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2018 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Awards — The Nominees

2018 was chocked with good productions and fine performances.

Choosing nominees, let alone recipients, required a battery of combinations and permutations until the lists were set.

Here, in each of six categories, are the five productions, performers, and directors nominated for the 2018 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Award.

  BEST PRODUCTION

  FUN HOME by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori (after…

Two More from ’18 — Nest to Normal and Passing Strange

NEXT TO NORMAL, Media Theatre, through February 25 — Krissy Fraelich’s riveting central performance blends with the perfection of Geoffrey Goldberg’s direction to make this production not only powerful and poignant. It might be the best ever in Media Theatre’s history, and that’s saying a lot considering some of the outstanding productions Media artistic director Jesse Cline has mounted in the…

Lightning Rounds — 1776

1776, Media Theatre, 104 E. State Street, Media, Pa. through Sunday, May 22 —Strong performances, especially by Luke Brahdt and Bob Stineman as two Continental Congress representatives that respectively not for uniting the states or independence, galvanize Jennie Eisenhower’s production of this amiable chestnut into a taut, entertaining history lesson that provides tension and suspense even…

Harvey — Walnut Street Theatre

Harvey, the towering — 6’2″…and a half — invisible rabbit in Mary Chase’s durable 1944 play, is a survivor. He outlasts Veta Louise Simmons’s plot to have him exorcised from the otherwise comfortable Midwest home she shares with her brother and daughter. He overcomes the doubt and ridicule heaped on people who claim to be able to see him. He cheers yearning soul after yearning soul in series for…

High Society — Walnut Street Theatre

The Walnut Street Theatre production of “High Society” is a curiosity in two distinct and separate ways, one having to do with its performances, the other regarding Arthur Kopit’s unnecessary rearranging and cheapening of the show’s source, Philip Barry’s “The Philadelphia Story.”

Secondary characters played by Jenny Lee Stern, Alexis Gwynn, Dan Schiff, and Grace Gonglewski far outshine the leads…

A glorious season is celebrated by citing some of the best productions and performances seen during it.

Awards are a round-up of sorts,. They compact cherished memories and give a point of reference for shows, fine acting, and astute directing that took place in a given year.

For 2014-2015, the recipients of the Helen and Morris Zoren Awards for World Theatre are an eclectic bunch, two from…

Passion — Arden Theatre

Stephen Sondheim’s musical, “Passion,” comes to a pivotal point at which a young soldier, driven to a range of emotions, most of them negative, by the unwanted, unencouraged love he’s engendered in an ill, homely, lonely woman, suddenly becomes deeply enamored of his former nemesis, and sharing her ardor, longs to requite their love.

Having seen “Passion” six times before Terrence J. Nolen…

Ian Merrill Peakes’s Macbeth at Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre shows less ambition than dissatisfaction. Nothing is ever good enough for him. He can’t be content with what he has.

When Banquo challenges the witches to declare whether they’re illusions or human and then inveighs them to speak, Peakes’s Macbeth, a wary stage-right listener to that point, is visibly unhappy when he hears he shall be…