Whit MacLaughlin is going off the deep end with this one. Are you willing to jump in with him? New Paradise Laboratories’ handsomely crafted, meticulously acted, and totally weird production, is not easily accessible. Nothing much can be taken literally here, and the production doesn’t reward searching for specific meanings as it creates its own tilted world with its own skewed logic.
View More THE ADULTS (New Paradise Laboratories): Fringe Review 20.2
This Neighborhood Fringe show, directed by Sean Connolly, transpires in the murky basement of an old church in Manayunk. The space lends an ideal sinister atmosphere to a play which, like many psychological thrillers, is more intimation and suspense than action.
View More SPLATTER (Manayunk Theatre Company): Fringe Review 24
This entry in the Visual Art category is an art exhibit based on the association between the person looking at the art and the meaning ascribed to the art itself. The artist, Krie Alden, who spoke to me at the event, is excited to be a part of FringeArts, and she loves the idea of “the Fringe being on the fringe, where they support the unexpected.”
View More UNTITLED: WHAT YOU SEE OR WHAT DO YOU SEE (KrieArt): 2014 Fringe Review 19
This love story, full of gags, comedic misunderstandings and lotsa heart, encompasses two smitten gay mummers, family devotion, and mummer-love.
View More TWO STREET: A TALE OF STAR-CROSSED MUMMERS (Tribe of Fools): 2014 Fringe Review 12.1
Zeus has decreed that Muses from Mount Olympus are not allowed to fall in love with mortals – that includes the Muse Clio and a boy from Venice Beach. Therein lies a story of forbidden love, gumption, and sly swipes at certain Hollywood movies — especially XANADU (Universal Pictures, 1980).
View More XANADU (Mazeppa Productions): A campy, aMUSEing musical
This mighty peculiar story opens with a grown up George looking back at 1929 and singing, “Did ya ever have one of those years?” His parents have one foot in the poorhouse, as their only prosperous relative has just stinted them in his will. When eight-year-old George has the chance to take performance lessons from the surviving member of an old vaudeville act, he shows inexplicable ability beyond his years. Parental hopes for financial resurrection ride on little George singing and dancing his way to Hollywood.
View More HERRINGBONE (Flashpoint Theatre Company): A remarkably strange solo musical, about a boy … with a problem
Jason (David Bardeen) and Brendan (Jered McLenigan) ease the paucity of Ritu’s (Rebecca Khalil) existence by sending monthly checks through an aid organization. The last thing in the world they’d ever expect would be for their charity case to show up in their living room.
View More RITU COMES HOME (InterAct): Two gay men who practice Safe Charity become parents
The Lantern Theater Company’s remount of THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by C.S. Lewis is a sizzling show from hell. Kathryn Osenlund’s 60-second review
View More THE SCREWTAPE LETTTERS (Lantern): 60-second review
I have taken the train up from Philadelphia to the New York Theatre Workshop to see how RED-EYE to HAVRE de GRACE has fared since I last saw it. I had discovered it in the Philadelphia Live Arts workshop production in 2005. Between that iteration and the world premiere at Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2012, an evolutionary process took place.
View More RED-EYE TO HAVRE DE GRACE (Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental): New York Theatre Workshop sees a reshaped Philly Fringe hit
OEDIPUSSY isn’t something to analyze, it’s just something to enjoy— an antidote to life’s heavy stuff. Appealingly physical and comically overwrought, it’s tons of fun. The most amazing thing about this lunatic version is that the epic tragic story actually emerges through all the clowning, sight gags and laughter.
View More OEDIPUSSY (Curio): Shenanigans, tomfoolery and ballyhoo reign
They’ve known each other for what—a couple of hours? Already they’re crazy in love, and they’ll steadfastly love each other against all odds. A love to die for. One of the world’s most celebrated and enduring love stories, ROMEO AND JULIET, is currently on stage at The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.
View More ROMEO AND JULIET (Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre): A Love to Die for
Call it Don Juan or Don Giovanni, the Don Juan story, handed down through time, is pre-loaded with a mix of serious and comic elements and a supernatural dimension. DON JUAN COMES HOME FROM IRAQ, from theater luminaries Paula Vogel (playwright) and Banka Zizka (director), has the gravitas down and doesn’t lose sight of humor, but extra pieces lodge within this puzzle’s slippery treatment of time and reality.
View More DON JUAN COMES HOME FROM IRAQ (Wilma): A Disparate Jigsaw
Theatre Exile mounts new, dicey plays and modern classics—badass classics, that is, from outstanding contemporary playwrights like Tracy Letts, Martin McDonough, and in this case,…
View More TRUE WEST (Theatre Exile): a rare, in-your-face take on a modern classic
The tragic news of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s death by OD has, for the moment, wrested the subject of substance abuse from the shadows and thrust…
View More WATER BY THE SPOONFUL (Arden Theatre): Dissonance v. harmony
“Let’s assume you’re traveling,” says Thaddesus Phillips, placing the audience as the sojourner. And he whisks us off. With co-creators Tatiana Mallarino and Patrick Nealy, and director Rebecca Wright, Phillips has concocted something special with 17 BORDER CROSSINGS.
View More 17 BORDER CROSSINGS (Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental/FringeArts): Voyage of imagination
Here’s the setup: A young man has lived with his male lover for a few years. During a spat he falls for a woman. Things…
View More COCK (Theatre Exile): Spatial choreography reveals isolation, influence, and alliances.
Fresh from the inaugural weekend of NICE AND FRESH, I’m heartened to report that SmokeyScout Productions (founded by Josh McIlvain and Deborah Crocker in 2008)…
View More NICE AND FRESH October (SmokeyScout): New art pops up
Object lesson: A demonstration of a principle using a material object, which forms the basis of the lesson and is available to be inspected. —Collins…
View More [40.1] THE OBJECT LESSON (Geoff Sobelle): Fringe review
Two young guys who moved here from Tennessee in 2012 started their own theater company, which they named Blue Suede Productions as a tribute to…
View More [27] AND TELL SAD STORIES OF THE DEATHS OF QUEENS (Blue Suede Productions): Fringe review
This town knows Aaron Cromie, polymath of the arts—puppeteer, performer, director, designer of puppets, sets, and props; choreographer, musician, teacher, and writer. What else? I…
View More [21] SAINT JOAN, BETRAYED (Aaron Cromie & Mary Tuomanen): 2013 Fringe review