Walnut

The Walnut Street Theater Company is planning another lightheaded season on its main stage - two musicals, a mystery and two comedies. Nothing on the agenda even hints at the serious mission of the nonprofit- theater movement. Nothing remotely high-minded clouds the horizon. At the Walnut, theater is just another kind of television, except you have to come downtown for it. And even television occasionally ventures into social problems or psychological byways. For its downstairs audience, the Walnut pretends there is no such thing as tragedy, no dark side to life, only easy laughs and song-and-dance.

Legends, like old soldiers, never die, but they don't fade away either. Legends grow with the fleeting years, adding even more romance and mystique to the myths, facts to the contrary. This is about such a legend, a legend about an Indian reservation at Broad and Walnut, where, Philadelphia lore holds, a small plot of ground was set aside in colonial times for visiting Indians. I recently learned of the legend when Russ O'Neill, who is big in hardware in Cape May, was in town for an eye check and topped off the day with dinner at the Union League with Bob Mendte, the ad man and historian.

In reviving a musical of such indelible memory as A Little Night Music, the trick is not to make us forget the original but to discover a fresh approach that does justice to the memory. The Walnut Street Theater Company has tried. Its production, which opened last night, bears evidence of rethinking. A new concept is tried for this beautifully conceptual show, but the effort has been made, plainly, by people who are not in the same league as the creative talents who made such magic with the 1973 Broadway production.

It's a Grand Night for Singing at the Walnut Street Theatre's Independence Studio, and it no doubt will remain so for the run of this cozy Rodgers and Hammerstein revue. Winding through nearly 40 of the legendary team's tunes, this production is fueled by amorous intentions, driven by a quartet featuring three of Philly's favorite performers — Jennie Eisenhower, Fran Prisco, and Michael Philip O'Brien (he's also artistic director of the all-musical 11th Hour Theatre Company) — and Rebecca Robbins, a fine, flame-haired New York import and Walnut regular.

The Walnut Street Theater will no longer extend the courtesy of free review tickets to Philadelphia's City Paper and the Courier-Post because the theater's executive director, Bernard Havard, is displeased with negative reviews by the papers' critics. "If they want to trash the Walnut, they can pay to trash it," Havard said in a phone conversation Friday. The City Paper, a free weekly paper that serves primarily a Center City audience, heard about the Walnut's policy first from a publicist, who called managing editor David Warner Tuesday.

In my favorable review last season of the Walnut Street Theatre Studio Series production of Wrong for Each Other by Norm Foster, I noted that it was the first local production of a work by the very popular Canadian playwright and that I would like to see more. The Walnut has obliged with Here on the Flight Path, and I'm pleased to report that, even though the play's characters and relationships are not as satisfyingly drawn as they were in Wrong for Each Other, the Walnut's sharp and snappy production is even more humorous and breezily entertaining.

A month or so ago I wrote a piece about one of the lasting Philadelphia legends - the legend of the Indian reservation at Broad and Walnut, said to have been set aside in colonial times as a camping ground for visiting Indians. I had heard talk of an Indian reservation behind the old Horn & Hardart Building, at Broad and Walnut, once the site of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, principally from Bob Mendte, the ad man and historian. But when Bob Mendte researched the legend, he couldn't find anything to back it up. To the contrary, Bob Mendte was informed by Ward Childs, of the city archives, that the legend had been debunked in 1940 by M. P. McGeehan, an attorney commissioned by the Welcome Society to search the titles to properties at Broad and Walnut.

A mob of unruly teens last night once again wreaked havoc on Center City, assaulting and robbing random pedestrians. About 9:15 p.m., police began to receive 9-1-1 calls about a group of 20 to 40 teens assaulting people. Police found a man on the ground bleeding badly from the head at Walnut and Juniper streets. He was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Brian Mishico, who was working the door at Good Dog Bar and Restaurant on 15th Street near Locust, said a crowd of about 30 kids, some who looked as young as 12, split into two groups as they walked down 15th Street.

A week or so ago I was an eyewitness to a quasi-bank robbery at Broad and Walnut. I say a quasi-bank robbery because this one was no Willie Sutton masterpiece. This one was the act of a rank amateur, but he fared a lot better than Willie Sutton. He didn't get caught. It was more akin to a purse snatch, except it unfolded inside the Meridian Bank, on the northwest corner of Broad and Walnut. This tall, lean kid grabbed the payday envelope from the hands of a tall, lean and pretty lass as she left a teller's window.

A mob of teens injured at least two people and robbed others during a brief rampage Friday night in Center City, police said. About 9:15 p.m., police started receiving 911 calls of a group of 20 to 40 teens assaulting people. Police found a man on the ground bleeding badly from the head at Walnut and Juniper Streets. He was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. A street robbery was reported at 16th and Spruce Streets, police said. An iPhone was taken in that or another robbery.

THE RESTAURANTS and merchants of Rittenhouse Row are gathering again on Walnut Street this Saturday, and that means about 50,000 area residents and guests will be joining them for one of Center City's largest street fairs. The Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival will close Walnut from Broad to 19th streets (from noon until 5 p.m.) and feature food, fashion, entertainment and fun for children. It's big. It's crowded. It's fun. And this year there's a lot of new stuff. * Dunkin' Donuts will be giving out free iced coffee on the 1400 block of Walnut.

Welcome to the perfect lives of playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. He's the 43-year-old screenwriter of mainstream films including the current Oz The Great and Powerful and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole . In recent ventures he has worked with the best of both worlds - Frances McDormand on Broadway and Nicole Kidman in film. He lives in a sprawling Victorian house in Brooklyn with his wife Christine (beautiful) and two children (delightful). He would appear to have left his hardscrabble South Boston upbringing far behind.

David Lindsay-Abaire's Broadway hit play Good People , at Walnut Street Theatre, is about class. It is a sociological cliche that the American inclination is always to root for the underdog, which often means, as it does here, the unlucky, the uneducated, the unemployed. "Un" is the fact of life in "Southie," a thickly accented rough and tough neighborhood in Boston. The plot centers on Margaret (Julie Czarnecki) who, fired by her nice-guy boss (Jered McLenigan) from her job at the Dollar Store, faces eviction from her not-so-nice landlady (Sharon Alexander)

  Though a transplant from the Philadelphia suburbs, Nan Hunter Walnut was as much a creature of the New Jersey Pinelands as the deer drifting past her windows, the quail skittering through the brush, or the raccoons poking around her porch. She moved to 20 wild acres in Southampton Township, Burlington County, in 1970, as development bore down on the forest. She soon became one of the most persistent and persuasive voices among the Pine Barrens' first-generation citizen activists.

What kind of building do you get when you cross the über-cool, urban minimalism of the Apple stores with the indulgent, diet-busting excess of the Cheesecake Factory restaurants? Would you believe an architectural confection that is as visually sublime as it is intellectually rich? I'll admit that when I first heard that the popular suburban temple of caloric overload was touching down at 15th and Walnut Streets, the news didn't exactly stoke my appetite for good design. I imagined a generic box, done up in flat, lifeless stucco the color of American cheese, elbowing its way onto a corner that has been occupied for the better part of a century by three ordinary, but charming, commercial buildings.

Philadelphia's Zoning Board of Adjustment approved a developer's plans Wednesday to raze three buildings at the southeast corner of 15th and Walnut Streets and erect a glass, three-story building that will include the city's first Cheesecake Factory restaurant. Lawyer Carl Primavera said demolition should begin within 30 days. Construction could take 15 months, so the restaurant is expected to open by fall 2014. The restaurant is planned for the second floor, with an entrance on Walnut.

A section of Walnut Street in Center City was reopened to automobile traffic Monday afternoon after more than a week of repairs stemming from a water-main break, the Philadelphia Water Department announced. The 1600 block was reopened around 4 p.m., said spokesman John DiGiulio. About 4:30 p.m. Dec. 8, a 12-inch water main broke, disrupting service for about 20 businesses and residents. Service was restored the next morning, but the block remained closed to vehicles while repairs were made.

THE USUAL hustle and bustle returned to a busy block of Walnut Street on Monday after a water-main break forced businesses to close Saturday afternoon during the height of the holiday shopping season. Gaping holes remained Monday on Walnut Street between 16th and 17th, where a 12-inch water main broke at 4:30 p.m. Saturday. The street remained closed to vehicle traffic Monday, but shoppers came back despite ongoing construction. "We're used to the fact that things break all of the time," said Lisa Gray, shopping at the Apple store.

A busy block of Walnut Street in Center City could remain closed for days as crews work to clean up a broken water main. The block - between 16th and 17th Streets - is home to retailers such as BCBG, American Apparel, and the Apple Store that have been busy during the holiday shopping season. The stores are still open, but visitors will have to park on another block and may find traffic in the area even worse than usual. A Philadelphia Water Department spokeswoman said the 12-inch water main broke around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, cutting off water service to at least 20 businesses and residents.