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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 theBrooklyn Bridge
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
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’sAmerica
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
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
Tommy and Me.
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 Philadelphia
