Wendy Rosenfield

Wendy Rosenfield is a freelance writer who has reviewed theater and written arts and lifestyle features for the Inquirer since 2006. She was chief theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001. Wendy holds a B.A. in English literature from Bennington College, has participated in the Bennington Writer's Workshop, and was a 2008 NEA Fellow in Theater and Musical Theater. She is also the proud mother of two young children who often fight over the extra reviewer's ticket, which leads her to believe that theater is alive and well and breeding new enthusiasts all the time.

Read "Drama Queen," Wendy's blog on arts and culture

Tony Braithwaite portrays 47 characters in Montgomery Theater´s "Fully Committed."

"Fully Committed": Look at eatery business

By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

Posted 06/22/2009

Tony Braithwaite is fast becoming the macaroni and cheese of Philadelphia-area theater. Employed in back-to-back shows all season long, and currently performing solo in Montgomery Theater's production of Becky Mode's Fully Committed, he's reliable, satisfying, and able to withstand countless variations on his basic recipe: the put-upon nice guy who may or may not come out ahead.

Tug of heartstrings in 'Honk!'

Theatre Horizon's take on "Ugly Duckling" is a stylized, musical tale of adversity and strength.

By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

Posted 06/15/2009

It's a big week for Hans Christian Andersen in the Philadelphia area. Theatre Horizon's Honk!, a musical take on Andersen's 1843 children's story The Ugly Duckling, dovetails with Robert LePage's The Andersen Project, a very loose take on Andersen's lesser-known children's story The Dryad.

New Candlelight's staging of 'Oklahoma!' is worth its ! - 06/10/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

It's probably appropriate that New Candlelight Dinner Theatre is staging its current production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! right around Tony Awards time. Its songs are such cultural landmarks - "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "Surrey With the Fringe on Top," "People Will Say We're in Love" - that it's easy to forget how innovative the show was when it opened in 1943.
An uninspired take on 'Doubt' - 06/08/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

How did People's Light and Theatre get John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable so wrong? An examination of power, faith, and oppression at a Catholic school in the Bronx in the early 1960s, Doubt is a taut vision of the impending social turmoil of the era.
30-odd players in six alcoves explode with 'Quixote' power - 05/28/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

There's a whole season between September's Live Arts/Fringe Festival and us, but Stillpoint Productions' Quixote, a reimagining of Cervantes' 17th-century tale, brings some of that discipline-blurring fervor to town months ahead of schedule.
A crazy meeting of the minds of Freud and Dalí - 05/22/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

Terry Johnson's Hysteria, currently onstage at the Wilma Theater, is the kind of script that jumps off the page, crackling with electricity and potential.
'Odd Couple': Classic recipe still needs fresh ingredients - 05/20/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

For the second time this season, a professional Philadelphia theater - in this case, Mayfair's Devon - is producing Neil Simon's perennial crowd-pleaser The Odd Couple. The season's first production pleased critics as well as crowds at the Kimmel Center's Innovation Theatre, and featured local lights Peter Pryor as messy Oscar Madison and Tony Braithwaite as persnickety Felix Ungar, the poker-buddy newspapermen forced into close quarters after each is evicted from his marriage.
A father's fight to hold on to home - 05/15/2009: New City Stage Company's "A Stone Carver" is a portrait of a man with rock-hard determination.

By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

After devoting its 2007-2008 season to the work of Trenton native (and Bucks County resident) William Mastrosimone, New City Stage Company revisits the playwright for its last production of this season, A Stone Carver, at the Walnut's Studio 5. The play, more than any other of his tense, darkly comic explorations of violence and connection, is closest to Mastrosimone's own story.
Respect: A Musical Journey of Women at Act II Playhouse - 05/12/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

The story behind Respect: A Musical Journey of Women, currently at Act II Playhouse, speaks volumes about its content, such as it is. Developed for "leadership-training programs" after a book by one Dr. Dorothy Marcic, the show purports to be a
A couple has no stuff, but the play has too much - 04/28/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

In Hedgerow Theatre's world premiere of The White Room, its writer and director, Nagle Jackson, asks what happens when a yuppie couple find themselves suddenly without their stuff. And not just without their stuff, but without even the stuff holding their
From South Camden, 5 one-act plays on injustice - 04/27/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

It's great that South Camden Theatre Company has mounted And Justice for All, a festival of one-act plays "focused on political and social injustice in America." Even better, it happens in the basement of a church that is a little courtyard oasis from the decay outside its gates.
Bringing children's books alive - 04/23/2009: By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer

Let's just get this out of the way: Playwright Y York, whose adaptation of Jerry Spinelli's children's novel Eggs opens at People's Light & Theatre Company tonight, really is named Y.