Rhrough minimal, absurd dialogue and highly stylized, disjointed movement, the ensemble-devised work evokes the boredom and bad behavior of a privileged vacationing family of film artists and their guests.
View More THE ADULTS (New Paradise Laboratories): Fringe Review 20
PAC’s THE RAPE OF LUCRECE is not only the performance of a lifetime by Dan Hodge, but also a momentous socio-political statement and a stirring call to activism.
View More THE RAPE OF LUCRECE (Philadelphia Artists’ Collective): 2014 Fringe review 4.2
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
With simulated oral histories, storytelling through creative movement, and naturalistic scenes of the women’s interaction, Butter & Serve craft an engaging and intelligible account of military service from a female perspective.
View More V (Butter & Serve): Fringe Review 18
Van.Martin Productions lampoons the Sophocles classic with their silly OEDIPUS THE MUSICAL, which ties together Greek tragedy, #YOLO, and herpes into one madcap package.
View More OEDIPUS THE MUSICAL (Van.Martin Productions): Fringe Review 17
This short musical is aimed at really young ones, but its message (and its sense of humor) is universal. Two actors and one musician run through a simple story, and model a gamut of moods and behaviors for their young audience. Queen Annie (the captivating Amanda Curry) is on a journey to find a new place to build her castle. She visits a series of emotionally-themed towns and connects with a local resident in each.
View More RAINBOWTOWN (Two Ducks Theatre Company): Fringe Review 16
You know that moment when playfighting becomes real? Everything is nice and amusing until a pulled punch actually connects, and then laughter gives way to the sounds of a struggle. Things become very serious awfully quickly once people start getting hurt for real. That’s the main thrust of WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT A PRESENTATION ABOUT THE HERERO OF NAMIBIA, FORMERLY KNOWN AS SOUTHWEST AFRICA, FROM THE GERMAN SUDWESTAFRIKA, BETWEEN THE YEARS 1884-1915.
View More WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT (The University of the Arts): Fringe Review 15
Shakespeare meets South Philly in Tribe of Fools’ TWO STREET, a high-energy take on Romeo and Juliet through the perspective of a contemporary gay couple.…
View More TWO STREET: A TALE OF STAR-CROSSED MUMMERS (Tribe of Fools): 2014 Fringe Review 12.2
If dance is a language, it is spoken in a variety of accents. With WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT OUTER SPACE, FringeArts commissioning three contemporary choreographers—Zoe Scofield, Georg Reischl, and Itamar Serussi—to create pieces on PA Ballet dancers.
View More WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT OUTER SPACE (Pennsylvania Ballet, Curtis Institute of Music, FringeArts): Fringe Review 14
This year’s Fringe offering by one of Philadelphia’s most consistently impressive young collectives transports us through a maritime dreamscape of sailors and pirates, shipwrecks and skeletons, sea shanties and sea creatures, as two children drift into a fitful sleep filled with the imagery of bedtime stories and seafaring tales
View More DEEP BLUE SLEEP (Found Theater Company): Fringe Review 13
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
Cirque du Soleil alumnus Greg Kennedy toys with the concepts of innovation, invention, and collaboration through circus arts in his new performance THEOREM.
View More THEOREM (Greg Kennedy): Fringe Review 11
In THEY CALL ME ARETHUSA, Southern-tinged Greek myths tie together documentary theater-style interviews reminiscent of Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman shows.
View More THEY CALL ME ARETHUSA (Colie McClellan & Mark Kennedy): Fringe Review 10
Staging a Happening used to be straightforward. To jangle the audience out of the role of The Observer, you redefined art from what-I-the-Artist-do-up-here into what-is-happening-between-you-and-me.…
View More (SOME) LOVE AND (SOME) INFORMATION (Ira Brind School and Headlong Dance Theater): Fringe Review 9
Each Fringe, the Pig Iron Theatre Company show is one of the most highly anticipated. This year’s offering, 99 BREAKUPS, may be untidy and inconsistent but it’s already almost completely sold out.
View More 99 BREAKUPS (Pig Iron Theatre Company): Fringe review 8
HBO After Dark meets Bunraku-style puppetry meets documentary theater in Laurencio Carlos Ruiz’s INCONGRUOUS. The piece is constructed of six short stream-of-conscious monologues from six characters…
View More INCONGRUOUS (Audience Wanted Productions): Fringe Review 7
The Drexel Players bring us with their adaptation of Aesop’s fables, AE$OP, re-hashing the fables’ warnings concerning might and deception, but subvertting others for our society in which money speaks the loudest.
View More AE$OP (The Drexel Players): Fringe review 6
Director Tina Brock brings spot-on casting, lightning-quick pacing, and non-stop hysteria (of both the panicked and hilarious varieties) to Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s FringeArts production of Eugène Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS. The devastating consequences of mindless conformity, social apathy, and turning a blind eye to a growing threat are the important themes of the darkly comic Theater of the Absurd masterpiece.
View More RHINOCEROS (Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium): 2014 Fringe Review 5
As indicated by Phindie’s 2014 Critics’ Awards, the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective is one of the most consistently excellent independent theater companies in the city. Their…
View More THE RAPE OF LUCRECE (Philadelphia Artists’ Collective): 2014 Fringe review 4.1
What makes film different from theater is that film is fixed forever, performances and lines repeating endlessly year after year, while theater has the ability to surprise us. And what makes theater different from life is that theater is scripted and life is random, unexpected, not planned out ahead of time. And what makes Philadelphia’s FringeArts Festival fun is that it delights in performances that confound expectations.
View More Intimate Exchanges (1812 Productions): 2014 Fringe Review 1.2