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.
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
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
Thomas
Eakins? Philadelphia
The
Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
at the last minute. Will there even be a
Thomas Eakins play on a Center City
(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.
