Leonard Bernstein's Candide isn't performed often, and whenever it is, it's usually been given a completely new book. The songs remain the same, as they say, but the script is ever-changing. The version of the show running at the Arden through this Sunday features a new book by John Caird that seems, finally, to have captured the feel of the original Voltaire work from which it was adapted. Featuring most of Philadelphia's favorite musical......

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that if you're directing a dialect-heavy piece, be it the thick Irish brogue required for one of Martin McDonagh's Connemara trilogy, or the crisp English accents of an Oscar Wilde play, or even the southern dialect accent used in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, now onstage at the Arden Theatre Company, you should give your audience a moment or two to get used to the difference in speech......

Two literary characters and a historical figure walk into a bar... It's not a joke – it's the basic premise of Wittenberg, a world premiere play currently running at the Arden Theatre. Wittenberg is a play for smart people, full of historical and literary references used, often, in very funny ways. Not well-versed on your Elizabethan drama or your Sixteenth Century religious history? Well, you can still enjoy the play, but you won't get......

An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf is not a perfect play. But the Arden's production of it is damned near perfect. Empty Plate, which made its debut at the Arden in 1994, was local playwright Michael Hollinger's first play, and it has some of the signs of an early work by a young writer: a little bit of pretense and an ending that you can see from a mile away. And......

Wow. It's been a few days now since I saw the Arden's production of Lookingglass Theatre Company's Lookingglass Alice, and that's still pretty much all I can say. It was one of those shows I really wish I'd had someone with me at: I just really wanted to talk to somebody after the show, but my plus-one had to cancel on me, quite literally at the last minute, so there I was, blown away by......

I was reared on PBS children's programming. Sesame Street. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Square One TV. But I had a special place in my heart for Reading Rainbow. Some episodes I remember better than others. One such episode being the one in which the featured story was The Story of Ferdinand, about a gentle bull who wanted to stop and smell the roses, rather than fight in the ring. It's this book on which the......

I have a serious literary crush on Tony Kushner. Blame Angels in America (yeah, both parts). So naturally, when I heard a few years ago that Tony Kushner had collaborated with composer Jeanine Tesori on a musical, I was intrigued. But I didn't catch it on Broadway, and then... well, embarrassingly enough, I just kind of forgot about the play until the Arden announced it as part of its 2006-2007 season. But then my......

We haven't gotten around to telling you about the Philadelphia New Play Festival yet (that post is forthcoming), but on Friday, I had the opportunity to see one of the featured plays (most of them open before the festival officially begins), The Arden's Dex and Julie Sittin' in a Tree. Dex and Julie tells the tale of two high school sweethearts who reunite twenty years later at their alma mater. Julie (Jennifer Childs) is......

Roald Dahl is, hands-down, one of my favorite writers. And not just because he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, either. Dahl wrote a number of works for grown-ups, too. (His short story, "Lamb to the Slaughter," was reworked for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents... and remains one of my favorite short stories ever.) He managed to achieve something many authors aspire to but few attain: the ability to write for the ages......

Rha Goddess' "Low"
12:30PM 8/31 - 5PM 9/1...

Jean Markovitz ...

Terrence J. Nolen, Director...

Tuesday night, Phillyist had the great pleasure of attending the Arden Theatre Company's production of Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It's a show that we know quite well and we felt that we were in a good position to be tough critics if that's what was required of us. But, it wasn't. The Arden's production was an immensely enjoyable one, from start to finish. The cast, led by......

Philadelphia does love its centennial celebrations. Here we are, still in the throes of the Franklin tricentennial madness, and we've decided to commemorate a bicentennial birthday, too! The 200th birthday in question in this case belongs to Edwin Forrest, famous Philadelphia actor and namesake of the Forrest Theatre. To mark this milestone anniversary of his birth, Mayor Street has declared today "Edwin Forrest Day." Forrest was sort of the Will Ferrel of the mid-19th century;......