Archive: May, 2012
By Howard Shapiro
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The frightening Jewish folkloric notion of a malevolent “dybbuk” draws that name from the Hebrew word for attachment — which is exactly what a dybbuk does. It’s the lost soul of a dead person that for various reasons is relegated to wander, and can attach itself to a living person.
The classic story of The Dybbuk was written in Russian in 1917 by S. Ansky, and has had its own transformations. A Dybbuk, a 1995 stage version by celebrated American playwright Tony Kushner, has never been produced professionally here until now.
It’s being done by Ego Po Classic Theater in a way that salutes the story — the production bows to the melodrama inherent in this tale (or any tale) of a dybbuk but also offers a sincere reflection on its place in Jewish culture.
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is a massive and magnificent play, and Wilma Theater ends their season with a massive and magnificent production of Part One “Millennium Approaches.” This is the first of two, each about 3 ½ hours long, and the second, “Perestroika,” will open Wilma’s next season. Written in 1991, the questions are obvious: now that the millennium is behind us, now that AIDS is no longer the doom-laden plague in America it was twenty years ago, now that the USSR is dismantled and that perestroika has been accomplished, does the play hold up?
By Howard Shapiro
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A note to guys about guy talk: Be careful what you say about your significant other in casual conversations with the pals. It may come back to change your life.
That’s not my caveat — it’s the playwright Neil LaBute’s, who wrote reasons to be pretty, the non-capitalized (and who knows why?) play about a guy who makes an off-hand, not even harshly stated, comment that his girlfriend has unremarkable looks. Her gal pal overhears this and immediately files a report. After that, the play opens, in an already-on-fire screaming match between the guy and his girlfriend, built equally of arguable points and cursing epithets. (The play is what you might call fully four-letter friendly.)
“Identity Crisis” Play Festival
by Toby Zinman
for the Inquirer
A smorgasbord approach to theater: Luna Theater Company’s festival offers 10 ten-minute plays all focused on the general theme of “Identity Crisis.” Ten playwrights, nine actors, five directors and four designers team up to create these quickies. The advantage of a smorgasbord is that you get to taste a little bit of many things; some you like, some you don’t.
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
After fifty years, the Shaw Festival seems to be running out of steam; having committed themselves to plays by Shaw or written by others in his lifetime, or set in his lifetime (a lot of leeway there, 1856-1950), the Festival has to repeat and/or reach deep into obscurity. Shaw is a dramatist of specific social issues, as were many of his contemporaries; social issues change, but the plays don’t. Sometimes the relevance to the contemporary world is clear; for example, somebody spray-painted quotations from Shaw onto the pristine sidewalks of Niagara-on-the-Lake. One read: “Do not waste your time on social questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty—what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.” As I stood copying this into my notebook, a cleanup crew arrived to water-blast it away.
It says something about economic times and theatrical tastes when of the eleven shows in the festival, there are only two by Shaw (Misalliance and The Millionairess) and even more telling is that the highlight of the five productions I saw is the musical RAGTIME. Directed by the Festival’s Artistic Director, Jackie Maxwell gives this story about the promise of America, a strong, moving and full-throated production. Ragtime is based on the novel of the same name by E.L. Doctorow, with a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty, and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens. The lives of three families are entwined: a prosperous white family (Mother is played beautifully by Patty Jamieson), a rags-to-riches immigrant family (Jay Turvey is Tateh), and a black family (Thom Allison’s Coalhouse Walker is the deep and thrilling center of the show). Ragtime both evokes the atmosphere of the early 20th century and gives us contemporary relevance—exactly the combination we hope for.
By Howard Shapiro
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
It's such a pleasure to watch a production make something more of a play than seems possible. Two actors -- Kash Goins and Roderick Slocum -- are doing just that in Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks' 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning play about two African American brothers living on life's underside.
I've never been much for the play, which is too long in the first act at four substantial but realistic scenes, and becomes less believable in the two-scene second act, when family revelations -- and hints at family revelations -- seem to come pretty late in the game.
But under Malika Oyetimein's precise and thoughtful direction, this Topdog/Underdog, on Walnut Street Theatre's fifth-floor stage, is both fluid and fluent.
By Howard Shapiro
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
If you don’t come out of the Walnut Street Theatre humming these days, then you just don’t hum at all. For me it was “That’ll Be the Day,” but then I turned to “Peggy Sue,” which will still be in my head next week this time, the way these things go.
The Walnut’s new main-stage show is Buddy -- The Buddy Holly Story and what you see in that title is precisely what you get — both the everyday and quirky stuff about the short life of the singer-composer who was instrumental in creating and delivering rock and roll to a nation of teenagers who craved the new music.
His songs, with simple lyrics and effusive melodies, are as catchy today as they were more than a half-century ago. At the Walnut, where most of the talented cast is its own the on-stage orchestra, the show is a remarkable display of acting, singing dancing and musicianship, all rolled into the one.
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, is about a real island in South Africa, the site of a notorious prison. If you’ve been there you know how stark and oppressive Robben Island is, despite its having now become—merely, happily— a tourist site. Nelson Mandela, among thousands of others, was imprisoned there under the grim laws of apartheid and participated in the events the play recounts. Fugard, long admired as the courageous theatrical spokesman for human rights in his native country, gives us just a glimpse of what it must have felt like to be trapped—physically and psychologically—in South Africa.
By Wendy Rosenfield
FOR THE INQUIRER
By Merilyn Jackson FOR THE INQUIRER You could sum up the work of the genius stagecrafter and choreographer Moses Pendleton by saying he exceeds the influence of such peers as Alwin Nikolais, Elizabeth Streb, Mummenschanz, and Pilobolus, the now-41-year-old company he cofounded, then left in 1983 to form MOMIX. His inventiveness and artistry far surpass the popular Cirque du Soleil. A Dance Celebration favorite, MOMIX opened at the Annenberg Center on Thursday night to a nearly full house with its show “reMIX.” Instead of one of his evening-length works, Pendleton offered an exotic caravan of pieces — some new, some familiar — that drew oohs, aahs, and scatterings of applause throughout. I’d love to be able to see into Pendleton’s dreams just one night, but dreams alone don’t make theater like this. It needs imagination, an understanding of the laws of physics — inertia, centrifugal force, gravity, weight, velocity — and the grit to work out the precision timing that keeps his dancers safe, all of which someone like Streb employs with ease. But like Nikolais, Pendleton brings beauty, mystery, emotion, and uproarious fun to the table, too. In his and Karl Baumann’s piece TableTalk, Steven Marshall, a phenomenal gymnastic dancer who performed in many of the works, splays his arms out and, with head below the rim of the table, draws us in with a powerful rippling of his shoulder muscles. He proceeds through every possible permutation of stance until finally he twirls the table on his back and carries it off. In Tuu, with Rebecca Rasmussen, he holds and lifts her, with every press of the feet, lean of the body, fall, timed to perfection. In Dream Catcher with Cara Seymour, he commands a giant elliptically designed gyroscope, which the two pivot and swing around on in dangerous-looking variations. Two dances by the company’s women endeared with sensuality and wit: In Marigolds, Phoebe Katzin’s fabulous orange frills enfolded the women and allowed them to shimmy the dresses down their bodies till they were rumba-like sheaths. Baths of Caracalla, by the same five women, now in white by Katzin, harked all the way back to Loie Fuller, with the women rippling their white skirts like bath towels, flags, or clouds. Sputnik and Pole Dance were magnificent spectacles, using poles for balancing, vaulting, and flying, that Philadelphia choreographer Brian Sanders had a hand in contriving. By the concert’s end the ethereal, Asian-inspired ambient sound and lounge music grew tedious — my only complaint — so it was a great relief in the last piece, If You Need Some Body, to hear Bach, which I normally hate for dance. It made a perfect foil for the ebullient silliness of the company of 10 partnered by floppy dummies that ended up flying joyfully from dancer to dancer. Additional performances 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday at the Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St. www.pennpresents.org.
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.
Merilyn Jackson regularly writes on dance for The Inquirer and other publications. She specializes in the arts, literature, food, travel, and Eastern European culture and politics. In 2001, she was dance critic in residence at the Festival of Contemporary Dance in Bytom, Poland; in 2005, she received an NEA Critics’ Fellowship to Duke University’s Institute for Dance Criticism. She likes to say that dance was her first love but that when she discovered writing she began to cheat on dance. Now that she writes about dance, she’s made an honest woman of herself, although she also writes poetry.
