High-Concept Haunted Poe

Brat Production's Haunted Poe, which everyone is talking about, is more of a literary haunted house than site-specific theater. There are embedded performances throughout, including a Punch puppet show, a song sung from the grave, and 2 short films, experienced either through a chink in a stone wall or through the windows of a Victorian train car. The audience moves through the theatrical installations which are cleverly layed out and circle back to a central room, where Poe, Virginia and her Aunt pass a pleasant evening playing cards and reading. Outside that conventional space, Poe's visions are realized, bringing home the striking discrepancy between acceptable Victorian norms of thought and behavior and what was actually happening inside Edgar's tortured head. A further insight the evening brings home is just how pervasive Poe works are today. Other than Shakespeare, it is difficult to think of a writer whose stories are well-known enough to provide the basis for short, interactive performances given without introduction or scene-setting. A dreadfully pleasant way to spend an evening.

Fall Opening (Like an Orchid)

Theaters stir to life. Gas & Electric Arts performs Cabinet of Wonders, a bit of Grey Gardens crossed with Tom Waits in the most fabulous converted industrial space in the Eraserhood. We have to pause and appreciate how much Philadelphia small theaters mean because they want to mean. Art must be tired of talking to itself, now, finally. It is so good when art talks to us, which Cabinet does with a great and cluttered heart.

Frank X is mesmerizing for 3 minutes or 3 hours. A Philadelphia gem, now on the dias in the Arden's The History Boys. A theater immersion that also means to mean.

Soon: Theater Exile will open their season with Hunter Gatherers. Theater Exile is one of the city's most mature small theaters, assured and unerring, they always hit the mark of taut realism (think Mamet, without the weird diction). I do look forward.

A good week for Philadelphia Jazz

On Friday, October 16th, two Philadelphia sons who have more than made their marks on Jazz, return to our fair city. The dazzling Christian McBride, fronting his own bass-lead band, plays at the Kimmel Center at 8pm while sax man Sonny Fortune will be smoking the house at the Philadelphia Museum of Art at 5pm.

High Noon

Not a minute past 12 and not one too late. What is chiefly needed is a voice to say, "Look here, and here, and there, to be astounded or refreshed by the creative capacities in this city and hours of work someone has spent just to bring you a gift (a song, an act)."

If I speak about EgoPo and the Lantern Theater's Beckett Festivals, will you listen?

Happy Days, now at the Lantern, is breath-taking: right, recognizable, swift. Like the inescapable comment of a sharp-tongued friend you wounded unawares. It should be seen. As if this gift weren't enough, they give us Krapp's Last Tape on Monday, October 12th, anchored by the reliable intensity of Frank X.

http://www.lanterntheater.org

Little EgoPo, the theater troupe washed up on our shores from their unluckiest of homes in New Orleans, does Endgame beginning in November and Waiting for Godot in March. This troupe has a kind of magic. Their work should always be seen.

http://www.egopo.org/index.htm