Bill Marx

Theater Review: “Pippin” – A Circus of Arrested Development

January 6, 2013
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Nervous mainstream audiences could breathe easy, the messy cultural ruckus of the ’60s was over: it was ok to find yourself in the suburbs.

Theater Review: An Intimate View of “Our Town”

December 17, 2012
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Bare bones, determinedly unhokey, and intimate, director David Cromer’s matter-of-fact approach does away with the irritatingly self-conscious fussiness that afflicts so many productions.

Theater Review: “Memphis” Doesn’t Sing the Blues

December 14, 2012
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In Memphis, the risqué exhilaration of early rhythm and blues is airbrushed away, to the point that the show appears to argue that from its inception black music sold out to mainstream tastes.

Theater Review: A Schizoid “Chinglish”

December 9, 2012
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Larry Coen directs “Chinglish”’s awkwardly written romance with a savory earnestness, but he can’t put the pieces of the fragmented script (you laugh/you cry) together.

Book Interview: Serbian Writer David Albahari — Letting Loose the Leeches

November 14, 2012
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By Bill Marx Arts Fuse: Tell me how Leeches came about, given how different it is from your other books, at least those in translation. David Albahari: It is different from other books of mine. But then, there were several things that made me, in the end, write the book. First of all, I wanted…

Theater Review: Two Theatrical War Horses Come To Town

October 17, 2012
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Two warhorses of the theater come to town: Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” trots along in the Globe Theatre touring production, while “War Horse” shows off the equine puppet body beautiful.

Theater Review: Two Plays About Desperate People, Members of the 47%

September 29, 2012
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The questions at stake are good ones and not asked very often in contemporary plays: why do some win and others lose in America? And what are the responsibilities of the haves and the have-nots?

Book Interview: Novelist and Short-Story Writer Nathan Englander Is Happy to Go Back to Basics

September 25, 2012
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Nathan Englander’s first play, “The Twenty-Seventh Man,” opens at the Public Theater in New York tonight. Fuse Editor Bill Marx spoke to the acclaimed, best-selling writer about the script and the production when Englander visited Wellesley College recently.

Theater Review: “Marie Antoinette” — Let Them Eat Images

September 12, 2012
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In its program, the A.R.T. links today’s 1% with the French aristocracy, a stab at relevance that does both the snobby thugs of the French Revolution and the super well-off of today a disservice. Say what you will about the 1%, but they aren’t stupid.

Book Commentary/Review: Imagine There Are No Negative Reviews — It’s Not So Easy If You Try

September 10, 2012
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Who has taken criticism out of the hands of the “true critics”? Is someone making me read rancid Amazon reader reviews? Where do we look for the “true critics”?

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