By Wendy Rosenfield
for the Inquirer
Here’s irony for you: for its production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, People’s Light and Theatre Company imported Scottish director Guy Hollands, and Hollands, in turn, presents the play as a winter festival celebrating community, featuring locally crafted design elements and edible treats. It’s sort of a riff on this script’s own sheep-shearing feast, during which area farmers and tradesmen celebrate the coming of spring by wearing masks, singing and performing. And in many ways, the gimmick works.
A short pre-curtain green show featuring the cast on an outdoor stage under tin can lamps and beside a warming fire, general admission tickets, and post-show pagan revelry, including a burning of the “Witch of Winter” (a wire-and-straw sculpture) all add to a sense of togetherness. This particular work is Shakespeare’s “kitchen sink” play, with two very different halves (a winter tragedy in which jealous King Leontes accuses his faithful wife, Hermione, of cuckoldry, followed by a spring romance between royal offspring) cleaved by his famous and most famously tragicomic stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” The Winter’s Tale needs all the unity it can get.
On Wednesday night, Robert Battle programmed Paul Taylor’s 1981 masterpiece Arden Court as the opening note on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s three-night run at the Merriam Theater. Even with William Boyce’s Baroque music, this company breathed new life into Taylor’s work and into the closer, the 1960 classic Revelations.
The six men in the work danced like tightly coiled springs rapidly released, or in static moments, X’d their bodies stiffly to be turned hands over heels by another man, one man rolled across the floor as the curtain dropped. Linda Celeste Sims, Rachael McLean and Alicia Graf Mack were ethereal ballerinas wafting over the shoulders of the men. But, as with most Taylor works, the men had the edge.
In Battle’s 1999 work Takademe, Jamar Roberts charmed in red ruched pants by Missoni wriggling his way through multiple personality changes to fit Sheila Chandra’s vocalizations.
But the most sensational work was the Philadelphia premiere of Philadelphia’s own Rennie Harris’s Home to a terrific musical arrangement by another homie and former Harris’ Puremovement dancer, Raphael Xavier. Former Philadanco dancer Hope Boykin stood out from the women in this hot number that featured sizzling performances by the 14-member cast led by the matchless Matthew Rushing. Xavier used New York house DJ Dennis Ferrer’s “Deep, Deep Where the Sun Don’t Shine” as a musical anthem and the techno beat gave Harris a multiplicity of choreographic possibilities. With the cast huddled together as if for protection, Rushing breaks out and begins the fast and fancy footwork and flying fingers that mark this dance throughout. Ultimately all the dancers break into house dancing, each sometimes in his or her own cloud of energy. But underlying the sensational torso-bending, hip-rocking movements were the B-Boy moves Harris grew up on and is justly famous for having created them into a new genre for the stage.
By Wendy Rosenfield
For the Inquirer
The flight for swingin’-‘60s farce Francais, Boeing Boeing--which had its English language premiere in 1962, and saw a subsequent film adaptation starring Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis--hasn’t exactly been nonstop, but in the last few years it’s sure picked up speed. The play’s most recent layover lands at Delaware Theatre Company, but it was preceded by a 2009 production at Ambler’s Act II Playhouse, and just before that, award-winning revivals on Broadway and the West End.
So, what makes this bachelor fantasy, with its carousel of international air hostesses, so right for right now? Perhaps the world’s macro-turbulence makes bachelor Bernard’s micro-turbulence so appealing. After all, what would you rather watch, CNN’s foreign desk, or a Paris-based swell and his nerdy Wisconsin pal juggling a trio of leggy German, Italian and U.S. stewardesses? Picked the latter? Perfect; you know where you can stow all that oversized baggage.
By Wendy Rosenfield
For the Inquirer
To breed or not to breed? That is the question facing M (David Raphaely) and W (Charlotte Ford) in Luna Theater’s production of Duncan MacMillan’s Lungs. In unremarkable clothes (jeans, sweatshirt), without props, sound design, sets or scene changes, they agonize, argue, love, leave, return, reconcile and endlessly orbit one another, the centers of their own tiny universe. MacMillan and director Gregory Scott Campbell present the simplest human situation without embellishment, and in doing so, illuminate its complexity.
If not for the clarity and honesty of Ford’s and Raphaely’s performances, this two-hander might become tedious. You’ve seen it all before, plot twists included, on television, onstage, in films, in life. But it doesn’t. Certain moments between the couple--a sleepy slow dance with Ford nestled on Raphaely’s shoulder--are so tender they ache, and the couple’s insecurities ring uncomfortably true.
By Jim Rutter
For THE INQUIRER
In his 1973 play Equus, Peter Shaffer depicted a detective story, inspired by a true event, about a reluctant psychiatrist attempting to unravel the case of a 17-year old boy who blinded six horses. The play's confrontation of religion with psychiatry helped set the tone for pop culture’s understanding of mind and behavior.
Forty years later, books by Oliver Sacks, shows on NPR, and hit TV shows and movies (Silence of the Lambs, Criminal Minds) have fleshed out the genre and broadened popular knowledge of aberrant psychology. In choosing to stage this otherwise-dated play, Curio Theatre Company needed to find a fresh, or at least relevant, angle for 21st-century audiences.
Find it they did.
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By Merilyn Jackson
FOR THE INQUIRER
A full moon soared diagonally across the stage backdrop at Temple’s Conwell Theater Friday night for the opening of “Wolf-in-Skins.” Hounds and wolves bayed; the hair on my neck prickled. The animals loped in on all fours, knuckles fisted like paws. From the opposite fly, three consorts of the prince regent of Annfwin (Gwyn ap Nudd, a stag) danced across in vertical contrast, often in relevé. Their breasts were cupped loosely in petals, their diaphanous empire-waist tutus flared by acrylic. This tale, drawn from pre-Christian Celtic mythology, takes place when man and beast mated and procreated, if only in myth.
“Wolf-in-Skins” is the brainchild of choreographer Christopher Williams in collaboration with composer Gregory Spears, and this was but a preview — Act I, and a short excerpt of Act II. Terry Fox, director of Philadelphia Dance Projects, laudably brought this huge project to Philadelphia on her shoestring budget.
By Jim Rutter
FOR THE INQUIRER
Katori Hall set her play “The Mountaintop” in Room 306 of Memphis’ Lorraine Hotel on April 3, 1968 — the night before Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s assassination on balcony outside that room. Though King’s legacy lives on, the world will always wonder what he could have achieved had he not been murdered at 39.
Philadelphia Theatre Company’s current pared-down production encourages a similar counterfactual wondering. Hall imagines a conversation between King (Sekou Laidlow) and Camae, a new motel maid (Amirah Vann). Over the course of 90 minutes, the two discuss social justice (Panthers vs. peace), race relations (“What to do with the white man?”) and the future of the civil rights movement.
They flirt, drink, and chain smoke, their sharp dialogue sizzles and Hall’s touching portrait flatters in its refusal to deify King. Both actors, directed by Patricia McGregor, deliver superb performances; Vann deserves choreography credit for articulating nearly every line with a foot pivot, flick of a wrist, or saucy wink.
By Wendy Rosenfield
For the Inquirer
The Arden Theatre’s current production of Endgame marks the first time this company--usually squarely in the province of narrative-driven plays and musicals--has taken on absurdist Samuel Beckett. So it’s perhaps not all that surprising that director Edward Sobel attempts to impose a sort of contemporary narrative on Beckett’s timeless apocalyptic vision; not surprising, but disappointing.
In 1984, American Repertory Theater was famously made to add an insert to its Endgame program registering the playwright’s disgust at director JoAnne Akalaitis’ subway setting, incidental music and interracial casting. This last element, he explained, added unintentional sociopolitical overtones. It’s also the key element in any argument for or against following Beckett’s very specific stage directions to the letter.
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
Hipster history. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a rock musical by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, was an outrageous success in New York. But the Plays & Players production fell as flat as cowpie; what excitement there was felt forced, and despite the young audience, there were few laughs and fewer shrieks. Daniel Student’s direction seems slow and flaccid; the slacker delivery sounds as if they’ve barely memorized their lines.
Jamison Foreman leads the onstage band, although there isn’t a memorable song in the 2 ½ hours. And it’s worth noting that the show’s running time was 90 minutes in every previous production.
FOR THE INQUIRER
When last we saw Phileas Fogg traveling Around the World in 80 Days, he landed in Delaware Theatre Company’s big, spare, delightfully imaginative, Barrymore Award-winning mainstage show. Now, a few seasons later, he’s back visiting the Walnut Street Theatre’s tiny Studio 3 in an equally delightful, up-close version of that same Mark Brown adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1873 novel.
Where the earlier production used the power of suggestion to evoke Fogg’s global adventures, here director Bill Van Horn and set designer Andrew Thompson present his journey from within and all around a Victorian cabinet of curiosities: a wood-paneled wall whose recesses pop out, slide or swivel open to reveal a ship’s captain, angry Indian priests, or a dryer vent-cum-elephant’s trunk.
This cast, which includes Van Horn, John Zak, Damon Bonetti and Sarah Gliko in multiple roles, embraces Van Horn’s madcap pace. Whether it’s Zak rolling Marty Feldman eyes as hapless Fogg-chasing Detective Fix or Bonetti’s Inspector Clouseau-style verbal contortions as Fogg’s valet Passepartout, compressed in this space, with everyone occasionally hopping aboard a shape-shifting platform hand truck, the fun multiplies.
Toby Zinman's night job since 2006 is theater critic for the Inquirer. She also is a contributing writer for Variety and American Theatre magazine. Her day job: Prize-winning prof at UArts, author of four books about four playwrights (Rabe, McNally, Miller, Albee), and doer of scholarly deeds (winner of five NEH grants, Fulbright lecturer at Tel Aviv University, visiting professor in China). Her 'weekend' job as a travel writer provides adventure: dogsledding in the Yukon, ziplining in Belize, walking coast-to-coast across England, and cowboying in the Australian Outback.
Wendy Rosenfield has written freelance features and theater reviews for The Inquirer since 2006. She was theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001, after which she enjoyed a five-year baby-raising sabbatical. She serves on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, was a participant in the Bennington Writer's Workshop, a 2008 NEA/USC Fellow in Theater and Musical Theater, and twice was guest critic for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Region II National Critics Institute. She received her B.A. from Bennington College and her M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She also is a fiction writer, was proofreader to a swami, publications editor for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and spends all her free time working out and driving people places. Follow her on Twitter @WendyRosenfield.
Jim Rutter has reviewed theater for The Inquirer since September, 2011. Since 2006, he covered dance, theater and opera for the Broad Street Review, and has also written for many suburban newspapers, including The Main Line Times. In 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a Fellowship in Arts Journalism. Thames & Hudson released his updated and revised version of Ballet and Modern Dance in June, 2012. From 1998 to 2005, he taught philosophy and logic at Drexel, and then Widener University. He also coaches Olympic Weightlifting for Liberty Barbell, and has competed at the national level in that sport since 2001.
