APRIL 18, 2018 • PHIlyFREEPRESS.com • UcREVIEW.com • 9


Inis Nua Teatre Company presents American Premiere of Our Few and Evil Days


total of 15 performances through Sunday, May 13, 2018. All shows are at the Proscenium Theatre at the Drake, 302 South Hicks Street. South Hicks Street is right next to The Drake apartment building at 1512 Spruce Street.


The perfect family photo is about to slip out of the frame as daughter Adele (Amy Frear) brings home a new beau to meet her parents, Margaret (Nancy Boykin) and Michael (Andrew Criss), in Inis Nua Theatre Company’s American Premiere of Our Few and Evil Days by Mark O’Rowe, playing through May 13, 2018, at The Pro- scenium Theater at The Drake. Photo: Plate 3 Photography, Kathryn Raines.


RAM IN THE THICKET Sir Leonard Woolley dubbed this statuette the “ram caught in a thicket” as an allusion to the biblical story of Abraham sacrificing a ram. It actually depicts a markhor goat eating the leaves of a tree. One of two such objects excavated from The Great Death Pit at Ur, the other is housed at the British Museum. Little of the original Ram survived when Woolley excavated it, which he did by pouring wax on it and using waxed muslin strips to stabilize it. In Woolley’s original reconstruction of the Ram, he miscalculated the height of the animal and placed the tree too deeply into the base, causing the Ram’s legs to dangle above the tree’s branches.


The Ram underwent some additional conservation around 1944. Although no


records exist, comparing the photos of Woolley’s original reconstruction with later ones reveals several differences; most notably that some of the ram’s fleece had been removed. When the Ram was slated to travel as part of the “Treasures of the Royal Tombs of Ur” exhibition in the late 1990s, it underwent further conservation to strengthen it for travel and to match it more closely with the proportions seen in its excavation photo. The conservation in 1997 managed to lower the Ram’s legs to the tree branches and replicate what was visible in the excavation photo. Photo: Bob Christian


MIDDLE EAST continued from page 1


animals from the Middle East and projects where people can make their own cylinder seals and clay imprints and learn Arabic calligraphy.


Live performances will


feature classical and con- temporary Arab music, choral performances and drum workshops. Teas, foods and spices will be available, and curators, graduate students and researchers will be on hand to discuss the gallery and the objects in it. Meanwhile, the items on display are presented “in context,” according to Holly Pittman, a curator at the museum. Viewed as a whole, the gallery shows how ancient peo- ple changed their way of life as they formed the


first cities and permanent civilizations.


And, continued Pitt- man, technology, cultures and societies may have changed drastically over the centuries. But, many of the challenges these ancient civilizations faced are the same ones as the ones we address today. “We are trying to tell the story of humanity,” said Pittman. “This story reso- nates today because it is our story.”


And, in many ways, it’s also the story of the museum itself. In one corner of the gallery, for instance, are items from the Nippur Dig. The dig was led by the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania archeology department in the late 1800s. It was the first Penn-led archeo- logical expedition. The museum itself was created


nis Nua will finish 2018 on a high note with the suspense- ful and eerie Our Few and Evil Days by Mark O’Rowe. When does love become obsession? Can obsession ever be love? Find out in this “unnerv- ing, arresting and shape- shifting play” (The Irish Times).


I


Our Few and Evil Days opens Friday, April 27, at 8:00pm with previews on Wednesday, April 25, and Thursday, April 26, at 7:00pm. It runs for a


in large part to house the more than 50,000 items uncovered during the expedition. This area of the gallery


features pottery ranging from 2000 B.C. to 225 A.D. In keeping with the gal- lery’s narrative approach to presenting items, the objects are displayed in chronological order along- side a diagram showing how deep below the sur- face they were found. Projects like the Nip- pur Dig gave way to large-scale archaeological projects in the early 20th century led by Penn and other institutions around the world. In particular, a joint expedition led by the university and the British Museum unearthed more than 1,200 objects. “The world-renowned artifacts unearthed in the 20s and 30s really aston- ished the world,” said Pittman. “They produced trea-


sures that really forever changed our understand- ing of the society of Meso- potamian culture.” For information, visit www.penn.museum.


Adele is a young woman with a good, open relation- ship with her parents (or so she thinks). She takes Dennis, her boyfriend of one month, to meet them for dinner, but Dennis has ulterior motives of his own, and her family is not the cookie-cutter, tra- ditional picture of a fam- ily she pretends. What begins as a simple dinner becomes something more like a thriller, until even- tually the story wends its way to a very dark and disturbing place. Secrets are revealed, and the past comes unburied, as the evil Adele’s parents try to hide moves jarringly to the surface.


At stake are the values we hold dear of family and love: What kinds of love can we accept? How do the loves we think we understand, like love


BULLHEADED can be a compliment.


between family mem- bers, contain inner dark complexities we’d rather ignore? Is there a dif- ference between loving someone and wanting to possess them? What hap- pens when love turns to violence?


When the play pre-


miered at the historic Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2014, Mark O’Rowe was already an established and celebrated playwright for his works Terminus and Howie the Rookie. But Our Few and Evil Days was his first play since


2007, and it surprised audiences familiar with his more fantastical pre- vious works with a real- istic set and characters. His dialogue also shifted from monologues to a fine- tuned, sparse and overlap- ping naturalism, which even O’Rowe admitted many critics would see as “a graduation” (The Irish Times).


Inis Nua Artistic Direc-


tor Tom Reing will direct, marking the second time he and Inis Nua have tack- led an O’Rowe play, the


continued on page 16


NEW


MIDDLE EAST GALLERIES


Opening Weekend: April 21 & 22


3260 South Street, Phila. | www.penn.museum


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