Lucinda Childs’ Dance (with music by Philip Glass and film by Sol LeWitt). Photo by Sally Cohn.

Surprisingly, the show’s three-day run at the Kimmel Center was not sold out, but its opening night was populated by the illuminati of Philadelphia’s cultural scene, all in agreement about the profound artistic experience they lauded with a prolonged standing ovation. Dance began at a breakneck pace and never relented, leaving the performers and audience breathless. The live dancers’ stylized symmetrical movements, choreographed by Childs, were performed behind a scrim, with silent video projections by LeWitt of the original troupe from1979, shot from a variety of floating angles, and set to the frenetic redundancies and variations of the score by Glass. The stark blue lighting, empty stage, and unadorned white costumes were in perfect accord with the collaborators’ less-is-more aesthetic; all elements were consistently subtle, hypnotic, visually impeccable, and flawlessly synchronized. This piece is a transcendent work that transports its viewers to a different plane.

Cédric Andrieux in Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux. Photo by Jaime Roque de la Cruz.

Another minimalist offering in dance was Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux. Presented as a live resumé, the solo eponymous dancer reviewed his career at an excruciatingly slow pace, with a soft-spoken humble demeanor bordering on insecurity. As a result, the audience experienced firsthand the tedium of seemingly endless auditions, warm-ups, and rehearsals, the impossible contortions and physical battering expected of professional dancers, and the brutally demoralizing criticisms they receive at the hands of their mentors. Each segment was followed by Andrieux trying to catch his breath, panting heavily into his headset for countless empty minutes. For me, he was sympathetic and engaging, with occasional understated touches of humor, as he imparted a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it means to be a well-known well-toned dancer. Others seated around me found the 75-minute performance interminably boring and self-indulgent. Though the audience reaction was mixed, I found Andrieux’s delivery completely in tune with the message: it’s worth all the emotional and bodily torture for that moment of ecstasy onstage.

John Zak in Nevermore Theater Project's The Tell-Tale Heart. Photo by Domenick Scudera.

Two solo theatrical performances were also among my Top Picks for the Fringe, and they didn’t disappoint. Both Nevermore Theater Project’s The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe and Luna Theater’s Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno were devastating studies of mental instability, acted with masterful intensity by John Zak and Christopher M. Bohan. Under the direction of Domenick Scudera, Zak, who has one of the most expressive faces in Philadelphia, drew us into the deteriorating mind of Poe’s fictional killer, from the carefully modulated and logical introduction to the increasingly agitated finale.

Christopher M. Bohan in Luna’s Thom Pain (based on nothing). Photo by Gregory Scott Campbell.

Bohan’s stand-up monologist Thom Pain was crazed and depressed, distracted and haunted; director Gregory Scott Campbell adeptly guided Bohan’s physical transformations through each bipolar cycle, from the wildly gesticulating arms and hands of his mania, to the downturned head and turned-in hands of his thoroughly dejected sadness, to the ambiguous twinkle in his eye and smile, as he expressed a final wish of “stability” for his audience. This is not theater for the fainthearted; it is powerful, disturbing, and uncompromisingly human. These heart-wrenching performances by Zak and Bohan will stay with me.

Plays and Players' Hear Again Radio Project. Photo by Alistair E. May.

Lighter fare was provided by Plays and Players’ Hear Again Radio Project, a visual recreation of two 1950s radio dramas, replete with commercials and sound effects. Every detail of the now camp production was well researched and accurate, from the costumes, hairdos, and make-up, to the trained radio voices reading the vintage scripts. Staged in the Skinner Studio of Plays and Players’ historic building, it was an entertaining and nostalgic step back in time, even for those of us who are not of that time. A stand-out in the cast was the young Vayia Karavangelas, whose delivery and timing in Zero Hour were spot-on as the pre-teen accomplice to Martian invaders.

Thaddeus Phillips in Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental’s ¡EL CONQUISTADOR! Photo by Evan Kafka.

One of the most original new works in the Live Arts Festival was Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental’s ¡El Conquistador! Supported by a cadre of Latin American telenovela stars filmed in Bogotá, Colombia, Thaddeus Phillips’ protagonist walked freely from live stage into (and out of) the well coordinated film clips, as he rose from rural poverty to the soap-opera life of a doorman in the big city, to a man of leisure at a beach resort, after escaping an assassination attempt and hitting the lottery! The exaggerated characters and outrageous plot twists, delivered completely in Spanish and derived in part from Hamlet and The Count of Monte Cristo, were hilarious.

Robert M. Johanson in Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Romeo & Juliet. Photo by Peter Nirgini and Kerstin Joensson.

So too was Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s Romeo and Juliet, whose unique premise was to present Shakespeare’s classic based on a series of ten phone calls to people who were asked to recount the story. None could remember the exact details, so embellished, invented, and went off on personal tangents. Actors Robert M. Johanson and Anne Gridley alternately recited the telephone soliloquies verbatim, applying Elizabethan dialects and histrionics to the colloquial American versions. It was a stroke of comic genius that kept the audience in hysterics, and one of the funniest productions I’ve ever seen. The show closed with the stage and house lights going down, and the actors reciting Shakespeare’s true text in total darkness, in conversational tones without theatrics, faux English accents, or visual distractions. The contrast between the inarticulate telephone accounts and the exquisite beauty of Shakespeare’s language confirmed why he remains the world’s greatest playwright.

Marcel Williams Foster in Hyphen-Nation Arts’ The Jane Goodall: Experience. Photo by Libby Cady.

Jane Goodall on Animal Planet, 2010. Photo by Animal Planet.

Visually and vocally, Marcel Williams Foster’s drag parody of anthropologist Jane Goodall in Hypen-Nation Arts’ The Jane Goodall: Experience was a comic delight. Though the story, writing, and music were not on par with Foster’s uncanny impersonation of his mentor in Tanzania, the promotional photos are stunning, and the production certainly fit the bill of “Fringe.” The running time, which was listed as 90 minutes in the Festival catalogue, was much shorter—presumably the show is still a work-in-progress, and worth the effort of reworking for future presentation.

Colleen Corcoran and Robert DaPonte in Playing Leni. Photo by Paola Nogueras..jpg

Another work-in-progress, by David Robson and John Stanton, presented free of charge as a reading, was Madhouse Theater Company’s Playing Leni (formerly titled Dysfictional Circumstances). Brilliantly performed by Colleen Corcoran, Robert DaPonte, and John Galla, the dark comedy about Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, is clever, well-written, and thought-provoking. Conceived as a Riefenstahl-directed autobiographical film-within-a-play, and set in the Austrian countryside during her post-war capture and detention, it humorously raises serious questions about personal ethics, opportunism, self-preservation, and the accident of birth. Be sure to see the full-stage production in May 2011, in the new third floor space at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.

Other established companies that extended their seasons into the Fringe and presented the most compelling and accomplished productions of the Festival were EgoPo and Theatre Exile. As my top picks of 2010-11, both succeeded in cementing their reputations as legitimate theaters on the cutting edge, featuring work by two of Philadelphia’s most outstanding directors, Brenna Geffers and Deborah Block.

Ensemble in EgoPo's Marat/Sade. Photo by David Cimetta.

Geffers launched EgoPo’s “Theater of Cruelty” season with The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Staged in the University of Pennsylvania’s classical Rotunda of 1911, the dilapidated space was the perfect metaphor for the deteriorating state of the French Revolution, the sanity of the asylum’s inmates, and the morals of de Sade. There is no formal stage in the circular building, but the interior was used to full advantage by Geffers; actors appeared on the balcony for their impassioned revolutionary addresses to the crowds, and at floor level with the audience (seated just two rows deep in a semi-circle around the action), for an in-your-face intimacy and intensity. Led by award-worthy performances from David Blatt as de Sade, Steven Wright as Marat, and Jered McLenigan as the emcee, the ensemble of thirteen was consistently stellar, as was the original music by Mathew Wright and lighting by Matt Sharp.

Kim Carson and Catharine Slusar in Theatre Exile’s Iron. Photo by Paola Nogueras.

Block, too, gave us a tour-de-force of directing with Iron, converting Exile’s newly restored Studio X into a catwalk stage for the penetrating prison drama. Within inches of the audience, Catharine Slusar and Kim Carson not only mastered the requisite Scottish accents, but gave stirringly convincing performances as the estranged mother and daughter trying to come to terms with their lives and the past. The heartbreaking story of these strong and oddly sympathetic women provided no easy resolution, no politically correct excuses, no surprise ending; it was as real as theater can be, and deserving of the highest accolades. Even Caitlin Antram and Michael Hagan, playing the prison guards, remained in character throughout the performance, keeping close watch on the audience, and thereby giving us a brief taste of what imprisonment means.

Matteo Scammell as Orpheus and Cuba Hatheway as Eurydice in the University of the Arts’ Polaroid Stories. Photo by Amy Feinberg.

One additional production I had the good fortune to see was Polaroid Stories at the University of the Arts. An experimental combination of live actors, video, live music, and graffiti, the original play is an intelligent reworking of themes and characters from classical mythology, reconfigured as a lost generation of contemporary runaway kids (victims of abuse, drugs, poverty, and sexual exploitation), living their tragic lives in an urban hell. Participating students had the opportunity to work with professional actor Russ Widdall (one of Philadelphia’s finest, who gave a characteristically powerful performance), and sound designer Nick Rye (who created the show’s original music).

I hope the masses of attendees at the many sold out Festival productions continue to patronize Philadelphia’s small theater companies, many with tickets priced below those of the Fringe, and performance dates spread out at a leisurely pace over the entire 2010-11 season. Season subscriptions to EgoPo, Flashpoint, Inis Nua, Luna, New City Stage, and Theatre Exile, combined, total less than the Fringe’s $325 all-access pass. At those prices, and with their proven quality and professionalism, why not support Philadelphia’s outstanding theater scene throughout the year, not just for sixteen harried days?

The 2010 Festival line-up is staggering, with nearly 1,200 performances of approximately 200 shows, ranging from theater and comedy to dance, music, and the visual arts.

Lucinda Childs’ Dance, (with music by Philip Glass and film by Sol LeWitt). Photo by Sally Cohn.

In a league of its own, and superseding any list of top picks, is Lucinda Childs’ Dance, with music by Philip Glass and film by the late Sol LeWitt.  It’s uplifting that these universally respected avant-garde giants of the 20th century, whose Minimalist/Conceptual work was misunderstood and criticized in its early years, would acknowledge their experimental roots and bring a reprise of their interdisciplinary collaboration to the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.  The two surviving members of this dream team will be on hand for a pre-show discussion on Sept. 10; this is your chance to converse with living legends.

Along with Dance, my top 10 Best Bets for 2010 are:
•    EgoPo, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Fringe)
•    Theatre Exile, Iron (Fringe)
•    Luna Theater, Thom Pain (based on nothing) (Fringe)
•    Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, ¡El Conquistador! (Live Arts)
•    Jérôme Bel, Cédric Andrieux (Live Arts)
•    Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Romeo and Juliet (Live Arts)
•    Nevermore Theater Project, The Tell-Tale Heart (Fringe)
•    Hyphen-Nation Arts, The Jane Goodall:  Experience (Fringe)
•    Plays and Players, Hear Again Radio Project (Fringe)
•    Madhouse Theater Company, Dysfictional Circumstances (Fringe)

Ensemble in EgoPo’s Marat/Sade. Photo by Joshua Wallace.

The top three productions are by a trio of the most consistently excellent, compelling theater companies in Philadelphia.

Following its stirring adaptation of Beckett’s Company last year, EgoPo will kick off its “Theater of Cruelty” season at the Fringe with Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade.  Brenna Geffers directs a roster of all-stars, including Ross Beschler, Steven Wright, David Blatt, and Theatre Exile’s Joe Canuso, in the controversial and unrelentingly sadistic play-within-a-play, staged in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Catharine Slusar in Theatre Exile’s Iron. Photo by Robert Hakalski.

Theatre Exile, too, returns to the Festival after a five-year hiatus, with Philly Fringe co-founder Deborah Block (co-artistic director at Exile) directing award-winning actresses Catharine Slusar and Kim Carson in Iron.  Set in a woman’s prison, Iron tells the story of a mother and daughter struggling to come to terms with each other, and with themselves, 15 years after a brutal murder.

Poster for Luna’s Thom Pain (based on nothing). Photo by Scott Fowler.

And Gregory Scott Campbell directs another of Luna Theater’s characteristically quirky shows, Thom Pain–a haunting anecdotal monologue by New York playwright Will Eno, which won the Fringe First Award in Edinburgh.  With their accomplished casts, directors, and design teams, these disturbing dramas promise to be the most professional of the Festival, while still exhibiting the cutting-edge intensity for which the companies, and the Fringe, are known.

Thaddeus Phillips in Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental’s ¡EL CONQUISTADOR! Photo by Evan Kafka.

My next three picks are part of the Live Arts Festival, distinguished from the Philly Fringe by selection process.  The Philly Fringe is unfiltered; both new and established artists can present their work without an invitation or preliminary judging.  Live Arts features renowned contemporary performing artists from the U.S. and around the world, who have been invited to the Festival by producing director Nick Stuccio.

Thaddeus Phillips’ Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental was selected to present its innovative fusion of live theater and film, ¡El Conquistador!  Combining the daydreams of an impoverished underdog with the popular phenomenon of telenovelas (Latin American soap operas), the performance (presented in Spanish, with English supertitles) makes reference to such classic sources as Hamlet and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Cédric Andrieux in Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux. Photo by Jaime Roque de la Cruz.

Also noteworthy in Live Arts is Cédric Andrieux, a behind-the-scenes autobiography of the eponymous French dancer, in collaboration with choreographer Jérôme Bel.  I can’t help but think of Avedon’s famous photos of Nureyev’s feet, evincing the torturous training that results in a work of beauty on stage.

Robert M. Johanson and Anne Gridley in Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Romeo & Juliet. Photo by Peter Nirgini.

And the New York based Nature Theater of Oklahoma presents an amusing retelling of Romeo and Juliet, synthesized from telephone interviews with everyday people who were asked to give an account of the story in their own words.  Their embellishments, inaccuracies, and reinventions include scenes and characters that were never part of Shakespeare’s original.

John Zak in Nevermore Theater Project's The Tell-Tale Heart. Photo by Domenick Scudera.

Nevermore Theater Project offers another time-honored classic in the Fringe, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.  This one is a faithful word-for-word staging of the dark short story, starring Barrymore recipient John Zak as Poe’s man on the brink of insanity, and performed at the appropriately creepy Mütter Museum (admission to the museum’s collections is not included).

Marcel Williams Foster in Hyphen-Nation Arts’ The Jane Goodall: Experience. Photo by Libby Cady.

Three more Fringe events round out my Top 10 list, all promising to be both unique and entertaining.

Hyphen-Nation Arts’ The Jane Goodall:  Experience features Marcel Williams Foster as the renowned anthropologist, in a performance/lecture/tribute to the 50th anniversary of her pioneering research in Tanzania.  Now working in the world of dance and theater, Foster trained at Goodall’s Institute, and incorporates years of research, a profound love of apes, and a virtuoso shift between humans and primates in his self-described “peculiar drag parody.”

Ryan Walter, Lauren Basler, and David Stanger in Plays and Players' Hear Again Radio Project. Photo by Alistair E. May.

More traditional is Plays and Players’ Hear Again Radio Project, comprising vintage radio dramas from the 1940s, performed live with authentic costumes, sound effects, music, and commercials.

Colleen Corcoran in Madhouse Theater Company’s Dysfictional Circumstances. Photo by John Stanton.

Last but not least is Madhouse Theater Company’s Dysfictional Circumstances, a twisted dark comedy about Nazi propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, which just won the Audience Choice Award for New Work in the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia’s Spark Showcase.

Beth Nixon and Alex Torra in Cankerblossom by Pig Iron Theatre Company. Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg.

If you love inane Jerry Lewis movies circa 1960, and find over-sized glasses, crossed eyes, protruding teeth, and grating voices hilarious, you probably number among the masses that can’t seem to get enough of Pig Iron Theatre Company.  In light of the success of last year’s Welcome to Yuba City (both in the Live Arts Festival and with the Barrymore Awards), I would be remiss if I didn’t remind fans to get their tickets early, because this year’s offerings by Pig Iron (Cankerblossom) and Charlotte Ford (Chicken) are sure to sell out fast.

Charlotte Ford in Chicken. Photo by Jay Dunn.

Also among the annual favorites is Brian Sanders’ JUNK, this year performing Sanctuary (which comes with a warning that the production may contain nudity).  Described as “a dance of intense movement, ritual, and mistaken assumptions about the past,” and using a 14 x 120’ wall as the stage, the perfectly toned gravity-defying dancers will undoubtedly wow Live Arts audiences again in 2010.

Sanctuary by Brian Sanders' JUNK. Photo by Steve Belkowitz.

The 14th annual Philly Festival runs September 3-18.  If you’re truly living on the fringe, it’s not likely you’ll be able to see much of it, so choose your shows wisely (tickets & info here).  At a pricey $325/person ($650/couple), the “all-access pass” gives access to all shows, not access for all people.

One show at the Philadelphia Fringe is not enough. It’s so hard to know what will be good, what will not, that you sort of have to sample a bunch and hope for the best. This year, we finally figured that out and purchased tickets to four shows. Two down, two to go–plus a bonus.

by Miriam Singer

The bonus was added on to show number one. Murray and I got to the Painted Bride early to pick up our tickets, and there were works by Miriam Singer hanging on the wall in the cafe area, where InLiquid curates member shows. It’s such a gloomy space that if anything looks good in there, it’s probably good. On top of that, I’m a Singer fan, having first come across her work in a show at Siano Gallery (now the late lamented Siano Gallery, it turns out–we heard from gallerist Luella Tripp that it’s going to be a furniture store, instead. But look for Tripp to run another Old City gallery in six months or so).

by Miriam Singer

Singer’s work in her show de’rive dreams merges drawings with prints on paper that has been folded and unfolded and otherwise distressed in the course of her travels. She adds to them on the run as she moves through her life, and they have the jazzy rhythms and compression of city life–showing hints of stores, apartments, reflections, compression, circles, parks, bicycles, cars. None of it is spelled out, but all of it is in there, chock-a-block and rubbing elbows, inch by inch across the page.

The performance we saw at the Bride–Flamingo/Winnebago–was almost really good. It’s about a road trip across America with actors and creators Thaddeus Phillips and Muni Kulasinghe. Their two private journeys seek a piece of the past in the seediness of Las Vegas and the environmental disaster of the Salton Sea. Along the way, their searches for the American Dream cross paths. The performances were great. The set was witty and iconic. But call in an editor to trim the talky rants about the environment and politics. The show also sagged in spots, the timing not quite on target. Otherwise, pretty interesting. And, Murray, who always bumps into someone he knows, ran into someone he had written about in the Inquirer, years ago.

Waiting in a kind of staging area before the play begins. It’s really the back of the stage set for Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven

We had given up the possibility of bumping into someone we knew when we were waiting for the beginning of another Fringe show, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, at the Arden. But sure enough, one of our neighbors stumbled in, his unlimited admission pass to all Fringe shows hanging around his neck. Dragons, by Young Jean Lee, is about her conflicting identity as a Korean and an American. The show included enough spectacle and emotion to keep us riveted. But honestly, I was a little confused now and then and couldn’t quite buy into the extremity of Korean self-disgust. And when the show was over, I had much too much to ponder. Still, I enjoyed it. As for our neighbor, he was taking his unlimited admissions badge and moving on to another show. Not us. We went straight home to hug our TV and watch U.S. Open tennis. I’m at it again today, and I’m writing this during the commercials (c’mon, James Blake; I can’t believe you’re going down!)