In the new FringeArts building, we are presented with what looks like a floating basement, decorated many decades ago, sitting on sloppily placed cinderblocks. Out of pure…
View More THE ELEPHANT ROOM (FringeArts): 60-second review
Category: Reviews
BLINK (Inis Nua): The Manufacturing of Affection
Phil Porter’s BLINK—making its American premiere with Inis Nua Theatre—is a touching pastiche of romance, high drama and farce. It’s both heavy and light, comic…
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LUCKIEST KID (White Pines): 60-second review
Philly-based playwright Martha Kemper’s memoir-based LUCKIEST KID is an achievement just this side of brilliant. Playing the protagonist and main speaker in a story of…
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THE BROTHERS SIZE (Simpatico): 60-second review
The stories of the orishas, a pantheon of spirit personalities, has a lasting influence on the descendants of enslaved Africans throughout the Americas (The great…
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DO NOT PUSH (GDP): Clown Symphony
Where invention, precision and skill are present, great theater is possible. Alex Suha, creator of DO NOT PUSH, has applied all of these attributes with a clever…
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NICE AND FRESH October (SmokeyScout): New art pops up
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)…
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12 ANGRY MEN (Gokash): A revealing look at social justice
According to Wikipedia, 12 ANGRY MEN was originally a television play broadcast in 1954, eventually making its way to the (actual) stage and then to the silver…
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THE MUSIC YOU REMEMBER (White Pines): An Introspective Journey through Love, Loss, and ‘60s Nostalgia
When burned-out middle-aged Professor Paul Diollio (Jerry Perna) learns via cell phone messages that he has been denied tenure, his car has been repossessed, and…
View More THE MUSIC YOU REMEMBER (White Pines): An Introspective Journey through Love, Loss, and ‘60s Nostalgia
PARADE (Arden): A Musical Tragedy of Bigotry and Injustice
Set in Georgia between 1913 and 1915, PARADE examines the true story of Leo Frank, a transplanted Brooklyn-bred Jew accused of killing a thirteen-year-old girl…
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EMMA (Lantern): Meddlesome Matchmaking and Regency Amusements
The Lantern opens its twentieth anniversary season with the Philadelphia premiere of Jane Austen’s class-conscious romantic comedy of manners, in which a young idle-rich heroine’s…
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EMMA (Lantern): Philly falls for Austenmania
Over the past few years, there’s been a surprising and unlikely spark of interest in Jane Austen. Austen’s novels—Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, et al—have…
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THE RAINMAKER (People’s Light): The Promise of Hope in Times of Hardship
People’s Light & Theatre Company has enjoyed success with its past offerings of masterworks about life in America in the first half of the 20th…
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[78] STUDY HALL (Philly Improv Theater): Fringe review
The conceit of Philly Improv Theater’s STUDY HALL is that we the audience are a bunch of prep school students, awaiting a lecture in an…
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[77] BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL (Life Theater Company): Fringe review
Weekly World News is known for a lot of things, but heartfelt sentiment isn’t one of them. Surprising, then, that the tabloid birthed BAT BOY:…
View More [77] BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL (Life Theater Company): Fringe review
[76] BASTARD PIECE (No Face Performance Group): Fringe review
You are in a spacey kind of facility thing. It’s all white in there, with some technological lookin’ kinda lights. There are three doors; soon,…
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[75] REGGIE’S BRODIE: A VAUDEVILLE EXTRAVAGANZA (Cut House Productions): Fringe review
Is your only experience with burlesque the 2010 Christina Aguilera / Cher movie? Never fear: the good people of Cut House Productions are here to…
View More [75] REGGIE’S BRODIE: A VAUDEVILLE EXTRAVAGANZA (Cut House Productions): Fringe review
[74] BEYOND THE LIGHT (Leila Ghaznavi and Pantea Productions): Fringe review
Beyond the Light is a devised puppetry/theater/music/acrobatics/dance exploring unrequited love through whimsical, nighttime wonderment. A blonde boy and a black-haired girl stand in separate shadows,…
View More [74] BEYOND THE LIGHT (Leila Ghaznavi and Pantea Productions): Fringe review
[73] ROOTS (AKA performance): Fringe review
AKA performance is a new dance collective, formed by young choreographers Katrina Atkin, Ann-Marie Gover, and Alessandra Delle Grotti to showcase their individual approaches to…
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[72] XY SCHEHERAZADE (Unstuck Theater): Fringe review
XY SCHEHERAZADE works very hard to conjure the moment when “a story that you’re telling a friend becomes, for a minute, a shared perspective.” But…
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[71] STRIPPED OF COMMON SENSE (Joint Bender Productions): Fringe review
“Back to the grind. Literally.” So begins a shift for five young women, dancing for a living. Set in the dressing room of a strip…
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