Alex Bechtel’s world-premiere production THE WEST is packing the house at the Off-Broad Street Theater in its short six-performance run. The ensemble-devised work, with Bechtel as the lead creator and director, features a cast of twelve emerging Philadelphia theater artists and an absurdist reinvention of the last days of the notorious Western gunman Billy the Kid.
View More THE WEST (Alex Bechtel): Billy the Kid Reimagined
You may have seen the Lantern Theater Company’s JULIUS CAESAR, which recast Shakespeare’s political tragedy in Feudal Japan. You may also have seen the open letter that local playwright and performer Makoto Hirano hand-delivered to The Lantern on “How to Stage Your Show Without Being Super Racist,” which he signed “Makoto Hirano, Dance-theatre artist, actual Japanese person, and actual Samurai descendent,” reposted on Phindie with Hirano’s consent.
View More The fault, dear Brutus, Act II: Interview with Makoto Hirano about “Super Racist” Julius Caesar
From the moment you arrive, Iron Age Theatre’s production of Sam Shepard’s BURIED CHILD, directed and designed by John Doyle and Randall Wise, thrusts you into a deeply disturbing world of grime, decay, and depression. Mounds of barren dirt, wood chips, and dried-out stalks surround and invade a tumbledown farmhouse with a rusted old mailbox that hasn’t seen a delivery in years. Inside, a filthy stained sofa with torn-up upholstery and torn-out stuffing is held together by black duct tape, as huge gaps between the rough-hewn wall slats let in the pouring rain and dreary darkness of a relentless storm.
View More BURIED CHILD (Iron Age): Decay and Dysfunction in America’s Heartland
Neil Simon’s autobiographical comedy, LAUGHTER ON THE 23rd FLOOR, offers an intimate, insightful, and uproarious glimpse into his experiences as a junior writer for Your Show of Show—the influential TV program that ran on NBC from 1950-54, and was the first to incorporate sitcom sketches into the traditional variety-show format.
View More LAUGHTER ON THE 23rd FLOOR (Bristol Riverside Theater): The Humor and Hysteria of 1953
The historic Walnut Street Theatre celebrates two milestones with its mainstage presentation of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, written by New York playwright Joseph Kesselring in 1939: the play’s 75th anniversary and its own 205th landmark season. Directed by Charles Abbott, the Walnut Street’s crackerjack production (in association with Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, PA) whips up the perfect concoction of murder, mayhem, and misplaced “mercy,” topped with a large dollop of macabre madness, in this delectable recipe for hilarity.
View More ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (Walnut Street Theatre): Macabre Madcap Comedy Classic
Upon entry into the theater space, I was directed to a setup off to the side with slips of paper and pens. Little placards told us to write a NOTE TO SELF and drop it in the metal can, examples offered including “get donuts for the office.” I had received the inside scoop from one of the other theatergoers that they’ll be used as a formative part of the show. As NOTE TO SELF is improv comedy, I didn’t want mine to be too mundane to work with so I chose a simple, sadly relevant, yet ripe for humor note: stop eating in bed. The conversation and jokes with strangers, all ruminating on what their contribution would be, set a fun, friendly and upbeat tone for the performance.
View More NOTE TO SELF (Figment Theater): Improv at Its Finest, with a Twist.
What better way to welcome the coming spring than with flamenco? Flamenco, which means “flame-colored,” is a genre of Spanish folk dance and music traditionally characterized by sensual choreography and bold, complex guitar rhythms. In Philadelphia, dance company Pasión y Arte is bringing the spirit of modern flamenco to the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival, which runs from March 1st through March 16th.
View More Passion and Art in the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival
The summer of 1998, I permanently moved out of my mother’s house. (My mother moved down to Nashville abruptly and without me.) So I traveled…
View More DANCING AT LUGHNASA (Curio): Casting Disaster
The National Asian American Theater Festival and Conference is coming to Philadelphia this October, and Philadelphia’s Asian Arts Initiative and InterAct Theatre laying the groundwork with a reading series of new plays this Spring. Directed by visiting artist Rick Shiomi, founder of Minneapolis-based Mu Performing Arts, “The Way Home” features contemporary works exploring what “home” means to Asian Americans.
View More Asian Arts Initiative’s THE WAY HOME continues with You for Me for You
In a culture that places heavier value on test scores than on the individual capacity for critical thought, you’re taught to associate. It doesn’t much…
View More SKIN AND BONE (Azuka Theatre): SoGoth Reinvented
PRIDE & PREJUDICE, Jane Austen’s classic tale of class, courtship, and decorum in 19th-century England, celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2013. People’s Light & Theatre…
View More PRIDE & PREJUDICE (People’s Light & Theatre Company): Structure and Snobbery in Regency England
Gunnar Montana presents a jaw-dropping winter wonderland that is part art installation, part theatrical dance performances in HYBERNATE. After his sold-out BASEMENT (see Phindie’s review…
View More HYBERNATE (Gunnar Montana): 60 Second Review
“Anything’s possible in a world where media rules all.” In 1981, John W. Hinckley Jr. fired into president Ronald Reagan’s entourage, hitting four men, including…
View More HINCKLEY (New City Stage): Life, Death, Celebrity
Life doesn’t imitate art as much as combine with it as Baker’s play, and Matthew Decker’s production of it for Theatre Horizon, sneaks up on you and moves you.
View More CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION (Theatre Horizon): All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women…
If Philadelphia is a tightly wound city wearing a permanent scowl, Sophiatown is tightly wound with a broad smile. Sophiatown was a cultural hub for…
View More THE SUIT (Prince): Balancing cruelty and kindness in pre-apartheid South Africa
The nature of Rupert Holmes’s ACCOMPLICE—a tongue-in-cheek thriller/sex farce/self- referencing spoof of the theater—is to surprise the audience with completely unexpected twists and turns in…
View More ACCOMPLICE (Isis): A Comic Twist on the British Whodunit
HOTEL SUITE highlights the best of Neil Simon’s successful play-turned-movie series including PLAZA, CALIFORNIA, and LONDON SUITES. HOTEL SUITE is a fun, in-your-face, comical view…
View More HOTEL SUITE (Act II Playhouse): A 60-Second Review
Henrik Ibsen’s name is so thoroughly canonized in theater history that it’s easy to forget just how progressive the man was as a playwright. Works…
View More THE LADY FROM THE SEA (Egopo): Bare production showcases Ibsen’s mental gymnastics
If William Shakespeare was alive today he’d be a …. well, he’d probably be a poet and playwright, but he’d also make a damn good political speechwriter. The crux of his JULIUS CAESAR, now in an accessible production by Lantern Theater Company, comes in a speech following the title character’s assassination.
View More JULIUS CAESAR (Lantern): Political persuasion in feudal Japan
In keeping with their native tradition of storytelling, Irish playwrights Paul Meade and David Parnell weave an engaging tale of two estranged men who reconnect…
View More TROUSERS (Inis Nua): The Proof Is in the Pants