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Sunday, July 30, 2017

Icon Theater August 2017

                                      ICON THEATER AUGUST 2017

Saturday Night Fever.  When this musical drama hit the big screen in 1977 audiences were mesmerized by John Travolta’s dance moves. The Bee Gees soundtrack went on to become the best selling soundtrack of all time. This Walnut Street Theater production starring Jacob Tischler as Tony Manero, a Brooklyn teen in a dead end job with a talent for disco dancing, has packed the house since May.


 The dancing is as good as anything you might see at BalletX.  Tischler, like Travolta, glides across the stage like an undulating rubber man on crack, spinning out moves with Annette (Nicole Colon) while simultaneously holding her romantic overtures at bay. Enter sultry Stephanie Mangano (Alexandra Matteo), hard to get and even harder to please but with Tony’s persistence (and wiggles), who can resist? Annette’s whinny clamor for Tony’s attention is the blueprint for the death of one of Tony’s friends on the Brooklyn Bridge even if the tragedy is blithely danced away. Richard Stafford is responsible for the engaging and beautiful choreography. It’s no wonder that SNF was designated “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress.





The Humans. The Walnut’s 2017-18 season will include Stephen Karam’s Tony Award winning play about family tensions over the Thanksgiving holiday. Originally an off Broadway production, The Humans went on to win six Tonys. Walnut President and Producing Artistic Director Bernard Havard announced that the Walnut is the first theater to acquire the rights to produce this play.



 BalletX, Summer Series.  In the first dance piece, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s, Castrati, presents elongated human forms reminiscent of the alien beings in Whitely Strieber’s Communion. The dancers portray the last seven living castrati in the 16th-18th centuries.

Ochoa has the dancers move in such a way that we can actually feel the castrati’s pain of being locked in a genderless world despite their beautiful voices.   Castrati was easily the best segment of the production. In the second set, Matthew Neenan’s Let Mortal Tongues Awake, explores the relationship of individuals to authority through militarized movements of ‘The Citizen’ as dancer. The Kraftwork- style soundtrack evolves into patriotic songs as the dancers, in ironic opposition to the lyrics, appear with tape over their mouths, a not so subtle reference to imprisoned or silenced citizens in a fascist state.  The subliminal reference to Trump’s America is obvious although this reviewer saw it more as the face of fascism in the academic world where the silencing of Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter has become common. BalletX is now off to the Breckenridge Music Festival in Breckenridge, Colorado and then the International Dance Festival in Vail, Colorado.       


Tommy and Me. The world premier of sportswriter Ray Didinger’s autobiographical account of his push to have his football player boyhood hero, Tommy McDonald, inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  Certain to be the chief draw of Fringe Arts 2017. The play was read to a sold out audience at Plays and Players in 2015. Didinger, the author of 11 books, excavated the myth of “the dumb football player” on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2014.




 Playpenn, new play development 2017. Here’s where true theater lovers gather. Free and open to the public the scripts of six new plays were read in July: Terence Anthony’s The House of the Negro Insane; Brent Askari’s Hard Cell; Christine Evans’, Galilee; C.A. Johnson’s Thirst; Carter W. Lewis’ With and Jonathan Norton’s Penny Candy. The Conference included an online workshop with playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger and a class called Writing the Issue-Based Play (IBP). Playpenn’s Artistic Director, Paul Meshejian, wrote: “PlayPenn was founded because of what I considered a paucity of new play production in Philadelphia. The impulse was a local one. Since our founding, and by no means only because of PlayPenn, Philadelphia has experienced an explosion in the production of new work. That PlayPenn has supported work that has gone on to have a more prolific national presence is a welcome added benefit. “  

ICON Theater July 2017

ICON CITY THEATER JULY 2017


  The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens & Count Leo Tolstoy. Theology in five easy
pieces is the subject of this comedy by Scott Carter, which means a lot of back and forth about religion and
 Jesus Christ. These three willful men from history, stuck in a room in the after life
 (like the characters in Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit), have all written their own version of the New Testament minus
the “superstitious parts” they’ve rejected. 


They argue with one another but nobody emerges as winner of the debate.
 Carter’s script has the snappy, irreverence of his work as writer for
 Real Time with Bill Maher. Andrew Criss as Tolstoy is powerful and peasant-like while Gregory Issac lends
 the right ‘aristocratic touch’ to his portrayal of Jefferson. Brian McCann as Charles Dickens has
 the zany wild writer thing down pat so that Dickens comes across as the most contemporary-seeming
 man on stage. Unfortunately the play ends with a


preachy condemnation of Jefferson’s having owned slaves while “hypocritically” writing so eloquently
 about human rights and equality. Carter’s script obsesses on Jefferson’s sins despite the fact that in the
 18th Century the notion of equality did not apply to slaves. The tiresome practice of judging famous
people of the past based on contemporary standards and values should die a quick death.
  (The Lantern Theater, until July 2)  



Red Velvet. Not the cake, mind you, but Lolita Chakrabarti’s drama of intrigue and riots on the streets of London
 protesting the Slavery
 Abolition Act as the first black man to portray Othello takes to the stage. This September 7- October 8, 2017
 Lantern production will set the tone for the fall season which will include two additional politically oriented
dramas, the WW II Nazi-German play, The Craftsman by Bruce Graham and Copenhagen
 by Michael Frayn. Lantern’s spring 2018 program brings some fresh air into the house with its production
 of the delightful French comedy, Don’t Dress for Dinner.

Souvenir, A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins.  Don’t believe it when they say that
 money can’t buy everything or that persistence can’t win out over talent. A big Cash Cow certainly
 opened doors for the highly untalented but charismatic socialite, Florence Jenkins, who achieved international
 fame as a coloratura soprano.  The productions at Walnut Street Theater’s Independence Studio on 3 just keep
 getting better and better. (September 12-October 15, 2017). 

American Canvas. Whatever happened to this potentially marvelous play about Philadelphia painter
Thomas Eakins? Philadelphia Theater Company had it all planned out but then substituted
 The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
 at the last minute. Will there even be a Thomas Eakins play on a Center City stage?

HIR. This disturbing play, directed by Jarrod Markman, shows what can happen when an abused wife, Paige
(Marcia Saunders) becomes an abuser herself after her husband’s debilitating stroke. She feeds husband
 Arnold (John Morrison) mind altering tranquilizers, spanks him, dresses him in a woman’s nightgown
 and then hoses him down like an animal when it’s time to give him his shower.  Her life of domestic
 revenge borders on the diabolical as she systematically destroys the lives of her two children, Max (Eppchez!),
 a transgender male and her normal, ex-Marine son Issac (Kevin Meehan), just home from a war zone. Playwright 
Taylor Mac, who describes himself
as “genderqueer, or a little bit of everything,” casts a satirically hard look at the ‘revolutionary’ world
 of gender identity with its 52 genders and ‘anything goes’ philosophy. He does this with as much harshness
 as he critiques the rabid All in the Family roots that once defined Paige’s family life. Eppchez! is charming
 as Max and Saunders is so convincingly horrible as Paige that this reviewer had to fight fantasies about dousing her
 with eggs or containers of potato salad. Mac, in commenting about HIR, wrote that “there’s this whole
 generation of older, white men who are filled with rage right now, because
 they watch Fox News all day long and they feel like they’re not part of the culture…” But in HIR it is the men,
albeit their faults, who are the sane ones.

  


    






Tuesday, July 4, 2017

ICON CITY THEATER JULY 2017
 
 
  The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens & Count Leo Tolstoy. Theology in five easy
pieces is the subject of this comedy by Scott Carter, which means a lot of back and forth about religion and
 Jesus Christ. These three willful men from history, stuck in a room in the after life
 (like the characters in Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit), have all written their own version 
of the New Testament minusthe “superstitious parts” they’ve rejected. They argue with one another but nobody 
emerges as winner of the debate. Carter’s script has the snappy, irreverence of his work as writer for
 Real Time with Bill Maher. Andrew Criss as Tolstoy is powerful and peasant-like 
while Gregory Issac lends the right ‘aristocratic touch’ to his portrayal of Jefferson. Brian McCann as Charles
 Dickens has the zany wild writer thing down pat so that Dickens comes across as the most 
contemporary-seeming man on stage. Unfortunately the play ends with a preachy condemnation of 
Jefferson’s having owned slaves while “hypocritically” writing so eloquently about human rights
and equality. Carter’s script obsesses on Jefferson’s sins despite the fact that in the
 18th Century the notion of equality did not apply to slaves. The tiresome practice of judging famous
people of the past based on contemporary standards and values should die a quick death.
  (The Lantern Theater, until July 2)  


 
Red Velvet. Not the cake, mind you, but Lolita Chakrabarti’s drama of intrigue and riots on the streets of London
 protesting the Slavery Abolition Act as the first black man to portray Othello takes to the stage. This 
September 7- October 8, 2017
 Lantern production will set the tone for the fall season which will include two additional politically oriented
dramas, the WW II Nazi-German play, The Craftsman by Bruce Graham and Copenhagen
 by Michael Frayn. Lantern’s spring 2018 program brings some fresh air into the house with its production
 of the delightful French comedy, Don’t Dress for Dinner.
 
Souvenir, A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins.  Don’t believe it when they say that
 money can’t buy everything or that persistence can’t win out over talent. A big Cash Cow certainly
 opened doors for the highly untalented but charismatic socialite, Florence Jenkins, who achieved international
 fame as a coloratura soprano.  The productions at Walnut Street Theater’s Independence Studio on 3 just keep
 getting better and better. (September 12-October 15, 2017). 
 
American Canvas. Whatever happened to this potentially marvelous play about Philadelphia painter
Thomas Eakins? Philadelphia Theater Company had it all planned out but then substituted
 The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
 at the last minute. Will there even be a Thomas Eakins play on a Center City stage?
 
HIR. This disturbing play, directed by Jarrod Markman, shows what can happen when an abused wife, Paige
(Marcia Saunders) becomes an abuser herself after her husband’s debilitating stroke. 
She feeds husband Arnold (John Morrison) mind altering tranquilizers, spanks him, dresses
 him in a woman’s nightgown and then hoses him down like an animal when it’s time to give
 him his shower.  Her life of domestic revenge borders on the diabolical as she systematically 
destroys the lives of her two children, Max (Eppchez!), a transgender male and her normal, ex-Marine
 son Issac  (Kevin Meehan), just home from a war zone.


 Playwright Taylor Mac, who describes himself as “genderqueer, or a little bit of everything,” casts a satirically
 hard look at the ‘revolutionary’ world of gender identity with its 52 genders and ‘anything goes’ philosophy. 
He does this with as much harshness as he critiques the rabid All in the Family roots that once 
defined Paige’s family life. Eppchez! is charming as Max and Saunders is so convincingly horrible as 
Paige that this reviewer had to fight fantasies about dousing her with eggs or containers of potato salad. Mac, 
in commenting about HIR, wrote that “there’s this whole generation of older, white men who are filled
 with rage right now, because they watch Fox News all day long and they feel like they’re not part 
of the culture…” But in HIR it is the men,albeit their faults, who are the sane ones.