Republished by kind permission from Neals Paper. Lightning, alas, did not strike two years in a row when it came to Pennsylvania Shakespeare’s grand experiment…
View More LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST (PA Shakes): 60-second reviewTag: Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival
BLITHE SPIRIT (PA Shakes): 60-second review
Nothing beats watching actors at the top of their game biting into crunchy material and whipping it into a tasty delight.
View More BLITHE SPIRIT (PA Shakes): 60-second reviewTHE TAMING OF THE SHREW (PA Shakes): Shrewd Shakespeare
A good production that benefits most when it puts farce aside and concentrates on two people using their will to create partnership and harmony
View More THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (PA Shakes): Shrewd ShakespeareJULIUS CAESAR (PA Shakespeare): A staging come to steal away your hearts
One must praise Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s CAESAR and do everything to keep it from being buried until the maximum number of people see Patrick Mulcahy’s intelligent, timely production.
View More JULIUS CAESAR (PA Shakespeare): A staging come to steal away your heartsFringe Preview: THE LIGHT PRINCESS (Tony Lawton with Ugly Stepsister)
The creators/performers of THE LIGHT PRINCESS discuss the development of their adaptation of the 19th-century Scottish fairytale before its workshop production in the Fringe.
View More Fringe Preview: THE LIGHT PRINCESS (Tony Lawton with Ugly Stepsister)HENRY V (PA Shakespeare): The king is but a man
While HENRY V contains two of Shakespeare’s most stirring speeches, smaller, less rhetorical moments are the more engrossing in Matt Pfeiffer’s staging for Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival
View More HENRY V (PA Shakespeare): The king is but a manAROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (PA Shakespeare): A comic circumnavigation of Verne’s classic
Director Russell Treyz grants quarter to cogent, cohesive storytelling in his production Mark Brown’s adaptation of AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS for Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.
View More AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (PA Shakespeare): A comic circumnavigation of Verne’s classicMACBETH (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival): A Minimalist Vision
Director Patrick Mulcahy takes a modernist approach to the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s production of MACBETH, with a 20th-century minimalist aesthetic that compels the audience to focus on the emotions and actions of the characters and the power of the playwright’s language. It’s stark and intense, and also, at times, oddly anachronistic and comical, performed in attire that suggests a peculiar mash-up of wartime Berlin and dance club chic, military and punk.
View More MACBETH (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival): A Minimalist VisionTHE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival): Fickle Love and an Irresistible Canine
Contrasting the giddy inconstancy of youthful passion with the unconditional love for and the stolid fidelity of a pet dog, THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA—one of the Bard’s earliest works—is a delightful rom-com/bromance (descended from the medieval genre of male friendship literature) that offers the perfect entertainment for a summer audience. And the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s production, as directed by the ever-masterful Matt Pfeiffer, strikes the perfect balance between the comedy’s irrepressible fun and playfulness and its more serious message about regret, repentance, forgiveness, and camaraderie.
View More THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival): Fickle Love and an Irresistible Canine