Bill Marx
Clocking in at around three hours, the show is a surreal grab bag filled with gags, skits, and sketches, the whole kooky kit and kaboodle tied up (too) neatly in a paranoid ribbon.
Stage coverage at the Boston Globe/NPR brain trust is generally dedicated to serving the rich and the trendy — the publicity gum drop for Finding Neverland is the latest evidence that the fix is in for the fat cats.
There are laughs in this production of Twelfth Night, but the romantic payoffs are scarce, perhaps because the sit-com rhythms tend to swamp all else (including some of the poetry).
A major regional theater is turning itself into a launching pad for Broadway/Las Vegas blockbusters, with Hollywood pouring cash and advice into the pipeline. .
Until now, the powerful economic reality spotlighted by The Arts Factor has generally been ignored or dismissed as anecdotal.
We have lots of plans to expand our readership and reach, to build new ways for our readers to read our online arts magazine. But we need some more resources and support to make this happen.
Critic Eric Bentley valued the theater of audacity above all, and that is just what is on glorious display in Trinity Rep’s marvelously nervy A Lie of the Mind.
Lydia R. Diamond’s Smart People is an amusing takedown of our “post-racial” world, and it is receiving a snappy, well-acted production via the Huntington Theatre Company.
We do it for the joy and communitas of making theater together much as we do for responding to the world around us through art.
Critical Commentary: But Can You Relate?
Fighting for the intellectual integrity and independence of arts reviews means demanding more analysis and less sales talk.
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