In Philly-area theater this week, a play about a prosthetic leg with a mind of its own

What a renegade Senator Sam Wannamead’s new prosthetic leg is! The Miraculous Knee-to-Toe XR-3000 with 3D Helix seems to have a mind of its own — playing footsie with people it likes and kicking at those it does not. With a prosthetic leg as a lead character in A Leg Up, Bristol Riverside Theatre hired a clowning expert and fight choreographer to help the cast pull off all the required stunts. The old-school farce with lots of LGBTQ+ twists comes to the stage from playwright Ken Kaissar, Bristol’s coproducing director, and is directed by his wife, Amy Kaissar, the other Bristol coproducing director.

To find two actors who use prosthetic legs, Ken Kaissar sought out casting agencies that specialize in finding roles for actors with disabilities. Equity actor Joe Hogan from California and John Siciliano, an Equity actor from Pittsburgh who also works as a prosthetic leg model, were both cast as the senator.

Writing a farce poses challenges for playwrights, Kaissar said, since each character is on its own comic trajectory but must interact and eventually, collide, with the rest of the characters.

“It’s very technical and mathematical. You have X amount of characters and they are all in different parts of the stage,” said Kaissar. To keep track, he drew stick figures of the characters, using arrows to chart their movements around a diagram of the play’s two-story set.

“You have to map it out so it’s believable and so you are creating the most funny opportunities for them to crash into each other,” he said.

(Sept. 20-Oct. 9, Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, 215-785-0100 or brtstage.org)

After Underground Railroad Game, Philadelphia-based Lightning Rod Special’s pointed history on race, sex, and power, made its regional premiere at the 2015 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, it went on to sell out off-Broadway in New York and tour around the world. After one performance though, students at a college postproduction talk-back session questioned Lightning Rod cofounder Scott R. Sheppard and his crew about the satire that is inherent to the show.

“It was a really interesting and complex moment,” Sheppard recalled. “The students were upset about certain elements of that show, wondering at what cost do you put complicated and painful images on stage… even if the intent is to show the complexity of a certain issue.”

That incident gave rise to Speech, this year’s Fringe offering from Lightning Rod Special. The idea is to explore how people adjust to a time of hyper-visibility and “this new climate of language and the internet and expectations of what ought to be said,” Sheppard said.

The cast of seven explores speech in various venues – a wedding, a funeral, a college theater production, and a speech and debate conference — putting a spotlight on what Sheppard calls the “slippage toward innocence.” What he means is the way people try to position themselves as innocent and virtuous, sometimes going to such length to do so that what happens, he said, “is both funny and really weird and interesting, and sad and isolating.”

Speech, he said, “sends us into an extraordinary place of comedy and tension around what people are and aren’t able to say and the elaborate dance that people do to avoid saying anything that might get them in trouble.”

(Sept. 27-Oct. 1, Lightning Rod Special, Proscenium Theatre at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila. 215-413-1318 or fringearts.org)

Last chance to catch the magic and mystery of The Poison Garden, a roving and immersive drama with a troupe of actors, circus artists, and aerialists on the grounds and in the halls of Glen Foerd, a public park on the banks of the Delaware River. It’s designed and performed by Alterra Productions as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Cash bar.

(Through Sept. 21, Glen Foerd, 5001 Grant Ave., Phila. 215-632-5330 or glenfoerd.org or fringearts.com)

In Tennessee Williams’ The Two-Character Play (Out Cry), a brother and sister deserted by their theater troupe, act on their own, performing a Southern Gothic play. As the siblings grow into their roles, they find it increasingly difficult to separate themselves from their characters. From the Ideopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, directed by the company and Peg Mecham, starring John Zak and Tina Ann Brock. It’s presented as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

(Through Sept. 25 at the Bluver Theatre at The Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila., Ideopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org or fringearts.com, 215-413-1318)

Gabriella Enriquez fell in love with the stage while ushering in a Santa Fe theater. And she fell in love with Argentina while working there as a barista and server. Now she has the lead role in Evita, heading a Latinx cast at the Bucks County Playhouse. A little behind the scenes info – she auditioned for a smaller part, but the producers fell in love with her and made her the lead.

(Sept. 23-Oct. 30, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, 215-862-2121 or bcptheater.org)

Sarah Rasmussen directs Sarah DeLappe’s drama, The Wolves, at McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton University. The pressure is on for the nine young women from a competitive high school soccer team. As the national championship nears, the young women learn lessons about life – and themselves.

(Through Oct. 16, McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton, 609-258-2787 or mccarter.org)

Souderton’s Montgomery Theater presents The Understudy by Theresa Rebeck. It’s always fun to watch a backstage play about the vagaries of showbiz.

(Through Oct. 2, Montgomery Theater, 124 N. Main St., Souderton. 215-723-9984 or montgomerytheater.org)

Check with individual venues for COVID protocols.