Barrymore Awards. Whether it’s the Academy Awards or Philadelphia’s Barrymore Awards, the adulation that actors receive can sometimes rival 4th of July fireworks. At this year’s Barrymores the Award for Outstanding Production of a Play went to Ego Po’s The Seagull. Jered McLenigan won Best Lead Actor in The Wilma’sConstellations. The Wilma’s Blanka Zizka walked away with Best Director award for When the Rain Stops Falling. Winner for Outstanding New play went to Will Snider’s How to Use a Knife (InterAct Theatre Company), an extraordinary gem directed by Seth Rozin. Outstanding Leading Actress Award went to Patrese D. McCain of People’s Light in Malvern for Mountaintop. Unfortunately Malvern’s twenty plus miles distance from Center City kept McCain’s talents hidden from city theater goers.
Blood Wedding. Famed Hungarian director-choreographer Csaba Horvath transformed Frederico Lorca’s seminal work into a hybrid mix of dance, poetry and hypnotic mantra making. A weak willed bride (Sarah Gliko) is conned into leaving her marriage celebration by a former lover, Leonardo (Lindsay Smiling), a sexy man without a future. Harsh reality intrudes when Leonardo kills the groom (Jered McLenigan) in a madcap fight. Lorca’s prose poetry isn’t easily translated into English so the beginning of the play was more an alphabet soup of poetic phrases than anything resembling narrative. Horvath’s choreography had its beautiful moments, such as when the cast picked up sections of the floor and used them as shrouds or cloaks, suggesting a human metamorphosis into mushrooms. But watching these same dancer-actors form human pyramids to scale a giant on-stage wall seemed more like a distraction. Acrobatics as dialogue may work for BalletX, but it rarely takes the place of language when the idea is to tell a story.
Broken Stones. Playwright Fin Kennedy is a noted teacher of playwriting in London’s East End. He also writes plays for young adults and children. In this play Kennedy seems lost between the worlds of childhood and adulthood. Rand Guerrero plays Ramirez/Romano, an Iraq war vet who’s Marine Company was involved in the looting of antiquities from an Iraq museum. A writer (Charlotte Northeast) convinces Romano to tell his story. The result is a best selling book and war hero status for Romano. But here the story devolves quickly. Did the theft really happen? Did Romano really lose his wife on 9/11 in one of the Twin Towers? Is his story about the antiquities theft really real? The only certain thing here is the fact that The Writer plays God while flaunting her ability top reinvent Romano or even erase him from the script altogether. During the post-play talk-back, director Seth Rozin confessed that he had initial concerns that Kennedy pulled the rug out from the audience too many times. Rozin was right: Kennedy wiped out the play with too many rugs.
See and be Scene.. PTC Producing Artistic Director Paige Price moderated a preview of possible new plays to be staged at the Suzanne Roberts Theater. Choices included R. Eric Thomas’ The Folks at Home, an interracial political comedy; The Anatomy of Love by Ted Malawer, a story about the gender transition of a couple’s toddler daughter; If I Forget by Steven Levenson, about the life and times of a Jewish Studies Professor; A Small Fire by Adam Block, about illness and unconditional love. What struck me about all these offerings was the preponderance of female themes. Does this mean that male themes and stories about men have been relegated to the back of the bus at PTC?
The Craftsman. Playwright Bruce Graham scores another hit with this Lantern Theater Company Production which takes place immediately after WWII when the Dutch Provisional Government in Amsterdam becomes as power hungry as the Nazi siege that it succeeded. Anthony Lawton excels as the artist Han van Meegeren who goes on trial for suspected treason and collaboration with the Germans. Directed by M. Craig Getting, the play is a triumphal study of hatred and the hazy boundary between revenge and forgiveness. A fascinating two hours and fifteen minutes. (Till December 10).
