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Arts
We always get a ton of stuff that doesn't make it into the official agenda for one reason or another. Or sometimes it does! Anyway, this is some of the stuff that CP staffers are attempting to get to this weekend their own selves. You have no excuse for boredom.
FRIDAY 4/5
- The large-scale, walk-through art installation Song of the Silken Mermaid at 2424 Studios. Plastic-sheeting caves: not as creepy here as they are on Dexter! (Fishtown)
- On the verge of Fluid's closing, the final Sex Dwarf dance party will likely have end-of-the-world energy. (Queen Village)
- Allison Weiss plays an early show at the Barbary tonight. Starts at 5:30 p.m., but there are five acts on the bill, so. (No Libs)
- Some of us at CP have an illogical hatred of the new Dolphin (because we fear change!) but Juan MacLean is DJing there tonight. (Newbold)
- Local rock band Restorations plays the Church. (Rittenhouse)
- Tonight's the first night of the Empty Air project, in which you download an app and walk around Rittenhouse Square triggering different musical cues from the Mural and the Mint. (Rittenhouse)
- Nothing Is Rather Do looks like a typo but it's a show at Space 1026. (Chinatown)
- Two sister art events about copyright, the internet and piracy, TAKEN at Practice Gallery and REPEAT at Little Berlin. (Eraserhood, Kensington)
SATURDAY 4/6
- It's supposed to be at least vaguely spring-like for Pilam's Human BBQ. (University City)
- Yeah, it's really silly, but we have a soft spot for the really silly. Therefore: Giant Pillow Fight in Washington Square Park. (Society Hill)
- Ex-City Paper staffer and esteemed poet Daisy Fried will read from her new book at Arts Parlor in the afternoon. (South Broad)
- How about 24 straight hours of Indian music? Raga Samay is a rare occurance, people. (University City)
- If you were not aware that there is a Stoogeum dedicated to the Three Stooges out in the 'burbs, there is, and it is this morning the curator is giving a presentation on Larry Fine as part of Cinedelphia (which has a lot of other cool stuff going on for its opening weekend). (Ambler)
- Brother JT fronts the Original Sins at Johnny Brenda's. (No Libs)
- And of course we will go to basically anything involving Skeletor and karaoke, ever. (Chinatown)
Actually it's kind of a trickle. Now's your chance to strike. Send your poems! Send your stories!
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
CLASS: Daringly High Trapeze Classes
GENRE: Circus
GROUP: Fly School Circus Arts
ATTENDED: March 31, 11:30 a.m., UArts lot
CLOSES: April 27
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: "On October 30th, 1965, Model Jean Shrimpton shocked the Australian establishment by attending Derby Day, a significant horse racing event in Melbourne, wearing a mini dress with a considerably higher hemline than was acceptable. … Fly School Circus Arts presents Daringly High, a celebration of the empowerment, confidence, and freedom found in doing the unexpected, flying in the face of limitations, trying something you never thought possible."
WE THINK: Jean Shrimpton might be hard-pressed to see what her hemline has to do with a group of six women (and one tie-dye-clad man) taking turns dangling from a trapeze set up an a gravel-strewn vacant lot on South Broad Street as gawkers peered on through a chain-link fence. But poetic reaches aside, this two-hour class suitable for beginners is one of the most invigorating experiences you’ll find in PIFA — or anywhere else. Mary Kelly Fayel, a graduate of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College leads an enthusiastic and surefooted team of instructors who take attendees through backflips, upside-down hangs and, if approved for takeoff, a catch in the hands of a pro hanging from a second trapeze at the other end of the net. Sure, I managed to give myself a black eye in the process (we took a photo, shown) — but the Shrimptonesque sense of liberation (from gravity, if not gracelessness) was worth it.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Civil War ghosts just wanna sing!
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: Wide Awake: A Civil War Cabaret
GENRE: Cabaret
GROUP: The Bearded Ladies
ATTENDED: Saturday, March 30, 8 p.m., Kimmel Center Innovation Studio
CLOSES: April 6
TICKET PRICE: $29
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: "The Bearded Ladies take on the entire Civil War . . . in one hour. Part Gone With the Wind, part folk-punk extravaganza, with music ranging from 1827 to 2013."
WE THINK: Every Bearded Ladies creation is a high-adrenaline adventure. Wide Awake starts with anti-paranormal commandos, bouncing off the walls like hyperactive hosts of a kids' TV show, commissioned to exorcize the spirits trapped since 1865 below the Kimmel Center. They're soon possessed by iconic American ghosts — P.T. Barnum, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln — with their own agendas. Their Kimmel contact, played by director John Jarboe, becomes defiant southern belle Dixie, and the war is on again.
Amidst lots of great songs and mash-ups (e.g., "John Brown's Body" with The Beatles' "Come Together" — surprisingly beautiful!), Wide Awake explores the Civil War's effects 150 years later. "You put all your faults on me," Dixie complains, "so you don't have to think about your damn selves." Slavery, women's rights and war propaganda are subjects woven through the silliness (Rebecca Kanach's costumes are sublimely ridiculous) and the cleverly arranged songs (credit music director-composer Heath Allen, leading a tight band billed as "Bobby Lee and The Surrenders"). Oona Curley's deceptively simple set and bold lighting add many surprises.
The Bearded Ladies' low-tech aesthetic soars here, with inventive use of shadow puppets and handmade cardboard props (both by Martina Plag), and the spooky flashlight self-illumination that every kid knows and loves. Check out the eclectic, cardboard-mounted displays in the lobby before the show too. Like every Bearded Ladies show, Wide Awake is a must-see.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Savion Glover taps back to the beginning of time?
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: Dance Space
GENRE: Dance
ARTIST: Savion Glover
ATTENDED: March 30, 8 p.m., Academy of Music
CLOSED: March 30
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: “Dance Space immerses the audience in the ethereal atmosphere — complete with low lights, fiber-optic stars, and environmental sounds — as Glover’s solo choreography taps through the darkness, drawing people closer to a connection with the early universe.”
WE THINK: Savion Glover’s taps are a language unto themselves, and he is in constant conversation with them. Dance Space began with a series of sounds like the winding of gears in a clock, and then a blinding light as the audience was transported back to the beginning of time. Glover’s taps began slowly, building anticipation in the audience as a slow clack echoed across the stage, and out into space, like the tumbling of a small rock. In this way, Glover began to explore his own, and our, plot in existence.
The tapping was ultimately the most thrilling part of this show, as it should have been. The lights effectively created an atmosphere of early space, but the “environmental sounds” could have been taken directly out of a bad ‘80’s sci-fi movie. Glover was raised midway up the performance space, which at first was disappointing, since it left much of the audience without a clear view of his feet.
However, sound was the focus here, and the stage did allow for the audience to focus on the rhythms he was creating. The show hit its climax during a sequence in which Glover taps to a recording of his voice on loop, his legs tapping so feverishly they seemed to blur at the bottom. This is the point where Glover made clear why he danced, to fully show his emotion, to lose himself in the art, bending his body forward and backward as though to hear the sound more clearly, emphasizing the taps with his hands. At this point, I felt as though Glover was giving the audience a new way to experience the universe, to give sound back to it as it was given to all of us.
—Nikki Black
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Reagan's shot and everything just got real weird.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: From the Swamp to the Stars
GENRE: Theater
GROUP: No Face Performance Group
ATTENDED: March 30, 8 p.m., AUX Performance Space
CLOSES: April 14
TICKET PRICE: $20
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: “It’s code red in the situation room as President Reagan lies on a gurney, waiting for the mask to drop. Who’s responsible? ... A Washington manhunt turns into a cosmic fever dream while the fate of the free world hangs in the balance.”
WE THINK: Directed by Gedney Barclay with a choreographer’s eye for movement and synchronized image, From the Swamp to the Stars is not so much about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan as about cultural transition, lost faith, new idealism (and cynicism), media saturation and American hysteria. It’s a mélange of late-Cold-War-era miscellanea, vintage Hollywood and GE footage of The Gipper, musical interludes, outbursts of pop culture ranging from David Byrne to Paul Schrader to Prince, and surreal hallucinations which remind one of what Robert Plant affectionately called “the deep and meaningless.” All of this is given levity by Justin Howe and Jaime Maseda, who ham it up gleefully as Reaganite suits, Russian underground nightclub impresarios, and, in Maseda’s case, Travis Bickle/John Hinckley Jr.
But the real stakes are embodied in Mark McCloughan’s Caroline and Anna Szapiro’s Red, one a washed-up chanteuse and the other a true believer so convincing she nearly turns Reagan’s farewell address into catharsis. But soon the play returns to where it began, four thanatoids framed inside Droste inducing rectangular prosceniums, sitting in thrall to the tube where they might very well be watching us watching them watching themselves…
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: A Houdini bio only scratches the surface.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: The Life (and Death) of Harry Houdini
GENRE: Theater
GROUP: EgoPo Classic Theater
ATTENDED: Fri., March 29, 8 p.m., Plays & Players
CLOSES: April 7
TICKET PRICE: $32
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: "After a lifetime of death defying escapes, Houdini is ready for his final curtain call. You will be there to distinguish reality from fiction — if you can."
WE THINK: A surprisingly straightforward ensemble-created work from EgoPo and director Brenna Geffers gives us Harry Houdini's story, from humble beginnings as Jewish immigrant Eric Weiss to international stardom as an escape artist. Robert DaPonte (shown) fascinates as the tortured, driven title character, but the 75-minute collection of biographical highlights doesn't plumb Houdini's depths, particularly his obsession with debunking spiritualists like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini's attachment to his mother, his resentment of his father, and his rocky relationship with his wife are all referenced, but ultimately fail to coalesce into the life-after-death insight promised. I wanted more Houdini: not just explanation of his damaged psyche, but insight into his often-discussed, never-seen escape skills. Most effective is Geffers' use of the century-old Plays & Players space: the audience sits on stage, with the theater's 380 red seats and decaying murals as backdrop, a ready-made tribute to vaudeville.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Azuka Theatre's slightly confusing (but moving) tribute to Billie Holiday and Frank O'Hara.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: Everyone and I
GENRE: Theater
GROUP: Azuka Theatre/The American Poetry Review
ATTENDED: Friday, March 29, 7:30 p.m., Hamilton Garden at the Kimmel Center
CLOSES: April 7
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: "July 17, 1959: Billie Holiday dies and Frank O’Hara pens one of his most beloved poems — an intersection of elegy and love letter — “The Day Lady Died.”"
WE THINK: First, just go read the poem first. We even linked it for you, right there. ...OK? Ready?
On a stage split evenly between a grassy patch in East Hampton and a jazz club in the city, Frank O’Hara (Mike Dees) and Billie Holiday (Kimberly S. Fairbanks) take turns sharing anecdotes with the audience about loneliness, romance, and the creative process. Frank and Billie never interact in this script by American Poetry Review editor (and Philadelphian) Elizabeth Scanlon, but weave in and out of each other’s monologues at thematically similar points. Perhaps more compelling conceptually than in execution, this feature underlies the show’s biggest weakness: Its two narratives sometimes feel disjunct, or inadequately paralleled.
But towards the end of Everyone and I, O’Hara has a poignant line about reception to his poetry that works as a metaphor of sorts for the show as a whole. “It doesn’t matter if anyone understands. They’ll still be moved if you’re doing it right.” I didn’t always understand what Everyone and I — structurally, narratively — was trying to achieve. But I did feel moved when the house lights came down on Dees reciting the last, shuddering line of “The Day Lady Died.”
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: St. Matthew's Passion, Philadelphia Orchestra
SHOW: Dust to Dust: A Brief History of Religious Violence
GENRE: Theater/stage combat
GROUP: The 95 Runagates
ATTENDED: Thursday, March 28, 8 p.m., First Unitarian Church
CLOSES: Sunday, April 14
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: "A series of the best violence set in churches throughout history."
WE THINK: Jesus vs. the devil! Charles VII vs. Joan of Arc! A bunch of gossipy Irish Catholic schoolgirls vs. ... each other! While not all strictly religious, Dust to Dust is something of a mixtape of some of the most memorable stage fight scenes (with varying Christian overtones) in theater history. Half of these are from Shakespeare, but aside from the raucous scene from Romeo & Juliet (in which Romeo and Paris hurl each other into the church pews), J. Oliver Donahue’s fight choreography hit hardest from the less classic works. Producer James Kiesel and Donahue’s steel-clanking swordfight as Jesus and Satan from The Wakefield Mystery Plays fulfilled the badassery quota, while Jess Brownwell, Terri McIntyre and Annie R. Such tussled in the best and most hilariously indulgent teen-girl fight (above) I’ve seen since 10th grade.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: J.S. Bach, St. Matthew Passion, opening night performance
GENRE: Classical music
GROUP: Philadelphia Orchestra with Westminster Symphonic Choir, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
ATTENDED: Thursday, March 28, Kimmel Center
CLOSES: Saturday, March 30
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: "Rare local performance of a baroque masterpiece."
WE THINK: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is the Sistine Chapel of music; it is so overflowing with beauty and meaning, all three hours of it, that it can almost be overwhelming. This Philadelphia Orchestra performance, their first in thirty years, was presented in such a way as to organize the drama, while not mitigating the gorgeous sheen of the music. It was made to flow in a theatrically cogent way, mainly via the use of minor blocking by the solo vocalists. The singers were not asked to “act,” per se, but to move about the raised stage, which was placed in the center of the orchestra, following the course of the passion play.
The instrumental ensemble itself was divided into two chamber groups that sometimes played separately, and elsewhere as one, and was abetted by a therobo and a gamba in the continuo, as well as two chamber organs. Yannick Nézet-Séguin found a delicate yet fulsome texture in this unusual grouping, and chose beautifully measured tempos, allowing the music to breath naturally. The singing was superb, with special praise going to the wonderfully nuanced tenor of Andrew Staples, in the central role of the Evangelist.
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