Philadelphia

‘Riffing, Replacing, and Reworking Goldoni’s “Servant of Two Masters” at the Hedgerow Theatre: An Interview with Director Aaron Cromie: Part 1

This is the first of two interviews with Aaron Cromie, one of Philadelphia’s most beloved directors, mask makers, writers, and interdisciplinary theater artists. Henrik: Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793),...

Review: ‘36 Views’ at Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia

On the surface, Naomi Iizuka’s 36 Views is a straightforward story set against the backdrop of the art world. It’s about an art dealer with a shady reputation, an art scholar who gets drawn into his...

Review: ‘Hillary and Clinton’ at The Philadelphia Theatre Company

Power. Election. Power. Primaries. Backroom Deals! Power! It’s election season again, and the media is overflowing with comment and analysis. After the surprise of the 2008 election and the disaster...

Review: ‘Steel Magnolias’ at Bucks County Playhouse

Chinquapin, Louisiana, the fictional setting of Steel Magnolias, is one enchanting place. You don’t see much of it in Robert Harling’s play – the whole show takes place in the town beauty parlor – but...

Talking with Susan Sullivan About ‘Steel Magnolias’ at the Bucks County Playhouse

There are few actresses more familiar, or more beloved, than Susan Sullivan. For four decades she’s been a regular, dependable presence on television, most notably in eight seasons as kindhearted...

Review: ‘The Secret Garden’ at The Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia

The Secret Garden by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon at the Arden Theatre Company closes out the company’s 2015-2016 season. The Secret Garden is based on the beloved novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett and...

Review: ‘Sister Act’ at Walnut Street Theatre

Even if you haven’t seen the musical version of Sister Act, you might think you know what it’s going to be like. After all, it’s a musical based on a familiar hit movie. It’s about a bunch of funny...

Review: ‘The Invisible Hand’ at Theatre Exile in Philadelphia

When we meet Nick Bright, his life has never looked bleaker. A midlevel Citibank employee, he’s been kidnapped in Pakistan by a group of Islamic militants, the followers of a local Imam. Handcuffed...

Review: ‘Kiss Me Kate’ at Act II Playhouse in Ambler, PA

The Broadway Musical flowered in the years following World War II. Many of the musicals produced during this “golden age” remain treasures of our lyric theater. One of the best will always be Cole...

Review: ‘Man of La Mancha’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre in Bristol, PA

Perhaps one of the most popular and perennial favorites from a golden age of American musical theatre, Man of La Mancha (with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh),...

Review: ‘The Christians’ at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia

“I have a powerful urge to communicate with you, but I find the distance between us insurmountable.” The Christians by Lucas Hnath is a dynamite exploration of religion without the zoomed in bias of...

Review: ‘All the Days’ at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ

Ruth Zweigman is not a pleasant person to be around. She’s so negative that when she says “I’m in a bad mood,” her sister responds, “How can you tell?” After making a typically harsh wisecrack about...

Review: ‘The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning’ at Inis Nua Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Inis Nua Theatre Company has made a specialty of performing plays written in, and set in, the British Isles. So it may seem odd that Inis Nua is doing a play about Bradley Manning, the American...

Review: ‘The Elixir of Love’ at Opera Philadelphia

Unrequited longing for a capricious woman of a higher social class can only be cured by a magic potion, or so thinks the lovesick Nemorino when he overhears Adina, the object of his affection, reading...

Review: ‘The Explorers Club’ at Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington

Patterned Oriental carpets, richly aged dark wood paneling, a tufted leather sofa and a tapestry upholstered chair, an exotic collection of art, curiosities, and taxidermy specimens, and other...

Review: ‘A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur’ at South Camden Theatre Company

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is one of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-known plays. First staged in 1978, a few decades after his biggest successes, Creve Coeur has echoes of Williams’ best-known works,...

Review: ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’ at Curio Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Telling stories is what the Irish are known for, and Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, directed by Joshua Browns at Curio Theatre Company, does not disappoint. The rumors are as reliable as...

Review: ‘Lacey Ward: Girl Detective’ at The Phenomenal Animals in Philadelphia

The first of Robert Cousins’ four-part series on fictional teenage sleuth Lacey Ward makes its Philadelphia debut with the Phenomenal Animals in a short six-performance run. Self-described as a...

Santino Fontana Discusses ‘The 2016 Oscar Hammerstein Festival’ at the Bucks County Playhouse

The 2016 Oscar Hammerstein Festival, being held this weekend at the Bucks County Playhouse, brings together a wide array of musical theatre artists, scholars, and enthusiasts to explore the importance...

Review: ‘The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Stupid Fairy Tales’ at The Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia

If you think that happy endings, moral lessons, and the power of goodness magically triumphing over the forces of evil are the stuff fairy tales are made of, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Stupid...

An Interview with Villanova Theatre’s ‘Translations’ Director Valerie Joyce: Part 2: Behind the Scenes of Her Production of ‘Translations’

In Part 2, Director Valerie Joyce takes us behind the scenes of her production of Translations at Villanova Theatre. Henrik: Congratulations to the whole Villanova community for having been awarded “a...

An Interview with Villanova Theatre’s ‘Translations’ Director Valerie Joyce: Part 1: The Irish Chekhov

Villanova University, with its long theater tradition, has fostered not only the classics, but Irish theater for many years. To honor the 100-year anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin,...

Review: ‘Sex with Strangers’ at Philadelphia Theatre Company

You’d probably expect a play with a title like Sex with Strangers to be provocative, entertaining and, well, sexy. And Laura Eason’s play is all that and then some. It’s not a perfect play; it tends...

Review: ‘Cocktail Hour: The Show’ at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA

Traditional ballet gets the “shaken, not stirred” treatment in Cocktail Hour: The Show, a unique piece produced and performed by New York company Ballets with a Twist, and presented by Bucks County...

Review: ‘Always…Patsy Cline’ at Walnut Street Theatre – Independence Studio on 3 in Philadelphia

As one of the most iconic country singers of all time, Patsy Cline was taken away from us too quickly. At age 30, she left us with classics as “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “Stupid Cupid,” “Crazy,” and “I...

Review: ‘Doctor Faustus’ at Quintessence Theatre Group in Philadelphia

One thing was abundantly clear as the youthful Quintessence Theatre Group cast took its curtain call to the cheers of a packed house: these players had fun. Fun you ask? Isn’t this The Tragical...

Pete Pryor on Reprising his Award-Winning Role as ‘Richard III’ at People’s Light in Malvern, PA

In 2006, Pete Pryor won the Barrymore Award for Leading Actor in a Play for his stellar portrayal of the titular character in Richard III at Lantern Theater Company. Now a decade later, he is...

Review: ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ at Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, PA

Among the many traditions at Hedgerow Theatre is a fondness for cozy English mysteries, especially Agatha Christie’s. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is their newest production, and it has everything...

Review: ‘Rumors’ at Bristol Riverside Theatre in Bristol, PA

There’s nothing like a door-slammer farce for pure escapist fun and Bristol Riverside Theatre’s production of Neil Simon’s Rumors provides just that. When the show premiered in 1988, the playwright...

Review: ‘An Octoroon’ at Wilma Theater in Philadelphia

Great plays ask great questions. Sometimes, if we are lucky enough, a production finds the inherent questions in a play and interrogates them in ways only theatre can. The Wilma Theater’s production...

Review: ‘Peter and the Starcatcher’ At Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia

Walnut Street Theatre rocked with laughter tonight. The Pirate King, Black Stache, was arguing with his mate, Smee, concerning a severed. . .oh well you have to see it. It was like old time vaudeville...

Review: ‘Saint Joan’ at Quintessence Theatre Group in Philadelphia

Repertory Theatre has all but vanished in this country today. Fortunately, one can still travel to cities like DC and Philadelphia to see a company of actors enact a group of classic works, with a...

Review: ‘Richard III’ at People’s Light and Theatre Company in Malvern, PA

Shakespeare’s bloody history of Richard III, presented in a stunning production at People’s Light and Theatre Company, is filled with blind ambition, violent power struggles, and remorseless killings,...

Review: ‘Two Trains Running’ at Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia

It’s 1969, and we’re in a diner in Pittsburgh. The sweet sounds of soul are on the jukebox, and the harsh sounds of revolution are in the air. It’s a time of change in the city’s Hill District: the...

Review: ‘As You Like It’ at Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia

As far as plays go, As You Like It has a little bit of everything. Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy brings us death, weddings, country shenanigans, court intrigue and attacks from wild animals. All of...

Review: ‘The Mousetrap’ at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ

The queen of mystery, Agatha Christie, is alive and well in a new production of one of her most famous stories, The Mousetrap, now playing at McCarter Theatre Center. Directed by Adam Immerwahr, her...

Review: ‘Nureyev’s Eyes’ at Delaware Theatre Company

David Rush’s play Nureyev’s Eyes takes us to the 1970s, when two of America’s greatest artists – Rudolf Nureyev, the Russian-born dancer, and Jamie Wyeth, the Wilmington-born painter – forged an...

Review: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ at Act II Playhouse in Ambler, PA

An enchanting version of the familiar tale, Act II Playhouse’s Driving Miss Daisy serves up a delightful cast and a pleasant story that both challenges and charms. Originally written in 1987, Alfred...

Review: ‘The Women’ at EgoPo Classic Theater in Philadelphia

If your best friends’ husbands were cheating on them, would you tell them? Or would you tell everyone else? The second installment of EgoPo Classic Theater’s 2015-16 “Season of American Giants II” is...

Review: ‘Too Much Sun’ at ISIS Productions in Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s own Nicky Silver delivers once again with Too Much Sun, a modern play focusing on a family and the drama that comes with a summer house in Cape Cody. The framing, shape, and journey of...

Review: ‘Capriccio’ at The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia

What’s a countess to do? Should the young widow, Countess Madeleine, marry the poet Olivier or the composer Flamand? Such is the dilemma of Richard Strauss’s final opera, Capriccio–a clever allegory...

Liz Filios Takes on Shakespeare in ‘As You Like It’ at Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia

A multiple Barrymore Award winner, Liz Filios has twice been recognized as Best Actress in a Musical for her lead roles in Midsummer [a play with songs] at Inis Nua Theatre Company in 2014–the same...

Review: ‘Smoke’ at Theatre Exile in Philadelphia

For more than a decade, Theatre Exile has made pushing the envelope their specialty. They’ve made themselves the city’s go-to company for sexy – and occasionally sexually explicit – theatre. Last...

Review: ‘Local Girls’ at Azuka Theatre in Philadelphia

Diskit (Anna Zaida Szapiro) is a high-school junior and a wiz at chemistry; Riley (Mary Tuomanen) is a senior in a heavy metal band who is failing her chemistry class. When Diskit (“It’s a family...

Review: ‘Red’ at Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio 3 in Philadelphia

Mark Rothko, the acclaimed abstract expressionist painter returns to Philadelphia in Red, the Tony Award-winning play by John Logan, at the tiny Independence Studio black box of the Walnut Street...

Review: ‘Spine’ at Inis Nua Theatre Company in Philadelphia

When we meet Amy in the opening moments of Clara Brennan’s Spine, she’s homeless, bewildered, and defensive. She’s a London teenager with a violent temper and a surly attitude. Over the course of a...

Review: ‘A Wonderful Noise’ at Villanova Theatre

When’s the last time you saw a musical about the competitive world of barbershop quartet singing? I’m not positive, but I think A Wonderful Noise may be the first show of its kind. (Truth to tell, the...

Review: ‘Sense and Sensibility’ at People’s Light in Malvern, PA

Taking a step back into the world of Jane Austen always promises a rainbow of young ladies in high-waisted dresses, men laced up in crisp white ties, and a cornucopia of ponderings on love, money, and...

Review: ‘Death of a Salesman’ at Curio Theatre Company in Philadelphia

Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Death of a Salesman, is being given a powerful production at the Curio Theatre Company. In an intimate setting, the themes of the American Dream, and...

Review: Joilet Harris: ‘From Me to You With Love’ at The Arden Cabaret Series in Philadelphia

“A chance at an intimate, up close and personal conversation.” That is how Matthew Decker, Arden Theatre Associate Artistic Director and Cabaret Series Director, described the goal of The Arden...