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2021-2022 Helen and Morris Zoren World Theater Awards — The Nominees

 As always, paring lists of more than 50 and two of more than 200 to a select group of five is an arduous task even if it’s a lot of fun.         The fun comes from remembering various productions and performances as I check the ranking, considering variables like the difficulty of the role, its meaning to its production, and originality of presentation. (The last of which means don’t expected…

2021 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Recipients

  Never, since I began seeing theater on a regular basis and keeping a running diary of all the shows I see and the performers in them, have I seen as few shows in a season as in 2021.          The answer is obvious. There was no theater for the first half 2021, or for the last three quarters of 2020 for that matter, and most companies took some time, even into 2022, to resume…

2021 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Nominees

Because of COVID, I saw only 22 plays in the Philadelphia area in 2021. Usually, I present what I call “The Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Award” — Notice the placement of the apostrophe — in late January or February each year. 2022 has been, for me, like a year of Mercury retrograde; no system, however old or reliable seems to work. The platform on which NealsPaper appears has been…

The Chinese Lady — InterAct Theatre Company

 The exotic remains a novelty until habit, constancy, and/or assimilation make it more familiar.        Think how many foods, from spaghetti to fajitas, from borscht to pho were considered new and exciting until they become commonplace. And, perhaps, cast aside for the next trend. Impossible burger, anyone?         “The Chinese Lady,” by Lloyd Suh, at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre through…

Hamilton — National Tour, Academy of Music

  Sweep on several levels accounts for the achievement and excitement of “Hamilton.” It’s no wonder it’s earned both critical acclaim and popular support since the Lin-Manuel Miranda burst of the theatrical scene in 2015.        Miranda manages to ace a feat that has daunted and defeated many. He has taken a person from history, to my mind the second most important figure in all of American…

2020 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Nominees

 From the beginning of the abbreviated 2020 theater year in Philadelphia, sterling performances were seen in several shows.       I noted some of them when posting nominees and recipients of the 2019 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards.       Thirty-four shows turned out to be plenty to make choosing five nominees in each of six categories a chore.  The labor may have been increased from…

Fool For Love — EgoPo; Words for Snow — Inis Nua; Outside Mullingar — Delaware Theatre Company

FOOL FOR LOVE — EgoPo Classic Theater at Latvian Society, 7th and Spring Garden Streets, Philadelphia, 267-273-1414, www.egopo.org -through Sunday, February 23- EgoPo’s production of “Fool For Love” holds out full Shepardian promise in its early seconds when Jered McLenigan’s Eddie turns up at a seedy Mojave Desert motel, and is seen, a

shadow in the doorway, by Julianna Zinkel’s May, who moves…

Midwives — George Street Playhouse; The Vertical Hour — Lantern Theater

7:53 PM

MIDWIVES — George Street Playhouse at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, 732-246-7717, www.georgestreetplayhouse.org, through February 16 — Working from the theory that stories find their best form, and that novelists are too married to narrative to be spare and dramatic, there’s risk in a writer

of best-sellers turning to the theater and plays.…

My General Tubman — Arden Theatre; A Woman of No Importance — Walnut Street Theatre

MY GENERAL TUBMAN — Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia, 215-922-1122, www.ardentheatre.org, through March 1 — “My General Tubman,” is ambitious in its attempt to tie 19th century slavery to 21st century mass incarceration, its thesis that leadership makes a difference, and its attempt to show how a united movement might be

the most efficient way to address an ill, but while it makes…

February 2020 at a Glance

THE BALD SOPRANO — Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, at Bethany Mission Gallery, 1527 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia, [email protected], through February 16 — Tina Brock constantly sophisticates and updates her act as she breezes, ambles?, through a canon few are brave enough to touch to accentuate the logic in

the absurd in pieces of that ilk and the pain of being…

2019 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Recipients

In the past week, performances by Marcia Saunders (“The Children”), Janis Dardaris (“The Children”), Dana Delany (“Goodnight Nobody”), Ellen McLaughlin (“Midwives”), and Alicia Roper (“A Woman of No Importance”) were so finely etched and individually moving, I would be content if these actresses were the nominees for a 2020 awards that has 11 more months to create candidates.

  You see the…

2019 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Nominees

You never know when you will enter a theater and see the “best.”

Of a season. Of a year. Of a decade. Or a lifetime.

I don’t go to the theater to find competitive superlatives. I go because of a lifelong passion for seeing stories acted out, a passion that began with television’s Armstrong Circle Theatre and the US Steel Hour and continued when I started, at age 3, going to movies. Seeing actor…

2019 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Qualifiers

In 2019, I saw and ranked 138 theater productions in the Philadelphia area, which I define as being from New Brunswick, N.J. to Wilmington, Delaware.,

These shows range from national tours of Broadway hits such as “Hamilton” and “Come From Away” to do-it-yourself productions at community theaters.

You’d be surprised. Sometimes the humble and homegrown outshines the lavish and polished. Sometimes…

2019 Oscars — Goodness All the Way

2019 did not look as if it was going to be an interesting, let alone an eclectic and notable film year.

Until November, only Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” seemed to be a genuine contender for post-year honors. One actually worried whether Maggie Smith or Jim Carter would have to get a nomination by default for the popular “Downton Abbey,” if Brad Pitt would need to be…

O19: A Genuine Festival and an Operatic Feast

Producing one opera is a chore.

Even when, in an unusual course of events, scenery and costumes are minimal, there’s a score, orchestrations, a libretto, the staging, and the delicate but all-consequential relationship between orchestra, singing, and theatrical direction to consider.

Producing four or more operas at once is a gargantuan undertaking.

Doing it with panache, and achieving a…

One Eclectic Season — 2019-2020 in Philadelphia

The list, not totally complete, sometimes because of forgetfulness, sometimes because of blissless ignorance, and mainly because all the imminent Fringe activity might double the number, stands at 211, including three shows — “Our Town,” “Tommy and Me,” and “Forever Plaid” — that have come and gone.

A compilation of plays, musicals, and operas scheduled for performance in a Philadelphia area…

Our Town — People’s Light & Theatre Company

Thornton Wilder’s elegy to unadorned simplicity, “Our Town” receives a warm, moving, pitch-perfect production at People’s Light & Theatre Company where director Abigail Adams and cast endow this valentine to life, with tribute to the hereafter, with the sweetness, honesty, and depth so basic to the piece.

This is no mean feat. “Our Town,” like most classics, is not an automatic, no-brainer…