Month: July 2009
If you’re looking for a magical evening of summer theater, get out your map and drive to the Pioneer Valley village of Chester (pop 1100) where the Chester Theater is now celebrating its 20th season. Actors Charles Stransky, Terry Alexander, and Warren Jackson work out a deal in “Railroad Bill.” (Photo Credit: Rick Teller) Railroad…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Two more reviews posted on my World Books page at PRI’s The World.
Read MoreAlmost every visit to the WCMA has piqued my interest so strongly that I’ve often gone straight to the internet or library to read more about what I’ve seen. Edward Steichen’s 1914 photograph “Heavy Roses” by Helen Epstein The Williams College Museum of Art, set back from Williamstown’s main drag and almost indistinguishable from other…
Read MoreAnother extraordinary evening at Tanglewood. No bones to pick. Just appreciation and delight. At Tanglewood: James Levine conducts BSO and Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, Conductor; Hei-Kyung Hong, Soprano; Matthias Goerne, Baritone. (Photo Credit: Hilary Scott) by Helen Epstein It’s time that some cultural reporter with a budget explored what makes the Tanglewood Festival Chorus…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein The extraordinary Eleanor Norcross: educator, collector, painter and daughter of Fitchburg’s first mayor. Have you ever been to Fitchburg? It’s off the beaten path and although I’d heard of its state college, and seen the signs — about five miles north of Route 2 — I’d never ventured into the once-properous, now…
Read More“Wherefore and hence? Therefore and ergo!” Did ever an American musical have more intellectual credentials than “Candide”? Candide. Music by Leonard Bernstein. Book adapted from Voltaire by Hugh Wheeler. Lyrics by Richard Wilbur. Other lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and John LaTouche. Directed by Ralph Petillo with the Unicorn Company at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, through…
Read MoreAn elegant and sleek meditation on the reverberations of trauma adapted for the stage from a collection of stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. After the Quake, based on the stories “Honey Pie” and Super-frog Saves Tokyo” by Haruki Murakami, which were translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin. Adapted for the stage by Frank…
Read MoreA true embarrassment of riches in the Berkshires this summer, with almost every cultural institution in the county scheduling round-the-clock events and package deals designed to attract even the least culturally interested among us. By Helen Epstein James Levine conducts pianist Leon Fleischer and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood (Photo Credit: Hilary Scott) Last…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx You want a racy, nineteenth-century epic about sex, sin, drugs, and prostitution set in China? Here it is. Two more pieces on international fiction for World Books, the feature I edit for PRI’s The World.
Read MoreBy Bill Marx If the age turns away from the theater, in which it is no longer interested, that is because the theater has ceased to represent it. It no longer hopes to be provided by the theater with myths on which it can sustain itself. –- Antonin Artaud
Read More
Jazz Perspective: Zev Feldman – A Sherlock of a Producer with an Impressive Portfolio