FRINGE REVIEW: Falstaff

You don't have to be an opera aficionado to be utterly charmed by Poor Richard's take on Falstaff, which marries a traditional vocal approach with modern touches.

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FRINGE REVIEW: Falstaff

POSTED: Saturday, September 15, 2012, 10:45 AM

Every year, there's hundreds and hundreds of performances at the Philly Fringe and Live Arts Festival, and unless it's one of the big shows, it's sometimes hard to tell what you're going to get. Here at Critical Mass we're sending writers to as many shows as we possibly can for 75 pocket-sized reviews over the course of the fest. Check back in with us at On The Fringe every day for real talk on what these things actually are!

SHOW: Falstaff

GROUP: Poor Richard’s Opera

GENRE: Music

ATTENDED: Thu., Sept. 13, 7:30 p.m.

CLOSES: Sat., Sept. 15

BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: Ladies beware. Shakespeare’s delightful yet disgusting Falstaff seduces and swindles via modern technology and social media in Poor Richard’s Opera’s take on Verdi’s timeless opera about love of all kinds at all ages. Sung in Italian with inventive English super titles.

WE THINK: You don’t have to be an opera aficionado to be utterly charmed by Poor Richard’s take on Falstaff, which marries a traditional vocal approach with modern touches. Under Siddhartha Misra’s direction, the fresh supertitles incorporate screenshots of text messages, tweets and a few short video vignettes. José Andrade is repulsive, pathetic and ultimately relatable as Falstaff, who gets his comeuppance after trying to snag two rich ladies with identical texts. Also worth singling out are Maren Montalbano as the crafty, comic go-between Dame Quickly and Rebecca Brinkley Nannetta, an ingenue in sweatpants. The Trinity Center for Urban Life resounds with their voices, and Ting Ting Wong’s brisk piano is all the accompaniment they need.

—M.J. Fine

Posted by M.J. Fine @ 10:45 AM Permalink | Post a comment

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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