Category: Theater

How random are moments in our lives that we define as “coincidence?” Perhaps, not so much.

A basic premise of Ian Kershaw’s The Greatest Play in the History of the World is that fortunate moments present themselves under the guidance of time and space. And the potential for life-changing outcomes lies in our recognizing such opportunities and seizing them.

A joint production of the Inis Nua and Tiny Dynamite theater companies, The Greatest Play is a warm and endearing tale of love lost and rediscovered. Directed by Kathryn MacMilllan, it makes parallel use of male-female relationships and science-fantasy motifs — equal dollops of James Thurber and Ray Bradbury.

The story and all its characters are told entirely by one actor … and a litany of shoes. More on that later.

Set in a quaint British neighborhood and, more grandly, the universe itself, the play begins with 31-year-old Tom awakening to a world frozen in time. But through his bedroom window he spots one person — staring back from her window — 26-year-old Sarah, who lives across the street. Tom, who’s writing The Greatest Play in the History of the World, is obsessed with words, and Sarah is a traveler enamored of numbers. Both have lost at love and feel their lives ending.

We’re soon introduced to the Forshaws, their elderly neighbors — also named Tom and Sarah, also aged five years apart, and also feeling life has stopped. Mrs. Forshaw, in the last stages of life, recalls teaching her former students about Carl Sagan’s Golden Record, an audio-visual collection included in NASA’s 1977 Voyager launch, offering a taste of our world to aliens who might stumble upon it.

The denouement of the play asks what we would choose as a personal remembrance in that vastness of space.

Barrymore awardee Brett Ashley Robinson narrates the monologue, and projects an unmistakable charm, maintaining a brisk pace throughout the 80-minute evening, a challenge for any actor. Her empathy is unmistakable, sustained with a smile that virtually never leaves her face.

Kershaw’s narrator leans exclusively into tale-telling, not role-playing. As such, our experience is that a novella is being read to us.

As for the shoes, Kershaw uses them to represent each character, and Robinson uses them to build rapport through audience interaction, demonstrating admirable improvisational skills.

Shannon Zura’s set/light design is inspired. A backdrop suggesting a cozy cottage gives way to an enchanting series of lighting effects. These create a sense of mystical science and the two-way power of windows. Adiah D. Hicks’ sound design includes voiceovers about the Voyager journey, interrupting Robinson’s narration with compelling contrast: the expanse of space versus the intimacy and love we require.

Told with wry humor and eccentric details specific to both personalities and environment, the play moves toward an emotional conclusion. Can we capture those connections that may escape our awareness?

The current challenging environment for the arts shows the wisdom of the Inis Nua/Tiny Dynamite partnership. The commitment to bring recent plays from the United Kingdom here provides an opportunity for Philly audiences to see the human experience through distant yet familiar cultures. As warm holiday entertainment, The Greatest Play is one with that mission.

‘The Greatest Play in the History of the World’

(Community/Arts)

A story love, loss, and reunion told through the eyes of an omnipresent narrator, spacecraft music, and shoes.

⌚️ Through Dec. 13, 📍 Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St. 🌐 tinydynamite.org

Theater reviews are produced independently by The Inquirer without editorial input by their sponsor, Visit Philadelphia.

Audiences apparently are shelling out money for tickets to Back to the Future: the Musical, now at the Academy of Music, just for a glimpse of the time-traveling DeLorean. But the rush from those high-action sequences is not unlike the thrills of a Universal Studios theme park ride — short-lived and emotionally hollow.

That is perhaps less a fault of the movie-to-musical pipeline, but more of the plot of Back to the Future. Marty McFly, high school boy of the 1980s, wants nothing more than to rise above his “loser” family and become a rock star. But when he accidentally transports himself back through time to the 1950s, he must help his parents fall in love to ensure his own survival.

Oh yeah, and his mom has the hots for him now and his father is a peeping Tom.

While these morally gray and otherwise two-dimensional characters are a product of the original source material, now in the medium of musical theater, their story falls flat with audiences. Characters sing because they have to — it’s a musical — and audiences grin and bear it until the next action sequence.

It is unfortunate, too, that even the dancers’ incredible execution of choreographer Chris Bailey’s lively interpretation of both ’80s and ’50s dance styles is not enough to save these long numbers. There is hardly a hummable tune in the bunch, and the plot rarely moves forward through a song.

There are bright spots, though.

Cartreze Tucker (Goldie Wilson/Marvin Berry) is a joy to watch sing and dance. Goldie is perhaps one of the only characters that gives audiences the musical theater warm and fuzzies as he dreams of becoming the mayor. Zan Berube (Lorraine) shines with her adept comedic timing and truly lovely voice. Overall, the cast, led by Lucas Hallauer (Marty McFly) and David Josefsberg (Doc Brown), does a wonderful job playing into the fan service element of the show. Audiences, clad in red puffer vests, are looking to hear their favorite lines and see their favorite moments and that, the show delivers.

Tim Hatley’s design is sleek and economical. The downstage scrim allows for inventive solutions to some of the more difficult action sequences. The DeLorean sequences in particular are aided by truly amazing work from video designer Finn Ross and illusion designer Chris Fisher. While at times those tricks could feel a bit smoke-and-mirrors with some conveniently timed blackouts, the work gives audiences a glimpse into the future of high-tech, commercial theater.

That is perhaps why the lack of heart in the book and lyrics feels so disappointing. The show does its best work when it leans into the campy, almost-parodic nature of the adaptation, using savvy theatrical solves to some of the harder scenes to reinterpret, like Doc climbing the bell tower with the clever use of projections.

It is when the production turns its attention back to the musical theater genre that it feels like a drag.

It seemed even Hallauer could feel the dead air when he called out “Philly, how you feeling?” during his rendition of “The Power of Love,” and there was no reply. It takes a lot for a Philly audience not to respond to the simple mention of Philadelphia.

But then, when the car flies, it’s pretty incredible.

‘Back to the Future: The Musical’

(Community/Arts)

In the latest big IP movie-to-musical pathway pipeline production, some truly amazing video and illusion work wow the audience. The cast does a wonderful job playing to the red puffer-vested fans.

⌚️ Through Nov. 30, 📍 240 S Broad St, Philadelphia 🌐ensembleartsphilly.org

Theater reviews are produced independently by The Inquirer without editorial input by their sponsor, Visit Philadelphia.

The 2023 Tony Award-winning musical Kimberly Akimbo has made its way to the Academy of Music, courtesy of Ensemble Arts Philly.

The intimate show tells the story of a girl named Kimberly Levaco (Ann Morrison) who has a genetic disorder that causes her to age at a rate of four to five times that of a normal person. So at 16, she looks like a 60-plus-year-old woman.

The show isn’t very plot driven, but more a character study of Kimberly, her family, and friends.

Kimberly lives with her parents, Pattie and Buddy (Laura Woyasz and Jim Hogan), and her Aunt Debra (a funny Emily Koch), who don’t always have Kimberly’s best interests in mind. The score is enjoyable in the moment but doesn’t provide the audience with tunes they leave the theater humming. It falls more in line with composer Jeanine Tesori’s other work, Fun Home, than something like Mamma Mia.

However, the score and script work well together to get the audience to empathize and care about Kimberly.

Leading the talented ensemble is Morrison who is able to embody the youthful hopes and dreams of Kimberly, while bringing an effective aged physicality to the role. Her voice, while mature, holds a youthful quality to it, making it feel like she is truly a young woman trapped in an older body.

Miguel Gil as Seth, Kimberly’s schoolmate-turned-friend-turned-partner-in-crime, is another standout. He brings an endearing nerdiness to the character that makes him a true scene-stealer.

While extremely affecting, the show remains a small-scale story; its intimacy often gets lost in the massive space of the Academy of Music. There are moments when the vastness of the stage almost swallows what should be a much more personable experience.

In a similar vein, the performances often feel like they are struggling to fill the space. There are several moments where diction could be cleaner, as there is an occasional mumbled or muffled quality to line (and lyric) delivery.

Kimberly Akimbo reminds the audience that life is short: You should live it to the fullest while you can. For such a conventional message, the show never feels saccharine. Instead, when the final song implores the audience to go on a great adventure “cause no one gets a second time around,” you are inspired to do just that.

‘Kimberly Akimbo’

(Community/Arts)

The Tony-winning story of a girl named Kimberly Levaco (Ann Morrison) who has a genetic disorder that causes her to age at a rate four to five times that of a normal person. With some great performances, the musical delivers a sweet message but never feels saccharine.

⌚️ Through Nov. 2, 📍 240 S Broad St, Phila. 🌐 ensembleartsphilly.org

Theater reviews are produced independently by The Inquirer without editorial input by their sponsor, Visit Philadelphia.

After the success of its world premiere adaptation of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Quintessence Theatre Company is back. In collaboration with the New Classics Collective, it’s now presenting the world premiere of Fire!! by Paul Oakley Stovall and Marilyn Campbell-Lowe.

The play seeks to reimagine the 1927 quarterly publication Fire!!, the first all-Black magazine in the country, as a stage production. Throughout the show, audiences are treated to staged performances of plays, stories, and poems by some of the great writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes.

Seeking to offer audiences a more immersive experience, director Raelle Myrick-Hodges begins the play in the historic Sedgwick Theater’s lobby, with performers in suits and flapper dresses. The 1928-built lobby throbs with life, making you believe you are in 1920s Harlem. Wallace Thurman (Kaisheem Fowler-Bryant), one of the editors of Fire!!, introduces himself and his fellow editors and explains that the night’s performances are part of a fundraiser to raise money for the magazine.

Zora Neale Hurston (Alicia Thomas) introduces herself soon after, but it’s hard to hear her over the rumbling of a wheeled platform stage being ushered into the lobby. This later serves as the train for the first scene of Hurston’s play Color Struck.

While it is admirable for Quintessence to use the Sedgwick in new and different ways, the echoing sound quality of the lobby leaves things feeling under-produced.

The audience eventually makes its way into the house. The theater’s arching pillars remain visible as a “backstage” space throughout the play — without the black curtains, this adds to the echo in the lobby.

Inside, the play continues, flipping between staged presentations of pieces that were published in Fire!! and the imagined drama of the editors hoping to appeal to patrons and fund the publication.

This invented drama is interesting but feels under-realized. For one thing, this is the actual conflict of the play, but all the action happens upstage of the “stage” and presents a myriad of sight line issues depending on where audiences are seated in relation to the pillars on stage. The audibility issues persist, making it difficult to hear actors, especially when they are fighting over any sound cues or underscoring.

The conflict of the play boils up when Thurman voices hesitancy toward presenting his lover Richard Bruce Nugent’s novel, which features queer characters. This conflict, while seeming to be the crux of the entire play, easily resolves itself within the performance of Nugent’s story, and is barely addressed later.

The behind-the-scenes tension, which is the through line of the plot, feels almost forgotten by the time the house lights are back up.

The staged presentations of works from Fire!! are, however, alive and well-executed.

At a time of extreme political division, it is important to celebrate joy — especially Black joy. It is timely to witness Quintessence recall the Harlem Renaissance and its resistance with fondness.

The stagings are ripe with music and dance. Xavier Townsend, who plays Aaron Douglas, in particular dazzles the audience with high kicks and spins, and Jordan Fidalgo’s Helene Johnson blows the audience away with her musical rendition of Johnson’s poem “A Southern Road.” The poems of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett speak for themselves and are well orated by Nicholas Parker and Taylor J. Mitchell, respectively.

Quintessence and the New Classics Collective are, as usual, impeccable with their selection of source material. The selected works from Fire!! are dynamic and fascinating stories that investigate the issues of the 1920s and today.

Audiences seeking to hear works of the Harlem Renaissance will be overjoyed by this production, if a bit confused by the subplot.

‘Fire!!’

(Community/Arts)

The story of the country’s first all-Black magazine, and the fight to keep it afloat, gets told in this 1920s Harlem Renaissance-set play. With Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes making an appearance, Fire!! is a celebration of Black joy and resistance, and a delight to witness.

⌚️ Through Nov. 2, 📍 7137 Germantown Ave. (Mount Airy), 🌐quintessencetheatre.org

Theater reviews are produced independently by The Inquirer without editorial input by their sponsor, Visit Philadelphia.

The article has been updated with the correct name for the actor who plays Aaron Douglas.