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Archive: September, 2012
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: modern dance explained
GROUP: Rebekah Rickards
GENRE: Dance
ATTENDED: Sun., Sept. 9, 3 p.m.
CLOSES: Sept. 9
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: A revelation of codependence between weakness and stereotypes, modern dance explained candidly details the distance we are willing to travel for acceptance, the hilarious hoops we jump through to be taken seriously, and the languages we contrive to be understood.
WE THINK: One of the benefits of the Fringe Festival is that it offers opportunities to catch emerging artists who are just beginning to stretch their wings as professionals. These shows may be rough around the edges and display the youthfulness of their creators, and that’s part of the enjoyment. That was the deal with Rebekah Rickards modern dance explained, a comedic dance theater performance that made good-natured fun of the pretentions and anxieties that inhabit the world of contemporary dance.
Playing the role of a wannabe posh choreographer, Rickards concocted absurd dances and prattled on with preposterous platitudes as she attempted to teach a motley crew the language of dance using Pictionary and other unorthodox methods. It was witty and knowing, and while the show ran too long and a bit too loosey goosey, the performance presented Rickards, and co-choreographer/dancer Ronald Parker (in the outlandish role of Angry Black Man), as fresh artists worth keeping your eye on.
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: Stop Kiss
GROUP: Kristin Heckler
GENRE: Theater
ATTENDED: Sun., Sept. 9, 2 p.m.
CLOSES: Sept. 14
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: Two young women fall unexpectedly in love. On the night of their first, tentative kiss, they are brutally attacked. With scenes alternating before and after the assault, this beautiful piece will make you laugh, cry, sigh, and cheer, while examining if progress has been made since its 1998 debut.
WE THINK: Diana Son's understated, powerful drama benefits from a smart production emphasizing the intriguing romance between Callie (Colleen Hughes) and Sara (Erin Carr), neither whom identify as gay, resisting and denying their feelings for one another. Neither Son or director Kristin Heckler make Stop Kiss an Issue Play, so we process both their awful attack and their new social identities on a very personal level. Sara's ex (Matt Tallman) Callie's friend with benefits (William Toussaint), a police detective (John Jerbasi), and other bystanders (Megan Ede) define the transformations that take the women by surprise and change their lives.
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: Comedy Sportz presents Tongue & Groove
GROUP: Tongue & Groove Spontaneous Theater
GENRE: Theater
ATTENDED: Sun., Sept. 9, 7 pm
CLOSES: Sept. 19
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: Inspired by personal information given anonymously by the audience, T&G instantly creates a dynamic collage of scenes and monologues. ". . . acted with soul-baring sincerity, intelligence and humor. GO SEE THIS!" (City Paper) "T&G will explode your expectations of what improvisation can be!" (Phawker.com)
WE THINK: Tongue & Groove amazing development continues with WHO, in which skilled improvisers use audience answers to "Who are you?" to instantly create genuine characters in a collage of intriguing scenarios, all focused on identity: how do we define ourselves, especially when — like on line, or in speed dating — we dictate the definition? Describing all that happened Sunday is irrelevant because each show is completely different, but one moment was particularly revealing: two performers took cards from the basket of audience responses; one read "I am a dreamer," the other said, "I am a dreammaker." Stunned and laughing, these skilled actors stopped their scene there, knowing nothing they could do would top this spontaneous synchronicity. That's one of many things I love about T&G: their hour-long shows are never indulgent, because they make smart choices and know when to move forward. See this show: I guarantee, you've never experienced anything like Tongue & Groove.
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: Some Other Mettle
GROUP: Applied Mechanics
GENRE: Theater
ATTENDED: Sun., Sept. 9, 10 p.m.
CLOSES: Sept. 18
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: From the company who brought you Overseers and Vainglorious, a new work that sends its stout-hearted underdogs into battle to vanquish their fears and discover mysterious truths. The physical world transforms around the audience as they witness acts of bravery small and large.
WE THINK: The program bill for Some Other Mettle mentions that some text by poet Wallace Stevens is used during the performance. It doesn't say which piece exactly, but it seems as if its Stevens' idea that people are "constantly putting together parts of the world to make it seem coherent"" that's cultivated for inspiration. According to Stevens, reality is an activity and at best people have "a piecemeal understanding" of it. It's not so much a fear of the unknown that's on display here, but rather it's this idea that no matter how ballsy or timid an individual is that fear is ever-present and it falls squarely on said individual to navigate their way out.
The performance opens at the dawn of time with a brief introduction detailing the impending sea change about to take place, and then lightning strikes and the actors scurry, stumble and crawl to various pockets of the Jolie Laide space. The characters explore the dark corners in an attempt to assess their new surroundings, and despite the primitive grunts and cries it's clear that these people merely want to be able to explain to themselves what's happening and understand why exactly it's happening.
For the uninitiated, a show by the Applied Mechanics collective cannot be contained in merely one room. It takes place in multiple spaces at the same time, and as an attendee you're encouraged to move around and make the most of it for yourself. When the action got underway, the majority of the audience froze in place which made navigating the recesses mildly difficult. Based on my position in the crowd, the character Sy was the most visible. Everyone is dealing with some aspect of fear, and with Sy it appears that his fear is rooted in what he is capable of. It's as if he's capable of truly great things, and that idea of potential is what causes him to freak out. This is a very participatory show in the sense that there are five rooms and five performers and absolutely zero breaks. Unfortunately, I can't say much about Usco's plight and I only have a foggy notion as to what was up with Tesam and Fallow, but this is positively an event that should be experienced before it's too late.
M. Night Shyamalan is still slaving away on After Earth, his upcoming apocalyptic-world flick with the Smith men, Fresh Prince Will and young Jaden (the latter was all over Made in America’s VIP area with Jay and Bey). But even a diabolical auteur gets hungry. That’s why he took a break on Saturday night to hit up the barely-one-year-old Tashan with his wife, Bhavna.
Since Tashan opened in the fall of 2011, other filming-in-Philly folk have stopped into the adventurous eatery. A heaping helping of director David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook lot (save stars Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro) hit up Tashan last November. Just weeks ago, as written up in an Ice Cube thespians Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman ate together at Tashan while on break from filming Paranoia with Liam Hemsworth.
Just this week though, it’s Tashan’s Munish Narula who has been in the foodie spotlight for turning his West Girard Avenue Indian eatery Tiffin on its ear with a bold new Indo-Chinese menu. For anyone who thinks Chinese cuisine doesn’t make sense at an Indian restaurant, guess again. Chinese food in all its kung-pao glory holds a similar place in Indian culture as it does in America (comfort food, really) and uses many of the same hot-and-zesty spices.
View galleryThe get the full experience, watch this on a giant concave screen.
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: 27
GROUP: New Paradise Laboratory
GENRE: Theater/Movement
ATTENDED: Sat., Sept. 8, 4 p.m.
CLOSES: Sun., Sept 16
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: It’s dusk in a country with an invisible flag. The inhabitants party hard, celebrating their way too-early deaths. They are the champions of inconsistency. They are the zombie fuck-ups. They are 27. Welcome to the afterlife. Where the laws of the universe are ignored. Where life is brilliant. Where victory means self-destruction in the most pleasurable way possible. And defeat means fading from view. New Paradise Laboratories returns to its roots in this muscular live performance. 27 examines maturity as a kind of tribulation, a labor against the laws of the universe that endures into death. All of it accompanied by the best music in the solar system.
WE THINK: Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse — the rocking members of the dead-at-age-27-club — host a barbecue in a rundown basement with tacky lighting, bad paneling and plenty smoke machine fog. There they writhe, bump, twitch grind and mumble their songs in a wifty whisper until they are joined by a girl who ran her car off the road and keeps losing her underwear during this lousy party. This dark movement comedy isn’t the most pointed or unique of magical director/conceptualist Whit MacLaughlin’s famed works within the storied Live Arts/Fringe Fest continuum but it’s noisily uncomfortable fun.
SHOW: Red Eye to Havre de Grace
GROUP: Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental + Wilhelm Bros. & Co.
GENRE: Theater/Musical
ATTENDED: Sat., Sept. 8, 2 p.m.
CLOSES: Sun., Sept. 16
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: On September 27, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe set out on a lecture tour from Virginia to New York. Days later a train conductor saw Poe in Havre de Grace, Maryland, wearing a stranger’s clothing and heading south to Baltimore where he died on October 7. Innovative stage director Thaddeus Phillips teams up with the Minneapolis-based musical duo Wilhelm Bros. & Co. to create an action-opera that follows the odd details surrounding Poe’s mysterious last days. Informed by 19th century train routes, historical accounts, and Poe’s letters to his mother-in-law Muddy, Red-Eye To Havre De Grace comments on the nature of being an artist in America and casts Poe in a new light by exploring his writings on the gold rush, fools, furniture, and the universe.
WE THINK: The final days of Edgar Allen Poe — drunk, druggy, paranoid, haunted by the memory of his young dead wife — is boldly re-imagined with director Thaddeus Phillips and the musician/composer/performing Wilhelm Bros at the helm. Its script utilizes Poe’s twilight poetry, letters to his mother-in-law Muddy, and the recollections of those who witnessed Poe during his lost last lecture tour. The reed-thin Ean Sheeny is ravished and ravishing as the dazed Poe, an actor whose wired stillness provides stability for dancer/actor Sophie Bortolussi to mold herself around. But the star is Phillips’ simple staging, bold lighting, shadow play and the manner in which his production literally courses the darkness of Poe’s tortured psyche.
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: Bang
GROUP: Charlotte Ford
GENRE: Theater/Musical
ATTENDED: Sat., Sept. 8, 8 p.m.
CLOSES: Wed., Sept. 12
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: A hilariously bold and dangerously inventive comedic-clown-theater-spectacular, Bang answers the question — under the glow of a pink neon sex show sign — what happens if you get what you want? Three of Philadelphia’s top physical and comedic performers — Charlotte Ford, Lee Etzold, and Sarah Sanford (of Pig Iron Theatre Company) — take the stage for a no-holds barred, sexually explicit, and hilarious exploration of nudity, desire, gender roles, and sexual arousal. Hosting are Cheyenne, a new-age spiritualist in indigo Thai fisherman pants; Gayle, who wears mom jeans, 5-inch cougar heels and is desperately in search of a sperm donor; and Barb, who recites Canterbury Tales in the original Old English, yet has mad tap skills.
WE THINK: The greatly-hyped Bang lives up to its reputation but not because of its bare-assed nudity. Rather, its bold potency comes from the frank sense of female empowerment and the clever clowning provided it by the woman who conceived it (Ford), her co-creating co-performers (Lee Etzold, Sarah Sanford) and its clown-expert director Emmanuelle Delpech. The nervous awkwardness of the mom-jean-wearing Etzold and the buttoned-up Sanford is handsomely balanced by Ford’s hippie-dippy-ish confidence when the trio acts as one unit. It’s each actress’ solo that shows off their true physical-comedy prowess, their innovative use of time-worn props (the comfy chair with fake back) and new scenic totems such as ladders and cheese-puffs.
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: Othello, Desdemona, & Iago Walk into a Bar
GROUP: [ad hoc theatre project]
GENRE: Theater
ATTENDED: Sat., Sept. 8, 6 pm
CLOSES: Sept. 23
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: What happens when you mix Shakespeare, sex, a go-go bar, & your soul? Mixed & poured by the ensemble, [ad hoc] shakes & serves up your ultimate identity crisis: you have a body that is not always your own; you have a soul that isn’t always known. Add in an interpretation of *Othello* you’ve never seen before & find your one true love: you. Come for the body, stay for the booze, discover the soul.
WE THINK: I wouldn’t trust a director who didn’t see the black-walled, retro pin-up dive bar Trestle Inn and say, “I want to do a play here,” but that doesn’t mean every director should. Mark Kennedy’s meandering meditation on Shakespeare’s Moor of Venice spins its wheels for what feels like an eternity (in a short show) as Big O (Akeem Davis), Miss Double-D’s (Emily Letts), and Ia-go-go (Meredith Sonnen) flail through frenetic dancing and desperate audience-participation before Sonnen cites Iago’s great line, “I am not what I am,” and the last five minutes actually go somewhere. Add poor waitstaff service and you’re left with a sour “this could have been good...” aftertaste.
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