Bill Marx
The year kicks off with few unusual productions — companies are depending on proven New York hits, such as the Yasmina Reza duo, the Tony award-approved “Red,” and “Green Eyes,” though the Tennessee Williams curio tantalizes.
The documentary “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” is pleasing to watch, but there are a number of ways of respecting as well as loving great artists, the most important being coming up with the chutzpah necessary to ask the tough questions that generate illuminating, inspiring, or interesting answers.
The essential task of the critic is not to like or dislike the arts or to push bromides, such as to celebrate the “power of reading.” Despite some troublesome modifications, Lionel Trilling carries on the mission of E.A. Poe and Henry James: he articulates the value of the serious act of judgment in a culture hostile to it.
As the year nears its end, time is running out to write at length about some of the new books that gave me pleasure. Thus this quick list of favorites. As usual, my taste runs to prose that’s off-the-beaten-path.
Ben Jonson is one of the great unknown geniuses of the English theater and of western literature. Ian Donaldson’s new biography of the playwright/poet successfully makes the case that he deserves to be better known.
For all of his claims to being a subversive termite, Jonathan Lethem the puffy white elephant appears more often in this collection, trudging down a much safer, much happier road — leave the negativity to the snotty aristocrats.
As the Occupy and Tea Party movements attest, this is a time in America of social action and political upheaval -– not to the degree that we see in “Battleship Potemkin,” but significant nonetheless –- and this classic silent film has resonance today in that regard.
Playwright John Hodge chooses to ignore the complexity of the dissident writer’s experience — expedience for the sake of protecting something of value from destruction, an author fighting his inner demons to live long enough to finish what he believes to be a work of art that is also an act of political defiance.
Along with its puppets and spectacle, “The Snow Queen” gives the audience a chance to become part of the action. Kids of all ages are invited to put down their electronic toys and enter a fanciful — rather than frenzied — theatrical world.
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