Nearly everyone in the arts has taken another job such as waiter, receptionist, or office temp just to pay the rent. Brad Zimmerman has an unfortunately typical problem: He's Jewish and his …
Come look at the freaks Come gape at the geeks Come examine their aberrations Is this any way to begin a Broadway musical? Well, if the subject matter is any individual who has been the vict…
What did happen to Sebastian last summer? This sounds like a murder mystery, right? But if Tennessee Williams writes the mystery, one can be certain that it will be highly poetic, and involv…
A group of people are seated at a dinner table. They discuss the weather. Meanwhile, their lives are falling apart. With the revealing use of subtext like this, Anton Chekhov and others intr…
Who put the bomp in the bomp be bomp bah bomp? Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? It these lyrics fill you with happiness in the remembrance of days gone by, then run to the Bristol…
Today's audiences need farce. Wild men chasing beautiful women through many doors, visual running gags, women dressed as men, and vice versa, all enhanced by a desperation throttled performi…
Atlanta 1948: "Negro Policemen to Patrol City Streets"They are ordered not to arrest white people" This is an actual headline featured in the multimedia of Bristol Riverside's Driving Miss D…
Close harmony, the singing style popularized in World War Two by the Andrews Sisters, is formidably difficult to do well. Did you ever wonder why great close harmony teams frequently had …
Fifty years is a very long time for an arts group to exist in this changing world and economy, but Freedom Theatre is celebrating its golden anniversary with a reconceived production of its …
Every city has a Clybourne Park. "It starts one house at a time," as one of the characters states. In act one (1959) it is a neighborhood that will soon have its first "colored" family movin…
The miraculous Andrea Marcovicci briefly returned to Philadelphia. One of the grandest divas of cabaret, Ms. Marcovicci seemed to own the fabled Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel for over …
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade is perhaps the world's longest title fo…
Greek Tragedy ably performed by 17 year olds? Is such a thing possible? Read on. The play is Sophocles’ Antigone, which is probably the best dramatic examination of the conflict…
Imagine the shock of the Provincetown Players of 1920 when they received the script for The Emperor Jones. The play contains a monumental role for a "negro" actor, and hundreds of roles f…
A thunderbolt hit Philadelphia last night in the form of the play Rizzo. The quake was made memorable not only by the superb playwriting of Bruce Graham and the multi- megaton production by …
The mists of ancient history paint the birth of theater as religious ritual that gradually transmuted into drama.The Ancient Greeks always considered attending a play festival as a religious…
“Gaslighting” is actually a word. My dictionary describes the verb as "a form of psychological abuse in which false information is provided to the victim with the purpose of maki…
Electile Dysfunction is a very funny show. Act II Playhouse is performing quite a community service, since the current election news ranges from ridiculous to terrifying. Laughter is cert…
Do you know your neighbors? Even their names? Years ago, (before the internet, video games, and cable TV), people routinely visited their neighbors, to share cups of sugar and companionsh…
"Why, oh, why do the wrong people travel When the right people stay at home." From Sail Away by Noel Coward This opening lyric sets the tone for On the Road Again, a cabaret show written and…
Atlantic City came to the Philadelphia area last night and it was a rare treat. Those who primarily know Rebecca Shoemaker and Michael McGeehan from their videos from Caesar's Palace or thei…
Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope is a musical that's not produced very often " but in its day, it was a huge hit. Opening on Broadway in 1972, it ran for over 1,000 performances and earned four…
The man in black has come to Malvern. It's a long way from The Grand Ole Opry, but People's Light has imported a cast that seems to have grown up in that world, with musical instruments i…
Broadway today is the era of musical/cartoon/film/remakes. We should, therefore, be grateful for anything that attempts a reasonably adult theme: in this case, how our decisions will create …
Feed the Beast! Money, power, fame! It's all here, along with a touch of sleazy sex in the world premiere of The Harassment of Iris Malloy. Who exactly is being harassed becomes the myste…