More than any other historical figure and his followers, Hitler and the Nazis are shorthand for evil. Few people emerge from the close contact with…
View More Madhouse Theater Company’s PLAYING LENI is SpellbindingCategory: Reviews
Old People and Theater (VIGIL at Lantern)
I began to attend Philadelphia theater in earnest about a decade ago, in my early mid-twenties. Consistently, my companion and I would be the youngest…
View More Old People and Theater (VIGIL at Lantern)Commedia, Terrorism, and Royalty: Inis Nua’s DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHT
Cast members from Inis Nua Theatre’s DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHT, playing in Philadelphia PA through May 14. The Royal Wedding and the death of international terrorist…
View More Commedia, Terrorism, and Royalty: Inis Nua’s DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHTAmaryllis Theatre Company Brings an Excelente LYDIA to the Adrienne
As Octavio Solis’s sublimely crafted play Lydia opens, the Mexican American Flores family is struggling to cope with the aftermath of a terrible car accident.…
View More Amaryllis Theatre Company Brings an Excelente LYDIA to the AdrienneTwo Jews Walk Into A War at InterAct
At the Adrienne last Thursday night, the show started before the curtain went up: first there was the woman who got a verbal spanking from…
View More Two Jews Walk Into A War at InterActBleak Complexity: SPEAKING IN TONGUES at the Walnut’s Independence on 3
As SPEAKING IN TONGUES opens, two couples are about to cheat on their partners. Their dialog develops in unison; each pairing uttering the same lines.…
View More Bleak Complexity: SPEAKING IN TONGUES at the Walnut’s Independence on 3One Woman, Many Voices: LET ME DOWN EASY at PTC
There are many voices in this nation’s health care debate, and Anna Deveare Smith could probably act out them all. In LET ME DOWN EASY,…
View More One Woman, Many Voices: LET ME DOWN EASY at PTCBCKSEET Productions’ Losing the Shore
You never expect lighthearted comedy when going to a show by BCKSEET Productions. Argentine prison dramas, biting Edward Albee plays, and a Christmas show depicting Santa…
View More BCKSEET Productions’ Losing the ShoreIt’s The End of the World As We Knew It: New City’s PTERODACTYLS at the Adrienne
PTERODACTYLS takes place in a sterile Main Line living room (set design Cory Palmer), a fitting setting for a work reminiscent of Victorian drawing room…
View More It’s The End of the World As We Knew It: New City’s PTERODACTYLS at the AdrienneTHE CRUCIBLE (Tri-County Performing Arts Center)
Like many people, I was introduced to THE CRUCIBLE in a high school English class. The teacher dutifully told us that it was a play…
View More THE CRUCIBLE (Tri-County Performing Arts Center)LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE by Theatre Exile at Plays and Players
Playwright Martin McDonagh delivers a powerful political message in the most palatable of pills
View More LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE by Theatre Exile at Plays and Players“Great Expectations” at Curio Theatre
Charles Dickens asked in his will that no memorials be erected to him and so the life-size sculpture of the author in Clarke Park in…
View More “Great Expectations” at Curio TheatreSarah Kane’s Controversial Play ‘Blasted’ Comes to Philadelphia’s Luna Theater Company
That playwright Sarah Kane looked on the world as a pretty bleak place was confirmed by her 1999 suicide (at the young age of 28). But her…
View More Sarah Kane’s Controversial Play ‘Blasted’ Comes to Philadelphia’s Luna Theater CompanyMusical theater kicks off Mauckingbird Theatre Company’s fourth season
I’m not the target audience for Mauckingbird Theatre Company’s Philadelphia premier of “[title of show]”, now onstage UPstairs at the Adrienne Theatre. I’ve never been the…
View More Musical theater kicks off Mauckingbird Theatre Company’s fourth seasonBrat Productions Presents ‘Carrie’ at Underground Arts
Published in 1974, Stephen King’s Carrie, the tale of a bullied high school outcast who takes bloody telekinetic revenge upon her torturers, kick started a horror-writing career that…
View More Brat Productions Presents ‘Carrie’ at Underground ArtsA Queer Midsummer Night’s Dream
Mauckingbird Theatre Company presents a gender-bent look at Shakespeare’s famous play for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell…
View More A Queer Midsummer Night’s DreamA Demonic Tour de Force: The Screwtape Letters Returns to the Lantern Theater Company
C.S. Lewis‘s The Screwtape Letters is more overtly religious than his allegorical children’s books. But just as an appreciation for the Narnia tales does not require a…
View More A Demonic Tour de Force: The Screwtape Letters Returns to the Lantern Theater CompanyAn Evening Without Woody Allen
Not everyone likes Woody Allen’s comedy, it can be a bit high-brow, idiosyncratic, or vulgar for some tastes, and like any comedy, some of his…
View More An Evening Without Woody AllenTheatre Exile’s "Shining City" at Plays and Players
The past year has seen some great stagings by Irish playwright Colin McPherson in Philadelphia. The Arden’s brilliant Seafarer was followed by a stripped down…
View More Theatre Exile’s "Shining City" at Plays and PlayersShakespeare in Philadelphia: The Arden’s Romeo and Juliet Introduces a Season of the Bard
Four hundred years after his death, William Shakespeare remains the world’s most produced playwright. For evidence of his enduring popularity look no further than the region’s stages:…
View More Shakespeare in Philadelphia: The Arden’s Romeo and Juliet Introduces a Season of the Bard