A provocative and dismaying story, conveyed through complex characters rather than through statistics and theories
View More BUZZER (Theatre Exile): We wouldn’t come here if we didn’t live here
Tag: Thom Weaver
HAND TO GOD (PTC): The human comedy with sock puppets
What a funny, nasty, smart show.
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ADAPT! (Wilma): On the brink of dawn
Blanka Zizka boldly steps forth as both debut playwright and seasoned director of the semi-autobiographical ADAPT!
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (Arden): Take pains, be perfect
Shakespeare made simple, and simply fun.
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SEAGULL (EgoPo): A comedy of torn hearts and thwarted dreams
The pathetically unfulfilled romantic expectations! The sad characters and absurd human comedy! EgoPo nails it, and beautifully. Sketches by Chuck Schultz.
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LIZZIE (11th Hour): Lizzie Borden took an axe
This is what “stifled rage” sounds like. Not so stifled, but certainly enraged.
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A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD (Arden Children’s Theatre): Another year with frog and toad
The simple tricks of the stage awe an audience of CGI-era children, showing that even something as normal as friendship can be magic.
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STUPID FUCKING BIRD (Arden): A sidesplitting and insightful reinvention of Chekhov
Aaron Posner’s hilarious reinvention of The Seagull captures all of Chekhov’s laughable characters, absurdities of life, and self-references to the theater from a 21st-century perspective.
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MACHINAL (EgoPo): Welcome to the machine
A dank, metallic, appropriately oppressive feel imbues this production of Sophie Treadwell’s 90-year-old play.
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AN OCTOROON (Wilma): A melodrama, a social commentary, an experience
Beyond being entertaining and thought-provoking, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s AN OCTOROON is an experience
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THE WOMEN (EgoPo): An engaging show turns a trifle into a treatise
Clare Boothe Luce saw her 1936 play as a critique of certain malicious denizens of Park Avenue. Director Lane Savadove sees more in it.
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What Can The Wilma Do With $10 Million?
A new $10 million in funds includes money for an updated facade, a cafe space, and a 10-member artistic company.
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2014/15 Critics’ Awards: The best in Philadelphia theater
Local theater writers vote for their favorites in twelve categories!
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HENRY V (PA Shakespeare): The king is but a man
While HENRY V contains two of Shakespeare’s most stirring speeches, smaller, less rhetorical moments are the more engrossing in Matt Pfeiffer’s staging for Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival
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LULU’S GOLDEN SHOES (FLASHPOINT): A deft treatise on cruelty
This is a play that is constantly surprising, entrancing, and always a step ahead of expectations.
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A Woman’s World: A conversation with Brenna Geffers, Lane Savadove, and Adrienne Mackey on bringing a new focus on women to Philadelphia theater
For the theme of its 2015–16 season, EgoPo Classic Theater has announced it will honor American female playwrights: Lillian Hellman, Clare Boothe Luce, and Sophie Treadwell.
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PASSION (Arden): Pretty anticlimactic
Excerpted from NealsPaper.com by kind permission. Stephen Sondheim’s musical PASSION comes to a pivotal point at which a young soldier, Giorgio (Ben Michael), suddenly becomes deeply…
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HANDS UP (Flashpoint): From micro- to macro- aggressions
As the nation mourns the victims of over-zealous policing, Flashpoint Theatre Company’s HANDS UP attempts to make sense of this injustice.
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WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF (Exile): A tour-de-force production of an American classic
The iconic three-act, three-hour marathon of marital warfare eviscerates the myth of the American family, revealing the drama and devastation behind the façade of our societal expectations
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THE WHALE (Theatre Exile): Intelligence and transformation moving under the surface
Not many plays have this kind of unmistakable resonance. When you encounter such a play, you know it. With works of consequence you can feel the pull of intelligence and transformation moving under the surface.
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