Also this issue:

Paperback Riders
Local commuters (re)discover the pleasures of reading in transit.
-Toby Zinman

Industry Standard
-David Anthony Fox

Tabloid Sensation
Bat Boy invades suburban household! With terrifyingly good results!
-David Anthony Fox

Hanging in the Balance
The negative and the positive find a happy medium in Isabel Bigelow’s work.
-Susan Hagen

Telling the Truth
-Lori Hill

Highway to Art
-A.D. Amorosi

Weathering the Storm
-Janet Anderson

Art of the Deal
-Lori Hill

May 29-June 4, 2003

artpicks

Twists of Fate

Anyone notice how ever since the folks from New Paradise Laboratories scooped up fellowships from Pew and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts they've made themselves scarce? Lest one think they took the money and ran, be advised this crew has been busy taking their show on the road, entertaining adventurous souls outside of our fair city with their unusual brand of wildly physical theater that's often humorous and always mysterious. The company has spoofed The Beatles, James Bond and Hugh Hefner in plays that are short on story and long on raucous behavior. And then there's Stupor, a 2000 Philadelphia Fringe Festival hit, loosely based on Francisco Goya's "Caprichos" etchings. The setting presents a group of people in an underground chamber acting out their sexual desires. Some of the contortions the performers get into are bizarre and freakish, but that's all part of the fun. Meanwhile, the music, which veers from Shostakovich to Sinatra, creates a loud muscular wall of sound. Intense and intentionally disturbing, you'll either dig it or squirm in your seat.

Stupor, Thu.-Sun., May 29-June 1, $20, Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St., 215-922-1122.

—Deni Kasrel