best bets
I've had a relatively restful, almost theater-free summer. Though I just saw five plays in two days at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on- the-Lake, Ontario (including the North American premiere of a rarely produced late play by my favorite Edwardian playwright, H. Granville Barker), that felt like a vacation compared to the orgy of theatergoing I indulged in last year at this time.
Last September I had just come back from a week at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, seeing three or four and sometimes five plays a day. It's a good thing I didn't try that this year, because I'd have been too exhausted for the first annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival (see story and schedule elsewhere in this issue). It's small cheese compared to some of the older Fringe Festivals, but not a bad start. Of course one could ask what it's a Fringe of. But then I noticed that seven of Philadelphia's theater companies will have started up their seasons by mid-September, with five productions having their official openings that week. So you do have a choice: mainstream season or Fringe.
In the mainstream local theater, I'm going to have to wait until after the new year for some of the theater events I'm most looking forward to this season (among other things a production of Shakespeare's Cymbeline at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, Grace Gonglewski as Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Arden, some new pieces at the Independent Eye, and Athol Fugard's new play, The Captain's Tiger, under his direction, at McCarter). But there's much to see in the between now and then, including:
Sept. 10- Oct. 5: Indiscretions.Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts., 546-STAGE. Jean Cocteau's comedy features one of the most dysfunctional families in modern drama (the play's original French title --Les Parents Terrible -- gives you an idea). Jiri Zizka directs.
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Sept. 16-Oct. 5: June Moon. McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, NJ, (609) 683-9100. The Drama Dept. Incorporated, a new cooperative theater company, revived George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner's classic comedy about Tin Pan Alley last spring off-Broadway, under the direction of actor Mark Nelson. McCarter brings the Drama Dept. and their production to Princeton to open their season.
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Sept. 17-Oct. 12: A Perfect Ganesh. People's Light & Theatre Company, 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, (610) 647-1900. Here's a recent Terrence McNally play you may not have seen, directed at People's Light by Abigail Adams.
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Oct. 31-Nov. 30: Full Gallop. Philadelphia Theatre Company at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., 735-0630. Mary Louise Wilson played her one-hander (written with Mark Hampton) about fashion editor Diana Vreeland for close to a year off-Broadway. While Wilson takes it on national tour, veteran actor Nancy Marchand plays the role here for the Philadelphia Theatre Company.
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Nov. 20-Jan. 4: Tiny Island. Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. Second St., 922-8900. The third installment in the collaboration between local playwright Michael Hollinger (winner of last year's Otto F. Haas Emerging Theatre Artist Award) and director Terrence J. Nolen of the Arden. Tiny Island shifts back and forth between past and present as two estranged sisters duke it out in the projection booth of an old movie house. After the premiere at the Arden, the production moves to People's Light in January and February.
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Nov. 20-23: The American Chestnut. Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 925-9914. Performance artist Karen Finley barely (in more than one sense of the word) survived the culture wars of the early '90s. See if you can survive her newest piece at the Painted Bride. Not for the faint of heart.
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Nov. 28-Jan. 4: Beauty and the Beast. People's Light, (610) 647-1900. Like last year's Arabian Nights and Grimm Tales the year before, this production is on both People's Light's main subscription series and its family-oriented "Discovery" series. If it's anything like the others, Beauty and the Beast (adapted by the same playwright as Grimm Tales) will have plenty in it to enchant adults, particularly the movement work by William Yalowitz.
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And if you're into solo performance, you'll be pretty busy this fall, even after the Fringe Festival is over. In addition to the Finley run at the Bride, consider the following:
Kevin Augustine appears in his first full-length solo piece, Plaid Wall Vaudeville, for Independent Eye (Oct. 2-25); Robert Christophe kicks off Venture Theatre's season with his Michigan Impossible, directed by Ozzie Jones (Nov. 4-30); Flash Rosenberg performs Camping in Bewilderness at the Painted Bride (Nov. 7); and Greg Giovanni "curates" an evening of performance by various artists at the Bride on Oct. 24 and 25 called Truth or Artifice? An Evening of Feminine Theatrics.
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Independent Eye at Old City Stage Works, 115 Arch St., 925-2838.
Venture Theatre at "The Adrienne," 2030 Sansom St., 923-2766 ext. 21. Venture's space, which it shares with Interact Theatre Company, has been renamed The Adrienne in memory of Adrienne Neye, former production stage manager of Philadelphia Theatre Company and a stalwart of the local theater community.