Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw, Notes From Arden When it debuted on Broadway in 1970, Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company (book by George Furth) rattled both social and theatrical sensibilities. Imagine having a boy-meets girls scenario where the boy, Robert (Cris Cortez), starts and ends the musical single. Why? He just doesn’t see the point of marriage … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In comedy, silly plots are easily forgiven if the writing is witty or insightful, or if one or more performers is so engaging that other shortcomings can be overlooked. With Clownfish,Theatre of NOTE’s premiere production following the hiatus of the pandemic, none of this is so Written by Amy Dellagiarino, the … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The dumbing down of American musical theater continues apace with Moulin Rouge! The Musical, which throws the past 50 years of popular music into a moronic Mixmaster and performs the stitched-together “songs” with the regrettable aesthetic of a cut-rate Vegas revue or a taste-free ‘70s TV variety show. It’s doubly unfortunate, because … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw “Few neighborhoods have changed as quickly and dynamically as Fishtown,” proclaims the website visitphilly.com, a promotional site for the City of Brotherly Love. The text goes on to explain how this once rundown working class neighborhood in the northeast part of the city is now home to a renaissance in culture, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw The Birthday Party, Harold Pinter’s first full length play, opened in London in May 1958. Reviews were grim. Most critics, accustomed to the kitchen sink realism of writers like Sillitoe, Braine and Osborne, were incensed and/or bewildered by the non-sequiturs, contradictions and pauses in Pinter’s language, along with the murkiness of … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw Playwright Will Manus’s one-man homage to humorist and screenwriter S.J. Perelman (Sam Aaron) is a bit of throwback, and that’s a compliment. In a world as lunatic and partisan as ours, when the divide between evidence and superstition has melted across huge swaths of the country (strategically and cynically, … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw The extent to which we’re governed by amoral/immoral power brokers is now evident in surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Partnership for Public Service that Americans’ confidence in government to address our problems has plunged over the past decade across party lines. Only one in 10 Americans … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw “There are no words . . .” This phrase is among the platitudes that writer-performer Colin Campbell excoriates in his solo performance about people straining to offer comfort in the aftermath of his losing his two teenage children in a car crash, on the other end of a drunk … Read more
Dana Martin – Stage Raw John Norris is a serious actor who doesn’t take anything too seriously and the outcome is very funny. Mr. Chonkers defies definition. It’s a late-night rendezvous with the absurd — a completely ridiculous and thoroughly enjoyable 50 minutes. The evening is full of good old-fashioned silliness. Mr. Chonkers emerges from … Read more
Dana Martin – Stage Raw Ramón is here for you. He’s ready to welcome you into his casa for a self-love seminar that centers around kindness, hugs, dance breaks, stretch breaks, courage and many LOLs. The Ramón Show: Spiritual Cheerleading 101 is everything you never knew you needed in a performance experience. Read more… Now through June 23