Philadelphia Theatre Company underwent a tumultuous year with pressures from the press and patrons due to the fact that the season featured no playwrights of color. While this programming misstep is not be ignored, the season strives toward a level of intimacy with its audience that is deftly achieved in Everything is Wonderful, as it was with 2019's A Small Fire and hopefully would have been in their spring 2020 production of Sarah Delappe's The Wolves, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything is Wonderful explores a local phenomenon and culture, bridging the gap between Amish Pennsylvania and urban Philadelphia.
Everything is Wonderful, by up and coming playwright Chelsea Mercantel, presents an intimate and pastoral meditation on faith and forgiveness, dreamily directed by Noah Himmelstein. The narrative concerns a grieving Amish family headed by the amiable but mournfully tired patriarch, Jacob (William Zielinski), stoic mother,...
