10 Dates with Mad Mary is playing upstairs at a favored watering hole, Fergie’s Pub. The show was so popular last year that it’s back!
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Author: Kathryn Osenlund
Kathryn Osenlund, Theater aficionado. Reviewer for Phindie.com. ATCA member (American Theater Critics Assn.) Professor Emeritus Communications and Theater, Holy Family University. Instructor Philadelphia Police Academy: Police role plays and public speaking. Visiting Lecturer Oxford University. Instructor in Warsaw, Poland. NEA Fellow: Arts Journalism. Barrymore Award Nominator. National Critics Institute, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Education: Villanova, PhD in Media; Temple University, MA in Theater; UArts, BFA in Film.
TWELFTH NIGHT (Wilma): Beach blanket Bard
There’s a lot of Twelfth Night going around in the Philadelphia area, all different. The Wilma conjures a fresh seaside setting. A dock moves forward.…
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TWELFTH NIGHT (Lantern): Some are born great
Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night (1599-1600), one of his few fantasy plays, immediately before he penned his incomparable Hamlet (1600-1601). As Artistic Director Charles McMahon describes…
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RADIO GOLF (Arden): Hearts on one side, heads on the other
A crippling honesty and family ties mark August Wilson’s Radio Golf, a play that flows with humor along with sharply incisive dialogue and a clever story line.
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THE TEMPEST (Quintessence): Full of magic
There’s magic and mystery as wonderfully costumed characters come alive to dance, sing, cavort, wrestle, draw swords, threaten violence, and show mercy
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CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (Walnut Street Theatre): A thinking play
Introducing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as “a thinking play,” Tennessee Williams wrote to his audiences: “I want to go on talking to you…
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Waiting For Lefty (Quintessence): On the side of angels but not art
This show has history. Odets, a voice for his disinherited generation was born in Philadelphia.
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Every Brilliant Thing (Arden Theatre Company): 60-second review
Scott Greer has the audience suffering with him, then happy for him. It seems this story could have been his personal history. He owns it that much.
View More Every Brilliant Thing (Arden Theatre Company): 60-second review
The Tattooed Lady (Philadelphia Theatre Company): Tattoo as metaphor, tattoo as tattoo
Boisterous, joyful, defiant, and a little bawdy, the show may have a sketchy contraption of a plot, but you don’t go to a musical expecting Hamlet.
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DEATH OF A DRIVER (InterAct): 60-second review
Faced with bureaucratic nonsense or official missteps, who hasn’t said ‘fuck the government’ or a more genteel equivalent? The multi-ethnic East African Kenya Colony gained independence in…
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THE GLASS MENAGERIE (Arden): Revisiting the famed memory play
Tennessee Williams had been writing since he was a teenager, and by the time he was 30 years old he was getting nowhere. His early…
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THE CHAIRS (Quintessence): 60-second review
Due to the pandemic, it had been many months since I’d visited the Sedgwick Theater in Germantown. October 1 was opening night for The Chairs…
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ROMEO AND JULIET (OJ Productions): 2022 Fringe review
It’s a tragedy that more audiences will not have a chance to enjoy the production.
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LATE NIGHT SNACKS FAMILY SHOW (Bearded Ladies): 2022 Fringe review
Okay: A drag queen show for children.
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Watching THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY (OUT-CRY) by Tennessee Williams
This play-within-a-play about a play takes place on the Bluver Theatre’s tiny stage, brightly lit, although called dim by the characters. The audience, up close…
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Romeo & Juliet in a Bar (Shakespeare on Tap): 2022 Fringe review
A little bit naughty at times, semi-Shakespearean lingo is mixed with a good deal of TomFoolery.
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FOOD (Geoff Sobelle): 2022 Fringe review
Unless you know Geoff Sobelle’s other works, you’ve never seen anything like this.
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NOT RIGHT NOW (James Christy): 2022 Fringe review
There are many, many moments that become stories.
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Looking Back: An early Pig Iron production
ames Joyce is Dead And So Is Paris was presented at Christ Church Annex in Old City in 2003. It was something else!
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Looking Back: Two works by Thaddeus Phillips
In today’s edition of my look back on theater from years past, I remember two Thaddeus Phillips works from 2015 and 2017: Alias Ellis Mackenzie and A Billion Nights on Earth.
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