The 2008 theater season closes with something for everyone.
The Cherry Sisters
Instead of giving gifts no one really wants, why not spend your cash at a local theater? Many are running productions that either celebrate, bemoan or joyfully ignore the holiday season.
Two of drama's most controversial women are the focus of Temple Theaters' double bill Women on the Verge, which features Henrik Ibsen's classics A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler performed in repertory.
In the feminist masterpiece A Doll's House, Ibsen tells the story of Nora, a victim of 19th-century misogyny who questions the gender inequities in both her marriage and society.
Perhaps even more compelling than the courageous Nora is the eponymous heroine of Hedda Gabler. Captivatingly beautiful, Hedda is the object of all men's desires and she knows it. In his unqualified masterpiece, Ibsen offers a portrait of a woman on an unswerving path toward self-destruction.
If you prefer your holiday fare dark, see the Philadelphia Theatre Workshop's staging of Roberto Aguirre-Sasca's eerie drama The Mystery Plays. A writer on the HBO series Big Love, Aguirre-Sasca tells the dual stories of a film director haunted by the victim of a deadly accident and a lawyer who attempts to make peace with the man who murdered her parents and sister.
As protests rage over passage of Proposition 8, the acclaimed Edgeworks Dance Theater arrives at the Painted Bride Art Center with the determining factor, a piece that examines how gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people relate to the sexual majority. A mix of solo, duet and group movement, factor specifically addresses the African-American community's complicated relationship with sexual minorities.
In 2000 1812 Productions presented its delightful holiday show Big Time: Vaudeville for the Holiday. The runaway hit was followed in 2001 by the hilarious sequel Another Big Time: More Vaudeville for the Holidays. Now 1812 returns to vaudeville in Cherry Bomb: The Worst Act in Vaudeville History. Created by Jennifer Childs and James Sugg, Bomb tells the story of the infamous Cherry Sisters, whose vaudeville act was so appalling, they had a giant screen erected to protect them from hurled projectiles.
Last year the Walnut Street Theatre scored a hit with director Madi Distefano's staging of Greater Tuna, a bit of silliness focusing on the uncultivated residents of Tuna, Texas, the second-smallest town in a state where everything's big. In December Distefano and her Greater cast (the terrific John Zak and Benjamin Lloyd) return for the sequel A Tuna Christmas.
In the new production set on Christmas Eve, Zak and Lloyd perform multiple roles as Tuna's population of rednecks, Bible thumpers and other assorted hicks.
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