Bill Marx
It is important for audiences to go to Ten Blocks on the Camino Real with an open mind. Do not expect a play like The Glass Menagerie. Go to hear a youthful Tennessee Williams’s marvelously poetic voice soaring in an unbridled, expressionistic way.
It is a pleasure to report that — driven by the lively direction of Jamie Lloyd and the skills of an energetic cast — the National Theatre production proves that even after two centuries Oliver Goldsmith’s classic can still dole out plenty of comic delight.
Director Robert Lepage’s “The Andersen Project” is a masterful meditation on the agonizing process of artistic creation. Few scripts bring the mixed essence of opportunism and magic of show biz together so effortlessly.
Many countries, including our own, still have not officially acknowledged that this genocide actually occurred and who was responsible. New England, and specifically the greater Boston area, has one of the largest Armenian populations in the nation.
Both productions play around with chronology in order to show the dark side of history, to unmask convenient illusions of social or personal well-being by juxtaposing the myopia of the past with the payback of the future.
August Strindberg’s work unquestionably has not received the degree of popular acclaim in America that it deserves. It’s a bit mysterious, given that major U.S. playwrights — Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams — have openly acknowledged their debts to Strindberg.
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.
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year: Warming Up a Riff — How It Happened, and Why It Matters