Two Trains Running
August Wilson
Many duo-tracks run in parallel, crisscross, and sometimes
collide in August Wilson’s Two Trains
Running, the 1960s contribution to his ten-play, 20th Century
American Cycle. Death and life, white
and black, love and loneliness, older generation and younger upstarts, poor and
wealthy are just some of the dichotomous threads running through this poetic
play of powerful prose of a turbulent, turning-point period American
history. In the video-enriched
production of Arden Theatre of Philadelphia where the scenes and sounds of 1968
Philadelphia racial-and-economic injustice speeches and protests (and riots)
overlay the Hill District diner setting below, the sometimes conflicting means
to a just end advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King and by Malcom X become yet
two more highlighted tracks running through these late 1960s. Through stunning performances by each cast
member as directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges, Arden has staged a Two Trains worth riding through the
every minute of the 150+, no matter how many times one has seen this 1991 play
awarded Best New Play by the American Theatre Critics Association.
Rating: 5 E
******
Peter and the
Starcatcher
Rick Elice
With puns by the hundreds (some groaners, most deliciously
funny) and with imaginative, make-believe antics at every turn (mostly done
with objects from someone’s forgotten attic), Peter and the Starcatcher is an afterthought prequel fully fitting
for everyone’s favorite tale of the boy from Neverland. Winner of five Tonys in 2012 and frequently
staged since all across America, Rick Elice’s play is a fun frolic that is just
the right mixture of silly but not ridiculous, naughty but never nasty, and
heart-warming without sappiness. Moreover, the script opens new pages
not-yet-read of the tale most of the audience come knowing and loving about
Peter Pan and Wendy, the Lost Boys and Tinker, Captain Hook and Schmee ... and
of course, Tick-tock, too. The oldest
theatre in America, Walnut Street Theatre of Philadelphia (founded in 1809)
stages a rambunctious romp of a show at an engaging clip and with a cast that
climbs, rolls, marches, runs, falls, and fights just like a bunch of kids in
the backyard. While each has many
moments to shine, particularly stellar is Ian Merrill Peakes as Black Stache
(aka later as Cap’n Hook) who is just the kind of villain you cannot help but
love. A tale certainly suitable for all
ages, it is the adult crowd that particularly will get a kick out of the quips
and quibbles that tumble by the dozens out of these mouths.
Rating: 4 E
******
He Who Gets Slapped
Leonid Andreyev
Adapted by Walter Wykes
In Partnership with the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts
A play written during the period of the Russian Revolution
of 1917 explores in a mixture of realism and symbolism the underlying elements
of the aristocracy’s greed, the working class branded by the rich as outcasts
and misfits, and the roles of Fate and Chance in the outcomes of the time’s
great societal upheaval. Under the big
top of a circus, Leonid Andereyev’s He
Who Gets Slapped – adapted by Walter Wykes in this Philadelphia Artists’
Collective production – unfolds a story of an intellectual trying to escape a
world turned upside down all around him.
He assumes the role of a beloved, if not also abused, clown in what he
hopes will be a new world of fantasy and wonder. He joins a family of juggling and tumbling
clowns with out-of-tune kazoos; a whip-cracking tamer obsessed with her lions; and
a sullen, handsome bareback rider whose young and beautiful partner is actually
a Countess with a philandering father currently penniless.
Love triangles develop; a plot for possible fortunes through
arranged marriage thickens; and the newly arrived mystery clown, now named He,
manipulates Fate to take control of Chance.
Underneath the surface, the playwright comments about his
disillusionment and disgust with both the old money of Tsarist Russia and the
new lords and despots, the Communists.
PAC partners with the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts to present a
fascinating, engaging, if at times also puzzling in its symbolism He Who Gets Slapped.
Rating: 4 E
******
An Octoroon
Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins
On a massive stage with dirt-filled gaps in the
wooden-planked floor, raised stages on tracks, a chicken-wired pen, and a model
reflected in a huge mirror of a Southern mansion of yesteryear, a man in underwear
begins confessing why he has adapted a controversial melodrama of 1859 to the
modern stage. An antebellum hit that
toured for years and was second only to Uncle
Tom’s Cabin in popularity – The
Octoroon by Dion Boucicault led to raging debates about the abolition of
slavery (while the playwright actually claimed he was actually neutral on the
subject). Taking place on a Louisiana
plantation called Terrebonne, the play’s tragic heroine is a young woman who is
one-eighth Black (or octoroon) and whose loving protector and father has died,
putting her and the estate’s fate (including all its slaves) literally on the
auction block.
Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ updated An Octoroon at the Wilma Theater retains and accentuates the 19-century melodrama aspects
of the original, borrows some reverse black-face elements of the recent Scottsboro Boys, and adds throbbing
hip-hop music as well as fantasy elements like the trickster B’rer Rabbit – all
done in a play within a play format. The
result bounces between amazing innovation of storytelling that is captivating
and thought-provoking and an over-indulgence of too-many disparate elements
that do not always add up to something meaningful.
Rating: 3 E
******
Sex with Strangers
Laura Eason
 | |
| Kyle Coffman & Joanna Rhinehart; Photo by George Street Playhouse |
Snow is falling in blizzard fashion; the fire is roaring in
the empty rural Michigan B&B; and Olivia is settling in to put some
finishing touches on her novel and to enjoy a nice red wine. That is until some young dude who could
almost be her son blasts in like a wet dog, helps himself to some of her wine, and soon starts making moves
on her that both repulse and excite her.
The fact that Ethan Kane is a world-famous, NY Times best-seller for an blow-by-blow, explicit book about his
sexually wild hook-ups (one a week for a year) is again both horribly
disgusting and increasingly titillating for this author whose first book fell
absolutely flat (although as it turns out, is known and admired by this
rambunctious, over-sexed – and really cute – intruder). The snowed-in pair of unlikely lovers soon
proves opposites in fact do attract (especially when there is no Internet, no
TV, and no way to leave).
In her Sex with
Strangers, Laura Eason has given Olivia and Ethan an adequate enough
framework and script that allows Joanna Rhinehart and Kyle Coffman to give
knock-‘em-out-of-the-park performances in this Philadelphia Theatre Company
production. Directed with David Saint’s
keeping snap, sizzle, and surprise (as well as sensual sex) in mind, the two
actors individually create intriguing, multi-layered persona with ongoing
twists and turns in their character’s development. Together, these two also totally convince through
their intense love-making of eye, lip, and body contact that their age, wealth,
and life-status differences mean little when it comes to the magnetic draw
between them. Where it all leads is
enough to keep the audience fully engaged and themselves, more than a bit
excited.
Rating: 4 E
******
The Rape of Lucrece
William Shakespeare
 |
| Dan Hodge |
In a solo performance that ripped with intensity and intrigue,
Dan Hodge reprised his Philadelphia Artists’ Collective, sold-out run of
William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece
for a one-time performance in a hotel conference room for a group of
America’s theatre critics. In street
dress, without normal stage effects, and with only minimal props save an old
trunk and a candle, Dan Hodge held his audience in captive amazement for a
hundred, spine-chilling minutes as he flawlessly recreated Shakespeare’s 1594
narrative poem.
A young prince’s fevered lust for his best friend’s bride
drives him to her midnight bed where he savagely violates her body and leaves
her in a suicidal state of shame and despair.
Mr. Hodge masterfully becomes each of the characters of this tragic tale
that Ovid and Livy both claim brought down the last king of ancient Rome,
leading to a republic’s formation. As
the plotter and attacker, he goes from a tormented soul who is fearfully
frightened by his attraction and its probable outcome to become a stalking
animal with deadly viciousness, vividly evident in the actor’s popped, neck
veins and enlarged, steely eyes. When the
actor suddenly lies prone to become the victim, his Lucrece sends chills down
the audience’s necks as she struggles, pleads, and undergoes painful
invasion. Her near-deranged aftermath
and subsequent confession to her weeping husband and his followers shakes one’s
very core through the pain-laden whimpers, body tremors, and wild-eyed
expressions Mr. Hodge gives her. He
equally excels as other, minor characters including an attending, timid maid
and the shocked, horrified husband.
Employing a fantastically wide range of muscles, body stances,
facial expressions, and voices, Dan Hodge gave to the members of the American
Theatre Critics Association a reprise none will likely forget.
Rating: 5 E
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