Arts & Culture in Haddonfield

There are many times when hilarity hides and withdraws, but with today’s side deal, it ensues. For $15, you get a ticket to the preview showing of The Foreigner on Tuesday, January 26, or Wednesday, January 27, at the Bristol Riverside Theatre (a $29 value for a regularly priced ticket; student tickets are $10 with a valid ID). Called “a hilarious farce, full of loopy jokes” by the New York Times, The Foreigner has also received glowing critical acclaim from the Village Voice, among others.

Dazzling audiences since 1911, Plays and Players boasts a troupe of talented thespians ready to take on Lost in Yonkers, a play that has won four Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and countless fist pumps. The complex and sharp-witted coming-of-age story follows two brothers sent to live in Yonkers, New York. Written by Neil Simon and directed by Betty Chomentowski, the approximately two-hour comedic drama depicts the struggles the brothers face after their father sends them to live with their immigrant grandmother, simple-minded aunt, and hooligan uncle. During the performance's 15-minute intermission, audience members can wipe tears of laughter from their eyes or mend the tears in their skulls incurred while thinking too deeply about the play's lessons on family relationships.

In professional theaters, Macbeth is euphemistically referred to as “the Scottish play” in order to avoid invoking the name that summons the ghosts of dyspeptic bagpipe players. Witness the danger firsthand with the PST's re-imagining, wherein the play's claustrophobic themes of madness are pictorially recreated with dramatic Asian music and theater forms. The opposite side of this Janus head is A Midsummer Night's Dream, a colorful romp through a fairy-infested forest that stands in stark contrast to the inward spiral of Lord and Lady Macbeth's dreadful natures. Thick with bright hues and inspired by Indian music and movement, PST's Midsummer liberates the senses from their corporeal soul-sack and guides them through the fumbles, foibles, and philandering ways of love, life, and leaving. No matter which story is witnessed, the audience is sure to enjoy plays performed with passion and panache by a theater company dedicated to Shakespearean productions.

The Mann Center is a prepossessing structure from anywhere you sit in the semi-covered amphitheater—all huge, rough slabs of timber that evoke the setting for a barn dance held by elegant giants. Even the lawn section isn’t an ordinary lawn: from the top of the steep hill where the theater perches, audiences can see not only the performers lighting up the stage below but also the canopy of trees in surrounding Fairmount Park and the city skyline just beyond.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts proudly stands as the apex of Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. Aiming to entertain a broad audience, the space’s soaring vaulted-glass ceilings ring with the sounds of the Broadway shows, jazz concerts, world music, and classical performances contained in its many concert halls and theatres, including the adjoining Merriam Theater. Opened in 1918, the Merriam has hosted legendary thespians such as John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn, and Sir Laurence Olivier throughout the decades and continues its legacy today by hosting touring shows of all types.

“This ‘PC’ world has never been more ready for Sarcasm,” exclaims Sarcasm Comedy Club founder Steve Trevelise. The WIP radio personality and veteran comedian, who honed his emceeing and managerial chops at the esteemed Catch a Rising Star, believes that “the comedy stage is the last place for freedom of speech.” Although some shows are rated PG and some are hard R’s, Sarcasm Comedy Club refuses to sanitize its performers for sensitive ears. For those who can take a joke, the uncensored humor hub’s calendar offers two Saturday-night shows per week that spotlight local cutups and national headliners. Those who dream of becoming comedians themselves can enlist in the Sarcasm Comedy School, in which they’ll learn the craft of standup, including joke writing, audience mining, and how to make your own heckler spray.