Entering the Adrienne’s Skybox into Liam’s Sofa Cushion Fortress Philadelphia premiere production of TRAVELING LIGHT, I was worried. I normally abhor plays hinged around real-life famous people, like Steve Martin’s…
Julie Beauvais is a director of operas. She lives in the mountains of Switzerland. Her partner on THIS IS NOT FOR YOU is Jon Foley Sherman, a professor at Franklin &…
“This morning I woke up in the spinning hole of momentum,” begins Geoffrey Decas O’Donnell as a self-help devotee in CTown’s THE MOMENTUM, “riding momentum… like a dolphin that just…
PARTS: A SPEED-THROUGH is an ambitious, outside-the-box piece devised and performed by the Drexel Players. Anyone who has ever been involved in theater knows the process: you audition, you rehearse,…
Good drinking companions hard to come by? This September, there’re at least six of them hanging out in Fairmount. The ensemble cast of the Pub Theater Company’s sketch comedy show…
A DOLL’S HOUSE, Henrik Ibsen’s classic tale of female confinement, is ripe for adaptation to the world of a teenage girl: the claustrophobia of a man’s world, the need to…
This outrageous frolic with a ridiculous premise begins in the meeting room of a quiet, conservative French coffee society. Everything is ordered and in its place. But when—horrors!—a used tea bag…
Renegade’s contemporary deconstruction of Herman Melville’s classic novel about one man’s vengeful obsession with an eponymous white whale features a tour-de-force solo performance by Ed Swidey and a penetrating script…
The crumbling interior of Eastern State Penitentiary provides the perfect setting for Swim Pony’s sold-out remount of its 2006 Fringe hit THE BALLAD OF JOE HILL, an original take on…
“You can see–but you cannot change–the choices you have made.” That’s one character’s assessment of the afterworld in Found Theater Company’s THIS IS THE TWILIGHT KINGDOM, a devised piece directed…
To call this play My Big Fat Greek Endurance Test would be flippant, but it wouldn’t be far off the mark. Certainly AJAX, THE MADNESS tests the artists’ stamina and…
Short plays by unknown playwrights, mixed performances by rarely seen actors, an upstart company that takes statement-making risks: this is what the Fringe is all about. Polly Rose Edelstein’s Crack…
“Noisy and full of crap.” That’s Molly (Clare Mahoney) describing the data one gets when trying to reduce messy living things down to mere data points. She’s a Bio grad…
Men are made into animals. Animals turn into men, and then are murdered. Bloody, bloody Ajax. His story settles in on you, in the way that something that is deeply…
We are all searching for something in this life, and oftentimes it’s something that can’t be got. That’s Captain Ahab’s story, but it’s probably yours and probably mine too. In…
COMPLETENESS (Theatre Exile): Algorithms and geek romance Seduction by examples of computational intractability 
THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR (IRC): Corruption! A production that forefronts Gogol’s surprising, desperate, hypnotizing dialogue. Illustration by Mike Jackson. 
An Aerialist Brazilian: Danila Bim discusses her work with Cirque du Soleil’s VOLTA Danila Bim’s job is literally hair-raising! 
THE AUDIENCE DISTURBS MARCEL’S BATHTIME AND HE’S VERY UPSET WITH YOU ALL (Tiny Dynamite): 60-second review Tiny Dynamite's A Play A Pie A Pint makes a welcome return with a smart and silly one-man show 
LA TRAVIATA (Opera Philadelphia): A stunning new design and a stellar new Violetta A refreshed rendition of Verdi’s tragic opera features the impressive house and role debut of Lisette Oropesa as the titular “fallen woman” ... Support Phindie operations
The Walnut’s production reveals the bones of an American classic if never quite fleshes out the potential of the enduring masterwork. more…
