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| go to lobby page | more reviews | go to other departments | GLENN LONEY'S SHOW NOTES
By Glenn Loney
[01] Theatre Fest for American Critics in Philadelphia
Caricature of Glenn Loney
by Sam Norkin.
[02] Dr. Barnes' French Impressionists
[03] The New Avenue of the Arts
[04] Other Philadelphia Ensembles & Venues
[05] Grand "Grand Hotel" at Walnut Street
[06] Arden Theatre Premieres "Violet"
[07] New [Hal] Prince Music Theatre
[08] InterAct's "Lebensraum"
[09] Alma Cuervo as Leenane's "Beauty Queen"
[10] Morpheus' "Orpheus Descending" at Wilma
[11] David Strathairn in "Sally's Gone"
[12] Irish Wake at Society Hill Playhouse
[13] Historic Hedgerow Theatre
[14] Mammoth Millennial "Noah"
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
Philadelphia, Here We Come!
American Theatre Critics Rally
Every summer, members of the American Theatre Critics Association descend on a designated Host City for an orgy of theatre-going, uplifting panel-discussions, and Serious Eating. This June, Philadelphia played host.
For Play Fest in City of Brotherly LoveOrganizer and ATCA member George Hatza outdid himself in devising six days packed with activities and feasts. This would not have been possible, however, without the enthusiastic cooperation of local newspapers, theatres, and the amazing Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Masses of Matisse, Riots of Renoir, Scores of Cezannes!
A non-theatrical highlight was the visit to the Barnes Foundation, in suburban Merion. The testy-tempered Dr. Albert Barnes made a fortune from synthesizing Argyrol, a pre-sulfa and penicillin remedy for venereal diseases and other infections.This enabled him to indulge his passion for collecting artworks. You won't see so many Renoirs, Cezannes, and Matisses crowded onto museum walls anywhere else in the world.
You certainly won't see such masterpieces set off by gleaming metal hinges, key-plates, and ornamental straps & scrolls elsewhere.
Dr. Barnes amassed one of the finest collections of Medieval and Renaissance blacksmithing in the world. He used these pieces to complement compositional details of his paintings.
He was also an avid collector of African sculpture and African-American art. As well as the somewhat naive art of Henri Rousseau and American auto-didacts. Limoges enamels and antique furniture, miniature objects and souvenirs: all are precisely placed on walls or in cases.
Even ephemeral sketches—possibly included in correspondence from artists he favored—are framed alongside major works. It's a wonder he didn't also frame all his Christmas cards.
All this is oddly intermixed in the many rooms of the special art-gallery he built in a residential neighborhood. Whose nearby residents still resent busloads of art-lovers arriving by appointment.
He left his museum and his treasures to Lincoln University, an African-American institution of higher learning. No one doubts his sincere interest in its mission, but he was certainly out to spite Philadelphia, its museums, and its arts patrons by so doing.
By the terms of his will, the collection was never to be shown outside the museum. Nor even rearranged from his fastidious and idiosyncratic display-plan.
This was thwarted, from 1993 to 1995, when outstanding canvases were taken on tour. I saw them in Munich at the Haus der Kunst. I was glad of the opportunity, for I feared I'd never make it to Merion at a set day and hour.
Now, I'm even more grateful to have seen wonderful paintings with enough wall-space around them to view them properly.
The tour attracted 5 million visitors in Japan, Germany, Canada, and the United States. It also earned $16.2 million, making possible a $12 million renovation of the Gallery.
Strolling Down the New Avenue of the Arts:
An important element in the amazing downtown revival of Philadelphia as a livable city and tourist magnet is the recent emphasis on all of the arts, but especially the performing arts.South Broad Street—separated from North Broad by the largest City Hall in the world—is now known as the Avenue of the Arts. Our Doubletree Hotel accommodations were on it, next to the Postmodernist Wilma Theatre. And across the street from the historic 1855 Academy of Music, America's oldest surviving opera-house and concert-hall.
But the famed Philadelphia Orchestra has long been dissatisfied with this venue. It's not large enough, for one thing. In fact, Philadelphia currently doesn't have a large central performance-space with enough seats for large-scale performances.
The acoustic is satisfactory, but not as remarkable as Symphony Hall in Boston. During the Symphony Season, it's impossible to share the stage with a touring show or an opera or ballet season. And there is no other suitable opera venue.
So there's now an immense block-sized hole in the ground on Avenue of the Arts. Soon this will be the Regional Performing Arts Center—and the Symphony's new home.
The Center's constituent structures will be roofed-over by an immense arched atrium. Rather like the arch on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, but without the Vegas Sound & Light show.
This will make the block seem like a public park, with welcoming access to all. Not a bastion of the Cultural Elite!
Also on the Avenue is the University of the Arts. It has taken over the old Shubert Theatre, renaming it the Merriam. [Full Disclosure: Its libraries have been slightly enriched recently by gifts of my theatre-books and fine-arts references.]
After the disaster at Columbine High School, it's most encouraging to visit the Philadelphia High School for the Performing Arts, or CAPA. The magnificent Beaux Arts Greek-Temple ensemble of the former Ridgeway Library has been enlarged with a Postmodernist annex, providing state-of-the-art classrooms, rehearsal studios, and performance spaces.
When we visited, enthusiastic and talented students showed us some of their work. As lawyers dined in the splendid neo-classical central foyer. This architectural showpiece has echoes of the grand stairway of Petersburg's Hermitage.
North Broad Street is more slowly recovering. A keystone in its renewal is Freedom Theatre, an African-American performing-arts complex being developed in the historic mansion of American actor Edwin Forrest, a favorite son of Philadelphia.
We were all very impressed with what's already been accomplished and even more encouraged by the energy, talent, and dedication of the fine folks who are making this happen. Forrest's own personal house-theatre is being rebuilt for modern performances.
Other Ensembles, Other Venues:
There won't be any audiences—let alone performers—for theatre in the future, if schoolkids aren't introduced to various modes of performance.I promised I'd mention the work of the Philadelphia Theatre Caravan, which brings its performances to schools, community centers, and wherever. Its current repertory includes "The New Kid," "Coyote Mischief Tales," "I Have a Dream," and "The Canterbury Tales." You can phone them at 215-242-8007. And they have their own website: www.libertynet.org/-ptc
And I very much regret missing the world premiere of "Seance," the new marvel of MUM Puppettheatre. This outstanding company—led by the amazing Robert Smythe—has a well deserved international reputation. If you want to see or to book a performance, or just want more information, call: 800-235-6432. Or try that ubiquitous Philadelphia website: www.libertynet.org/mum
At CAPA, we visited a kind of Performing Arts Trade Fair, meeting reps from various theatre and production groups. I'm sorry I don't have time—space is no problem on the net—to note all the interesting ensembles with whom I spoke.
But you can get more information about them—and more than fifty other Philadelphia and area companies—from the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.
This is the agency which sponsors the Barrymore Awards, Philly's Tonys. Gloria Goldager is the Exec Director. For more information, call: 215-413-7150. Or have a look at their website: www.theatrealliance.org
The Convention & Visitors Bureau is outstanding in its services and its thorough knowledge of its city and environs. Anyone looking for a great Conference City should consider Philadelphia.
Contact Susan Schwenderman, Director of Communications, for more information. Phone: 215-636-3413. FAX: 215-636-3327. There's also a website: http://www.libertynet.org/phila-visitor
W. C. Fields: On the Whole,
Fields had a point. From the theatrical standpoint, even today, Philadelphia has a number of producing theatres offering professional fare, without the hectic hassles of play-going in New York.
I Think I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia!In just five days in early June, I and my ATCA colleagues saw at least seven plays. One of them was a World Premiere.
But five of them I had already seen in Manhattan. So I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing some of those again.
Fortunately, most of the productions were so well presented and performed that I was really delighted to see these shows in a new guise in another city.
We avoided "Cats"—even though it was playing at the historic Forrest Theatre—because it was touring and not a domestic product.
"Grand Hotel" at the Walnut Street Theatre:
Far more historic than the Forrest is Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre. Recently, it acquired an heroic marble statue of Edwin Forrest, one of the great names in American Theatre to stride its stage.
THE BARON AND THE TYPIST--Jill Powell is the free-lance typist and David Hess the handsome thief in the musical, "Grand Hotel," handsomely revived in Philadelphia by the Walnut Street Theatre. Photo: —Gerry Goodstein. The lobby floor had to be reinforced: Forrest was a stocky, muscular man in his prime. In stone, he's even heavier. Weighed in tons, not merely in British "stones."
Mrs. John Drew—founder of the Barrymore Clan—was a longtime acting-manageress. Charlotte Cushman was another notable who dominated its boards.
The boast of the Walnut Street is that it is the oldest theatre in the United States in continuous use as a theatre. Some believe this can be extended to the entire English-speaking stage.
Although it has been dark on occasion—and has served as a cinema—at least it has never been converted into a shoe-store or supermarket as have many historic American theatres.
It began life in the late 18th century as an Equestrian Circus. When it was being historically restored in the early 1970s, the actual stone ring was discovered.
I wrote a report on that restoration for "Theatre Design & Technology" at the time. It was interesting to see the actual ring. And the outlines of a very tall door, supposedly designed to permit large animals, such as elephants and giraffes, to be brought into the theatre.
But the restoration—aside from the careful preservation of the facade—was more nominal than actual. The auditorium—which had been 1920s Art Deco—now looks slightly spacey, as in Space Ships.
Truth is, in restoring Historical Theatres, you really should limit that to the facades and public spaces. The last thing you want is 18th century stage-technology.
The Walnut Street's stage is something of a necessary compromise with the past, present, and future. Fortunately, despite its limitations, major Broadway musicals can be most handsomely mounted there.
Under Bernard Havard's astute artistic direction, its musical revivals have been big magnets for subscribers and the public. These are not touring shows. They are Walnut Street stagings.
I've seen a number of them over the seasons and found them always very professional. They also often resembled the London or Broadway productions.
Even with some "Equity Membership Candidates" in the cast, "Grand Hotel" was thoroughly professional. Director Bruce Lumpkin paced it swiftly and deftly. In fact, the entire show seemed choreographed, not just the specific dance-numbers.
There was no program-mention of Tommy Tune, who gave the show its original dance-identity. But Richard Stafford's brisk and precise routines certainly recalled Tune's distinctive choreographies.
John Farrell's unit-setting could have been copied from Broadway. And Broadway's Santo Loquasto provided smart Jazz Age costumes.
The ghost of John Barrymore must still be hovering over the Walnut Street stage. Handsome David Hess—as the elegant but impoverished, thieving Baron von Gaigern—recalled the matinee idol in manner and looks. But he played the role with a curious sensitivity.
Natalie Mosco was properly moody and grand as Grushinskaya, the aging ballerina. [Charles Ludlam would have found little to parody in her performance, though his Norma Desmond was a deadly send-up of Garbo in the Theatre of the Ridiculous' early version of "Big Hotel."]
Jill Powell was a pert little Flaemmchen, a mobile typist hoping for Hollywood stardom, but settling for considerably less. Kringelein, the dying accountant, seemed ready to collapse on stage several times.
It seems a shame that author Vicki Baum's estate isn't getting residuals. The production credits Ted Turner's broadcasting empire, owner of the Hollywood film.
The Arden Theatre's "Violet" as a Philadelphia Premiere:
What is a premiere in Philadelphia, for a New Yorker may well be just another revival. I saw Jeanne Tesori and Brian Crawley's unusual musical in its Manhattan premiere at Playwrights Horizons.While the new mounting of "Violet," on the F. Otto Haas Stage, is lively and enjoyable, this small-scale musical suffers somewhat from the expanse of the stage. Action and objects seem unnecessarily strung out.
Among other oddities, the bus-seats seem abnormally large—like nauga-hyde sofas instead of your typical cramped Greyhound or Trailways seats. Encounters on the bus would be more powerful, more meaningful, if the spaces were more confining.
Violet—strongly sung and acted by Linda Pierson—is supposed to have been dreadfully scarred across her face as a child. Watching her father chop wood, she was hit by the loosened axe-head as it flew from the handle.
Was it an accident? She reminds him too much of her beautiful mother—who died in childbirth. Later, she blames her father for trying to repair the damage too late and too cheaply.
As a young adult, she leaves home to seek a miracle of healing from a TV evangelist. On the way to his Tulsa Temple, she meets a white and a black soldier on the bus. Both are smitten with her. For the white boy, she's a lay. For the black sergeant, she's much more, a marked Outsider, like himself.
The book is based on Doris Betts' "The Ugliest Pilgrim." Its inspirational message is that true beauty is within, not on surfaces which can and often do deceive.
Violet discovers this the hard way. Her encounter with the phony Faith Healer is almost as comically disappointing as Dorothy's unmasking of the Wizard of Oz.
But she is convinced, despite this farce, that she has been healed, made whole. She avoids looking into a mirror, however.
She wants to see her healing reflected in the faces of her two soldiers. Bitter is her disappointment when she realizes nothing has changed. But her sergeant has already looked deeper into Violet and found a truly beautiful woman.
At the Arden, as in New York, Violet's face is not marred. At Playwrights Horizons, at least, she had a lock of hair hanging down her face to suggest the horrid scar. I think—even fear—that audiences would react quite differently if they saw Violet as she is supposed to look throughout the play. Director Terrence Nolen must also have feared this reaction.
Projecting a black-and-white photo of a girl with a puffy facial scar now and then doesn't do it.
Of course, if Violet had scar makeup, the audience would know that she hadn't been healed. Without the scar, spectators discover as disappointingly as she, only when she meets the soldiers again, that there was no miracle. This is a momentary visual trick which is unnecessary.
Tesori's score is lively and varied, drawing on Country & Western modes. Crawley's lyrics are hardscrabble romantic. Some numbers wouldn't be out of place on Grand Ole' Opry. "On My Way," "Look at Me," "Raise Me Up," and "You're Different" are both emotionally and dramatically effective.
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
Because of technical problems, this musical review—subtitled "Yip Harburg's America"—was not yet ready for critical review. It was a courtesy to members of the American Theatre Critics Association that we were invited to savor the Golden Oldies of E. Y. "Yip" Harburg.
At the [Harold] Prince Music Theatre:Yes, he was the lyricist who gave us "Look To the Rainbow," "Over the Rainbow," "Necessity," "April in Paris," "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and "Where Has the Rainbow Gone?"
But not in that order. He had a thing about Rainbows. So did Judy Garland, who regarded "Over the Rainbow" as her personal song. It became Her Signature—so much so that she often neglected to see that performance royalties were paid.
Deena Rosenberg and Mel Marvin have devised this show from Harburg songs. And it is a curious affair—quite aside from production values, which are not under consideration here.
It's not unfair to point out that the tunes of Harold Arlen, Sammy Fain, Vernon Duke, Burton Lane, and Jerome Kern are at least as important and memorable as Harburg's lyrics.
What seems especially odd in the way the songs have been organized is the conjunction of an optimistically romantic sentiment with a social indictment worthy of a witty Upton Sinclair.
Both "Wizard of Oz" and "Finian's Rainbow" can be viewed as fantastical-allegorical social critiques, but they are now seldom remembered that way. "When the idle poor become the idle rich" changed nothing.
If the FBI spent millions of dollars and many years investigating the possible Socialist Sentiments of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, where were they when Harburg was crafting some of his sly Marxist lyrics?
I love these songs, but not in this order.
Nonetheless, Rosenberg worked with Harburg on the early concept of this show. And she has a list of impressive credits longer than your arm. So it's unlikely that any effective changes will be made.
The really good news at the Prince Music Theatre is that it finally exists!
Named for Harold Prince—who already had a smaller theatre named for him at his U of Pennsylvania alma mater across the Schuylkill River—it is the new home for the American Music Theatre Festival.
Previously, innovative productions of experimental music-theatre works were presented in various Philadelphia venues.
Before the New York City Opera premiere of the Davis family's opera about Malcolm X, I'd seen scenes from it both at the American Music Theatre Festival and at BAM.
Other memorable adventures in Music Theatre in Philly were San Francisco-based George Coates' "Seehear," Lee Breuer & Bob Telson's "Gospel at Colonus," and Harry Partch's "Revelation in the Courthouse Park." The latter work was played on Partch's own very unusual instruments.
And how about "Warrior Ant," "1000 Airplanes on the Roof," "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," "Hydrogen Jukebox," "Banjo Dancing," "Amphigorey," "Steel," "Frida," "Floyd Collins," "Jelly Roll!" "Band in Berlin," "Punch and Judy Get Divorced," and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"?
A number of these works were subsequently seen in New York, across the nation, and even abroad at major festivals!
We're talking about talents such as Allen Ginsberg, Meredith Monk, Christopher Durang, Adam Guettel, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Richard Peaslee, Tom O'Horgan, Andre Serban, George C. Wolfe, Garth Fagan, Julie Taymor & Elliot Goldenthal, David Henry Hwang, Ntozake Shange, Emily Mann, Mordechai Richler, Oliver Sacks, William Finn, Graciela Daniele, William Bolcom, Stephen Wade, Edward Gorey, Derek Walcott, Migdalia Cruz, Galt MacDermot, Joyce Carol Oates, Pat Birch, and even Robert Brustein!
Eric Salzman, a transplanted Manhattan music critic, was a dynamic founder of this important festival. Today, it's under the guidance of Ben Levit and Marjorie Samoff.
InterAct's "Lebensraum" at the Adrienne Theatre:
Although I'd already seen Israel Horovitz's powerful drama, I was more impressed with the Philadelphia production.This disturbing "future-scenario" presents Horovitz's astonishingly timely vision of what might happen if a future German Chancellor invited Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and descendants to return to take their rightful place in society.
They make a beachhead in Bremerhaven, on the docks, to the immense displeasure of the German working-men they so ably displace.
Something like this is already happening, with new workers from former Warsaw Pact Nations eager to do jobs Germans have traditionally disdained. And with rising unemployment rates, a new kind of racism is rising.
Horovitz's returnees not only want their rights, but some also require their revenge. This is a complex play, but it takes only 95 minutes and three actors, playing all the roles.
The stage of the Adrienne is just a space in front of the tiered seats in a small box-theatre. On a simple raked platform, designer Robert Kramer has provided all that is needed for the action.
Seth Rozin has skillfully and subtly directed his cast. Harry Philibosian, a strong, stocky actor in his middle years has only recently come to acting. He could have been doing it all his life. He is admirable.
As are Catherine K. Slusar and Scott Greer in all the other roles.
Hitler's excuse for conquering the nations of Eastern Europe was to provide Lebensraum—or space for living—for the expanding German People. When World War II had been won, he envisioned settling discharged German soldiers in those lands. Effectually to replace the native peoples, or to enslave them.
Horovitz has turned the tables in adapting that catch-word as his title.
Philadelphia Theatre Company's
"The Beauty Queen of Leenane" at Plays & Players:Plays & Players Theatre is one of those wonderful old private theatre-clubs. It is hardly as historical as New York's Players—still active in Edwin Booth's Gramercy Park Mansion—but certainly on a par with less well known Manhattan theatre groups.
"BEAUTY QUEEN' IN PHILADELPHIA--Alma Curvo is Maureen, Leenane's Beauty Queen, with Isa Thomas as her nagging old mother. The auditorium is decorated with Art Nouveau mythical murals and classical quotations. But they are all so darkened with age and dirt it's difficult to discern their original subject-matter. High time for some Historical Restoration here!
In their present state, however, they make an excellent environment for Martin McDonagh's old-fashioned Irish Melodrama.
I'm one of the very few New Yorkers who knew what was coming when Maureen first grabbed the poker to stoke the stove with peat.
I was more stunned by the discovery that many of my Manhattan colleagues thought this drama was something on the order of Synge or O'Neill than I was when Maureen clobbered her dreadful old mother. That I was already prepared for.
Having just seen Alma Cuervo in New York in "The English Teachers," I was amazed at her transformation into Maureen. She was admirable in a stereotypical role.
Isa Thomas was quite different from Anna Manahan's Mag, but none the less effective in her whining and nagging. Boris McGiver as Pato Dooley, the man who would have married Maureen—had his letter not gone astray, another hoary melodramatic device—was both goofy and tender.
Liam Craig seemed quite wrong and manic as Ray. Maria Mileaf directed.
And the production was savaged by the Philadelphia Inquirer's critic. True, it wasn't a Patrick Mason Abbey Theatre staging, but it wasn't a disgrace either.
"Orpheus Descending" at the Wilma Theatre:
Before I say anything about a Tennessee Williams play which is not one of my favorites—or the current production of it at the Wilma—I must note that I have seen a number of excellent productions in this theatre, under the artistic direction of Jiri and Blanka Zizka.
WHAT TENNESSEE WILLIAMS PLAY CAN THIS BE?--Not "Streetcar," not "Rose Tattoo," not "Cat," not "Sweet Bird," but the Wilma Theatre's "Orpheus Descending," with Janis Dardaris as Lady and James Farmer as Val. Photo: Jim Rose. They are also willing to take chances on plays which have been unjustly—and sometimes justly—forgotten. The Wilma's revival of Peter Barnes' "The Ruling Class" was so good it should have transferred.
Even with Vanessa Redgrave on Broadway as Williams' wild Italian-American heroine, Lady Torrance, this seemed a distinctly bottom-drawer version of a pet theme.
Crackers and Red-Necks just can't stand it when a handsome drifter-hustler appears on the small-town scene. Even if he's local, he's a threat. Castration ["Sweet Bird of Youth"] or mutilation with a torch ["Orpheus"] are the standard responses to his seduction of Our Women Folk. Even if they are more than willing to take a fling.
Unfortunately, James Farmer as Val didn't quite make all those colored lights start blinking. No one could hope for Brando, but Farmer isn't really the Fugitive Kind. He'd be hard put to match Ralph Meeker in "Picnic."
As Lady, Janis Dardaris was full of frustrated vitality and much given to flamboyant gestures. Her murdered father was from Palermo, but her accent seemed closer to Posnan. Or Piraeus.
Costumes, wigs, and makeup for most of the locals were not worthy of Wilma standards. Some of the wigs looked atrocious. If they were actually the actresses' own hair, that's even worse.
The faded dresses hanging on the wall of the Torrance Women's Wear establishment would have looked better on the women.
At times, I feared I was watching "Morpheus Descending." At least it wasn't Williams' "Seven Descents of Myrtle." Just because he's now regarded as our Greatest American Playwright by some does not mean every Williams drama is a masterpiece.
People's Light & Theatre Company
Present "Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name"Out in the verdant countryside, our bus passes a handsome old stone farmhouse. These really are Penn's Woods—or Penn's Sylvania. And the house is surely a landmark?
DAVID STRATHAIRN LIVE ON STAGE--Out of touch with his spacey stage-wife, Sally, played by Elizabeth Webster, Henry tries to cope in "Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name," produced by The People's Light & Theatre Company in rustic Malvern, PA. Photo: Mark Garvin. The bus turns into the large parking-lot. It once was a farmhouse, but now it's part of the attractive complex of the People's Light & Theatre Company. They also do weddings and parties. Not just Theatre Parties.
As I have seen Tazewell Thompson's able stagings in Manhattan—and Feydeau's "Flea in Her Ear" more times than I care to count—I elected Artistic Director Abigail Adams' production of "Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name."
This was done on the smaller stage, with a state-of-the-art modern kitchen, designed by James F. Pyne, Jr. This family-center was flanked by two side projection screens and a rear projection of a strange painting of a woman walking beside the sea. [Actually, there is a Swedish canvas much like this, shown in New York in "Northern Light."]
The chief advance attraction was the fact that David Strathairn was playing the baffled husband & father. I'd just seen him as Duke Theseus in the film of "Midsummer Night's Dream."
He was anything but magisterial as Henry, a quietly desperate business-man, who's losing focus. And losing contact with his wife, daughter, and son.
His wife seems already to have taken emotional and spiritual leave from her family. As scenes progress, sections of the kitchen vanish. This is symbolic. No one seems to miss the Microwave.
And the painting grows larger and larger. It is very visible remnant of Henry's artist-father. As Henry remembers it, his father wasn't very good as painter and never made a living from his art. Worse, he didn't even try to support his family with other sources of income.
Henry doesn't want that heritage passed on. But it's already too late. This isn't exactly "The Ice Storm," but it does have disturbing resonances in it of lost modern family contacts and cohesiveness.
I was subliminally moved by it, but on a conscious level, I wished playwright Russell Davis had been more specific. I felt I was losing focus even faster than Henry, and I didn't even know the family as long as he had.
Some of my colleagues escaped at the interval to sneak over to see the remainder of "Flea"—which they very much admired. But I stayed, thinking the loose ends might be knotted up at last. No such luck. This play is a fragmentation grenade.
After performances, they have something called Talk Back or was it Backtalk? I really wanted to ask the actors and director what they thought it all meant. You cannot stage or act effectively even the most Absurd or Abstract drama without some personal concept of what you are doing.
But we had to get back to the City of Brotherly Love to have midnight champagne on the great steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art!
Wow! What a view! And a huge electric sign kept welcoming the American Theatre Critics.
Later, I found out in the People's Light & Theatre newsletter that Davis wrote the play in 1979—or it was first produced then. Since then, he's worked on it, ignored it, and even discarded most of it.
"I thought I'd written this play 15 years ago, and I found out that I hadn't," he says.
"I was horrified how unspecific I had been. I think it's now much more specific, detailed, and much more honest emotionally."
Perhaps he's still too close to it? There is a certain power in what is played, but its fractured form still unduly distances audiences from the characters and their problems.
Why is Henry losing focus. Is there really another woman? Is Sally schizoid? Or just other-worldly?
Where did that Microwave go? And why?
I want to return and see more of their work. And start collecting the handsome cards & posters for their productions. Each of these is a work of art in its own right, as well as a distinctive visual signature for distinctive productions.
This season, they've presented Dickens' "Hard Times," Diana Son's "Fishes." "More Grimm Tales," Louis Lippa's vaudeville of "Sacco and Vanzetti," Shakespeare's "As You Like It," and a non-Lewis Carroll "Through the Glass Looking."
This is adventurous and innovative programming. Especially for a theatre out in the boonies.
This is a theatre group and complex you should make a point of visiting when you are on wheels in Philadelphia! Very professional. And very welcoming!
They are at 39 Conestoga Road—Wagons Westward, ho!—near Malvern. And they have a website: www.peopleslight.org
"Lafferty's Wake" at Society Hill Playhouse:
The food in New York at Grandma Sylvia's Funeral was Kosher and awful. Tony & Tina had pasta with grated Kraft parmesan for their wedding.
Move Over, Tony & Tina and Grandma Sylvia!I didn't get to see it, but I'm told "Lafferty's Wake" has great food—eaten not on the Society Hill Playhouse premises, but at the Montserrat Restaurant nearby. In the cabaret theatre, transformed into Rory's Pub, however, Irish beers and American soft-drinks flow as the bogus wake reaches crescendo.
Even visitors from Ireland have raved. Jim Kelly won the Potato, but he's from Philly.
Next time I'm down there, I have to check this out. It's my experience that American-Irish are far more daft about those good old songs and Come-All-Ye's than are the real Irish.
A Bit Beyond Broad Street: Hedgerow and Arroyo!
Also, I must make the pilgrimage beyond Philadelphia to Rose Valley and the Hedgerow Theatre. It was founded by Jasper Deeter, back when "Theatre Arts" was a new magazine. Editor dith J. R. Isaacs was fond of saluting the Hedgerow as a pioneer in Tributary Theatre.Together with Virginia's Barter Theatre, it was indeed one of the first of what we now call Regional Repertory Theatres. And it is still in business! Peter Shaffer's "Lettice and Lovage" is its current attraction.
If I can find someone in Manhattan with wheels, I'll even treat if we can have lunch—as ATCA members recently did—at the Arroyo Grill in Manayunk, up river from downtown Philadelphia. The Southwestern cuisine is great.
The week before, I'd been standing in Monument Valley, absorbing the mystic vibrations. And the sun. At the Arroyo Grill, they have some small-scale murals of that historic & highly cinematic site.
But, for down-home culinary treats, Pennsylvania Dutch Country can't be beat. Years ago, I used to drive down to Lancaster for Shoefly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy. Which, as the song says, make your eyes light up, your stomach say howdy.
I even had some wonderful handmade and painted Amish chairs made for me by a sulky-racing family in Intercourse, near Bird-in-Hand.
A "Noah" Not on Mount Arrarat:
Immense Biblical Spectacle in Strasburg!Now I discover it's high time to return to Lancaster County, even before the Millennium. In Strasburg, a mammoth production of "Noah" will be presented until 14 August in the immense Sight & Sound Millennium Theatre™.
SCORES OF ANIMALS & TONS OF SCENERY--Loading the Ark in Sight & Sound's epic production of "Noah," at Pennsylvania's Millennium Theatre. I know about this only from photos and ecstatic press-releases. But the lobby boasts the largest fiberglass dome in the United States. It is painted to represent the Heavens.
A 16-foot mural of Paradise adorns the box-office area. The press-material doesn't say whether the painter had actually been there to get the details right before he "hand-painted" this epic canvas.
Both the theatre's architecture and decoration are designed to evoke the Holy Land. Including, of course, Roman overtones.
The 300-foot wrap-around stage offers massive spectacle, with the Ark and other set-pieces rising 40 feet above the stage. The settings weigh 100,000 pounds, some moved on air-casters.
This sounds like an attempt to outdo Oberammergau and its Passion Play—performed only every decade, with a revival scheduled for the Millennium.
The mainstage has some 18,000 square feet of acting area, with another 2,000 square feet of space on each of two side-stages.
PARADISE JUST OVER THE BOX-OFFICE--Overhead in the lobby, the Heavens, and a mural of Paradise over the ticket-wickets at the Millenniuum Theatre, site of the mammoth staging of "Noah" in Strasburg, PA. Of course, it's what you do on those stages that counts, not how large they are.
Fortunately, the Ark is stocked at every performance with 80 live animals and 125 animatronic ones—elephants, zebras, and the like. Plus 69 hand-crafted birds and small animals.
It was news to me that God told Noah to include a pair of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs among the Ark's smelly cargo. Did Noah even know where Vietnam was?
To get the animals in the proper mood for performances, the soundtrack of "Noah" is played in the barn at mealtimes!
Fortunately, topicality is avoided. No Arab mobs storm Noah and his Ark when the Flood recedes. This is not going to be yet another Jewish Settlement on Arab Lands.
There are 12 performances a week, with audiences coming "from all around the world." Thus far, some millions of guests have come to Sight & Sound's biblical productions over the past 22 years.
How could I have missed all this? How could you? This mammoth show really needs to be checked out!
If you cannot get to Lancaster before 14 August, this immense spectacle will be reprised in 2000 AD, from 10 May through 26 August. If the World does not Come To An End on l January.
Meanwhile, this fall you can couple Amish foods with a visit to the theatre after 2 October. That's the opening date for the Millennium Theatre's new holiday spectacle, "The Miracle of Christmas." Not a word about "The Magic of Chanukah." [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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