A Night in Philly - Penn Singers & Late Night Dumplings

Mar 26

Last Friday I was invited to attend a performance of Iolanthe at the Annerberg Center for the Performing Arts. Iolanthe is a comic opera written and composed by Gilbert & Sullivan. This production was fun in particular because it was being produced by Penn Singers, one of the student performance groups at the University of Pennsylvania.

Iolanthe, Penn Singers, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The performance itself was 2 hours long with a 15 minute intermission and I have to say the production was as charming and wonderful as I thought it was going to be. Iolentha is set in Fairy Land and begins with the return of the title character- Iolentha from exile. Twenty-five years ago Iolanthe broke the Fairy Law by falling in love and marrying a human. Instead of death, the Fairy Queen banished Iolanthe as long as she leaves her husband and promised to never contact him in the future. When Iolnathe returns to Fairy Land, she brought along her son who is now 25 years of age and plans on proposing to a girl beyond his class status named Phyllis. The Chancellor however plans on marrying Phyllis off to one of the members of Parliament. The fairies got involved and madness ensued.

The opera reminds me a lot of A Midsummer Night's Dream with similar humor, misunderstanding and misdirect. Since the cast and orchestra were quite small, I thought that Penn Singers did an outstanding job in filling up the space. In a cast of there were so many stand out characters but for me Lauren Nagy as Phyllis and Michael Freeman as Private Lewis stole the show. Even though the Iolentha is the main female "lead", I thought that Nagy's performance as Phyllis was solid all the way through. She was also the one that I felt as a performer gave the most heart and was able to hit her high notes effortlessly. Private Lewis was only in Act 2 (he had a solo at the top of Act 2) but boy, that man stole thew show. His comedic timing was brilliant even thought he was a background for most of Act 2, he was still present and involved).

After the show, we were hungry so we ended up at David's Mai Lai Wah in Chinatown. David is a well know late night eatery in Philly (open till 4 am). It won a bunch of awards and just a really solid place to eat. The restaurant is really simple, nothing fancy here just really good Cantonese style Chinese food. David's is popular for their Hong Kong style wonton soup but since I am allergic to shrimp I decided to get their steamed pork dumpling with ginger & scallion oil, hot and sour soup and Beef Chow Fun. David's Mai Lai Wah is located at the corner of 10th and Race St.