The Cat in the Hat: Wanting to Keep the Magic Alive

Do we need to understand everything? Why can’t children be allowed to wonder anymore?

I've an urge to write this in some sort of rhyme, but I haven’t the knack and I haven’t the time, I do want to say that the Cat in the Hat is an adorable show even if you don’t have a grandkid in tow. The kids were appropriately shocked and amazed, and the Cat was an acrobat who left us all dazed.

There’s a moment in The Cat in the Hat at the Arden Theater when the Cat (Doug Hara) stands precariously on a big yellow ball balancing, as in the book, a fish in a bowl on a rake and a book and a cup and a cake on his hat and a bowl full of milk and a kite in his tail and whatever else Dr. Seuss has listed in his popular children’s book.

It’s one thing to see a picture in a book, another to watch an actual person propel himself around the stage on what seemed to be a large exercise ball.  It was a truly remarkable feat, and we, myself along with all the children in the audience, held our collective breath waiting for something or everything to fall—while the young man next to me kept saying, “Oh, my,” and “My gosh”—until it all came crashing down—only not before our eyes. Just a lot of clattering and shuddering and shocked expressions.

And that was the fun of the piece. Part of going to the theater is the magic—not knowing quite how they’re doing what they do. It’s not the same as the movies, where we know that a bunch of experts worked with technology to create what are called “special effects.” The magic happens elsewhere in the movies. In the theater it all has to happen right in front of us leaving us wondering and amazed.

But what happens when that wonder is explained away? Does it diminish the effect and take away the magic when we know that it’s merely a trick?

Mark Nadler: A Cabaret about Cabaret

What makes a Cabaret a Cabaret? Is it drinks and music, or is it spending time with a performer who invites you into his world? Mark Nadler tells us a story about his world and the dark past of cabaret in Weimar Germany. 

The word cabaret  conjures up for me a dark room with people crowded around uncomfortably small tables only half listening to a singer who tries to hold their attention while waiters serve and diners drink and dine. Some of my favorite singers are strongly associated with the smell of smoke and the clink of glasses in a dimly lit space with poor ventilation. The word also brings to mind the dark, daring world of the film Cabaret where a struggling young singer tries to survive in a Germany fast being taken over by the Nazis. 

What happens when the two experiences combine, the intimate setting around food and drink, and an audience watching a performance from the distance of a stage? That was the challenge facing Mark Nadler in his recent show I’m A Stranger Here Myself at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia—how to make the audience sitting in a large theater space feel that they are a part of the show as well as observers of it—and with no food or drink to distract or engage us.

What draws us into the cabaret or nightclub instead of a traditional show is precisely that intimacy. We want a nice dinner out with friends and don’t want to have to go to the theater afterwards, or we want to hear a particular singer, or the club is known for the kind of musicians who perform there, and we’ll go no matter what.

Kun Yang Lin / Dancers. Be / Longing: Light / Shadow

Photo by Bill Herbert

With so many dance troupes, both local and touring, appearing in the Philadelphia area, what sets Kun Yang Lin/Dancers apart is their emphasis on humanity and connection to the audience.  

Before there is the dance, there is the sound. Entering the theater, one is instantly enveloped by the sound of waves. There is no way to escape, it fills the room, chattering subsides, and we are lulled into silence.

A questionnaire on bright red paper challenges us to identify who we think we are. Not just our professions, but all the labels we and others have placed on us – cat lover, poet, Eagles fan, philosopher. We toss it off with a laugh, but it lingers. Who do I think I am? Who is this me that has come to watch the dance?

Arsenic and Old Lace: Farce Still Works

Jane Ridley, Laurent Giroux, Mary Martello and Dan Olmstead
Photo by J. Urdaneta Photography

Death isn't really funny, but when the good guys succeed and the bad ones get their just desserts, who minds a corpse or twelve in the basement, when we have so many worse skeletons in the closet.

Sometimes going to the theater can be just plain fun. That’s how I felt about the Walnut Street Theatre's production of Arsenic and Old Lace. A lot of familiar Philadelphia actors (Mary Martello and Jane Ridley as the Brewster sisters, Ben Dibble as Teddy Brewster, Damon Bonetti and Jennie Eisenhower as Mortimer Brewster and Elaine Harper, Peter Schmitz in two character roles)—I’ve only been here a little over a year and most were already familiar to me, along with a well-crafted script, resulted in a delightful farce—and I’m not one who uses adjectives like that lightly.

As the two elderly Brewster sisters, Martello and Ridley were alternately batty and serious, competent and absurd. In my quest to find satisfying roles for mature performers—more on that at another time—it’s nice to see that material does exist for them in which they are not distraught, alcoholic, or verging on dementia—although some may question the sanity of these two ladies, it’s more their thought processes that are in question, not their ability to think.

TED Comes to Philadelphia

I've always wanted to go to a TED Conference but didn't know it was possible. Then a little blurb in the local paper said TED was coming to Philadelphia (TEDxPhiladelphia 2014: The New Workshop of the World, March 28, 2014 at Temple Performing Arts Center). I was one of the first to sign up, and over a thousand more people quickly followed. And there we were, in Temple University’s Performing Arts Center, hunkered down with water and snacks for a day of talks about Philadelphia, its history and its possibilities.

For those who haven’t encountered one of TED’s short video talks (usually less than 18 minutes), TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a non-profit organization that organizes conferences around the world on topics that have to do with the technology, entertainment and design, as well as education, business, global issues and more. Local spin-offs, referred to as TEDx, cover topics of interest to local communities or centered around a particular issue.  

Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq: A Wounded Hero and the Fierceness of his Victims

The hero of Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq, a new play developed in a two-year collaboration between award-winning playwright Paula Vogel and Wilma Artistic Director Blanka Ziska, is a difficult hero to like. He’s a womanizer who uses women to fulfill his own needs with little regard for theirs. We are, I think, supposed to care for him, but that’s a challenge despite the excellent performance by Keith Conallen in the title role.

The play is structured around the journey of Capt. Don Juan (Conallen), a Marine who comes home from war with PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury) to search for Cressida (Kate Czajkowski), his missing lover. He claims to have changed, but he’s in such pain, which he desperately self-medicates, that it’s hard to trust his promises of reform.

See rest of the article in Broad Street Review

New Stars Shine in Tribes Production

One of the delights of the recent production of Tribes, by Nina Raine, directed by Stuart Carden, which played recently at the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, was  the introduction of two young actors at the very start of their careers. 

The more seasoned performers did their parts well, but it was Tad Cooley, who just last year moved to the area from Texas to attend the NY Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and Amanda Kearns, who graduated from University of the Arts in 2012, who made us care about their characters in a very authentic way. Cooley played Billy, a boy who has been deaf since birth but is just discovering sign language, and Kearns played Sylvia, a girl with deaf parents who is losing her hearing and figuring out how to cope with that.  .

Cooley, who, like his character, has just recently learned to sign, was raised in Vanderbilt, TX where “football was practically a religion.” With a partial hearing loss from an infection that is growing worse, early on he “learned to manage around it,” playing football and appearing in high school productions. The choice to drop football for theater was an easy one for him.  “I've always been a cheerful kid,” he says, “but I never felt so accomplished and happy with what I've done as when I’m on stage.”

See article on the show at: Broad Street Review