Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Shakespeare in Clark Park returns this week for its 12th season with five performances of Coriolanus, a timeless political tragedy of manipulation and revenge. This year, SCP will roll with an all-female cast led by Barrymore Award winner Charlotte Northeast as the title character. The professional cast of women warriors will appear alongside a Chorus of 50 Philadelphians who will become the riotous citizens of Rome. The production is directed by SCP Artistic Director Kittson O’Neill (Interact Theatre Company).

“It’s easy to see Coriolanus, a blunt war hero, as an indictment of “Macho” culture, but there is so much more to this story,” O’Neill, who is pulling double-duty as the director of the show, said in a statement. “By moving our production to a matriarchy I think audiences will more readily see themselves in our hero: we can all be inflexible, we all have deep prejudices and we don’t always get the glory we have rightly earned.”  Continue Reading

Cast members Brian McCann and Paul Kuhn (Photo by Rebecca Gudelunas).

The Curio Theatre Company’s production of the Samuel Beckett classic Waiting for Godot premieres Friday night.

The play features two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting along a country road for someone named Godot, who never arrives. The two engage in a number of comically absurd discussions and encounter others along the road. The British Royal National Theater named the play the most significant English play of the 20th century.

The Curio performance features Brian McCann, Paul Kuhn, Robert DaPonte and Harry Slack. The director is Dan Hodge, who guided the 2016 Curio staging of Death of a Salesman.

A second preview performance is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 9, and the play opens on Feb. 10 and runs through March. All performances begin at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets are available here.

It’s not often you get to see a play’s world premiere. Here’s your chance with the debut of Antagonyms, which opens at the Curio Theatre Company on Friday, Dec. 2.

Written by playwright, actor and Curio member Rachel Gluck, Antagonyms tells the story of four young Philadelphians.

“In Antagonyms, four twenty-somethings wrestle with their sense of self and their relationship to each other as they find themselves at each other’s throats and in each other’s beds. Contemporary millennial anxieties fuel a stylized high-stakes power game, creating a world in which old Hollywood glamour mingles with the sticky floor of a West Philly dive bar,” said Gluck.

Artwork by Elizabeth Gallagher.

An antagonym is a word with two opposite meanings, such as “bound.” One could be on the move, “bound” to Center City for example. Or “bound,” as in tied up, unable to move.

The performance is directed by Jack Tamburri, and the cast includes Alee Spadoni, Alexander Scott Rioh, Andrew Carroll and Colleen Hughes.

This production has mature content and not recommended for children and there are themes related to sexual violence.

You can catch a preview performance tonight and Thursday night. Antagonyms runs on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Dec. 17. All performances begin at 8 p.m.

For tickets visit the Curio Theatre Company website or call 215-525-1350.

Photo by Rebecca Gudelunas

OK, now here is something to look forward to as the days get shorter and the leaves begin to fall. Curio Theatre Company will be staging The Birds in October.

Yes, we’re talking Hitchcock (based on Daphne du Maurier’s novelette, of course). Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s play builds on the story of birds gone wild as three people retreat to an abandoned farmhouse, where relationships begin to unravel. As it becomes clear that the birds are a signal of the apocalypse, the rules of society change.

While it shares its name with du Maurier’s work, which was set in her native Cornwall, England, and Hithcock’s frightening film, McPherson’s work charts its own course that includes explorations of human frailty under extreme duress.  Continue Reading

The annual celebration of Philly arts and artists, The Fringe Festival, will be held from Sept. 9 through Sept. 24. This year, the festival has expanded its reach and is presenting an array of outstanding contemporary theater, music, dance and other performances at city-wide locations, including many events in West Philadelphia.

Here’s information on some of the performances to be held in West Philly. We also included shows by West Philly’s all-female aerial dance company, Tangle (for more festival events and tickets, visit: fringearts.com).

Shakespeare @ the Bar: The Taming of the Shrew

Sept 11, 7:30 p.m. – City Tap House (3925 Walnut St)

Fire up your Tinder profile (seriously) and get ready for Shakespeare @ the Bar, a no‐holds‐barred experience of Shakespeare like no other in Philadelphia! This lightly rehearsed production of the Bard’s most irreverent romantic comedy exposes one man’s lusty, raucous scheme to “take one for the team” and get filthy rich in the process. FREE. Go here for more details.  Continue Reading

Martin and Malcolm arm wrestling for the future of the movement in The Meeting, one of three short plays that comprise this year’s Theatre in the X (Photos by West Philly Local).

Theatre in the X, the all-black free theatre that is quickly becoming an August staple on 52nd St., kicked off its third season Sunday evening in Malcolm X Park at 51st and Pine.

This year’s works include New Black Math, “a creative explanation of what a Black play is”; The Meeting, a poignant and provocative fictional meeting between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.; and Love, Queens who Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,  a choreopoem that examines gun violence, abuse, love and heritage from the perspective of a black woman. Continue Reading