealth): 60-second review
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…
View More RETURN OF CONFESSIONS OF A PLATE AND SHOE (SmokeyScout): 60-second review
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…
View More THE VIOLENCE OF THE LAMBS (OR THE ANIMAL VS. HUMAN WAR) (Chris Davis): 60-second review
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…
View More GLASS: SHATTERED (Renegade): 60-second review
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…
View More VENUS IN FUR (PTC): 60-second review
“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…
View More THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (Curio): 60-second review
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.
View More KARMA 101 (GoCar Productions): 60-second review
“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…
View More 60-second review: FUTURE FEST (Luna)
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…
View More 60-second review: THE AMERICA PLAY (P&P)