Coming Attractions
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, television, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
The Arts Fuse Currents
Music
The Rhode Island Philharmonic will perform the world premiere of a new work shaped by a New Year’s Eve encounter with Ukrainian refugees—and the consoling force of “Amazing Grace.”
Visual Arts
The Cape Ann Museum’s revelatory exhibition shows how Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko turned the Gloucester shore into a language of abstraction.
Film
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return to the Owens family in a handsome, fan-friendly follow-up whose appealing cast and witchy atmosphere cannot overcome a disjointed, derivative script.
Books
In this monumental, politically charged epic, the author turns Cold War imperialism, government secrecy, and the limits of human understanding into a haunting story of weaponized ghosts.
Poetry at The Arts Fuse
This week’s poem: Zachary Bos’s “Sonnet Nearly Forty-Five”
Dance
Animated calligraphy, dancers in half-shadow, and two industrial robots create an eerie, elegant theater of marks, motions, and metallic afterimages at Jacob’s Pillow.
Theater
Television
HBO’s docuseries on the illegal reptile trade is less wild than its predecessors, but its sorrowful, criminal undertow makes it unsettling in a different way.
Podcasts
Guest host Jessica Khan talks to DJ and broadcaster Kwame Daniels about his immersive live musical performance, “North Star.”
Short Fuses
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Spotlight
This book is the best travelogue you’ll ever read about a terrible place you’ll never want to visit but want to experience vicariously.
About the Arts Fuse
The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication's over 70 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. Support arts coverage that believes that culture matters.
Performing Arts Feature: Huzzah! Renaissance Faires as Immersive Theater
King Richard’s Faire, which is New England’s largest and oldest medieval-themed entertainment venue, serves as an intriguing case study of countercultural expression and commercialized theatrical spectacle.