You never expect lighthearted comedy when going to a show by BCKSEET Productions. Argentine prison dramas, biting Edward Albee plays, and a Christmas show depicting Santa Claus as a reindeer molester — these are standard fare for the small Philadelphia company. It’s no surprise then that BCKSEET’s first commissioned work, Losing the Shore by Catherine Rush (now onstage UPstairs at the Adrienne), is an ordeal of uncomfortable intensity.
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category:
Lieutenant of Inishmore by Theatre Exile at Plays and Players
Guns blaze, blood flows (gallons of it), and the stage is littered with corpses. All this, and it’s funny too. Theatre Exile’s production of Lieutenant of Inishmore, now onstage at Plays and Players Theater, is a treat in many ways. The beautifully choreographed violence is entertainingly gruesome not emotionally disturbing, and the horror is underpinned by a farcical humor that brings laughs galore. But Lieutenant is more than just a grotesque comedy; playwright Marin McDonagh delivers a powerful political message in the most palatable of pills.
“Great Expectations” at Curio Theatre
Charles Dickens asked in his will that no memorials be erected to him and so the life-size sculpture of the author in Clarke Park in West Philadelphia is the only one in the world. But the greatest monument to Dickens can be seen just a few blocks away: a theatrical version of his finest work, Great Expectations, is now onstage at Curio Theatre.
REVIEW: Terrence McNally’s Golden Age
Matthew Ray reviews Terrence McNally’s Golden Age by the Philadelphia Theatre Company. Golden Age is an insider’s look at the schemes and dreams behind the curtain at an opera. But this is no fictional everyman opera production. McNally, a devoted opera aficionado, has set his production at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris on the opening night of Bellini’s I Puritani in 1835. The Golden Age then spends the next three hours AND three acts indulging an overload of selfish egos, petty jealousies, recriminations and career strategizing.
