Bill Marx
In “Delusion,” veteran performance artist Laurie Anderson generates a muted melancholy, sometimes poetic, sometimes poignant, that makes the piece a consistently compelling if not always successful addition to an ambitious body of work.
Read MoreIn this delightful production of “Candide,” director Mary Zimmerman imaginatively reworks and mischievously augments the musical. Her deliciously blowzy approach embraces, with charming lyrical fervor, the sheer preposterousness of Voltaire’s sardonic fable.
Read MoreThe brilliance of Alberto Moravia’s cool diagnostic vision — sleek, clear, cruel, and existential no matter how emotional the conflict — puts us off. His male protagonists often self-consciously analyze their puerility to the point of comic masochism.
Read MoreWhat drives serious writing about film? “When Movies Mattered” suggests an answer: it helps for a critic to take a side, not as consumer advocate, hipster crank, or box office predictor, but as a passionate advocate for standards, often taking on the role of separating overpraised films from the unfairly neglected.
Read MoreThe American Repertory Theater’s juggling/removal of the operatic elements in “Porgy and Bess” is clumsy, but the goal is to create a compelling entertainment for contemporary audiences, smoothing out the melodramatic story’s edges and cutting its length.
Read More9/11 has inspired a number of movies and TV documentaries, but theater works about the event are rare. What are dramatists and theater companies afraid of?
Read MoreThought to be lost, the only existing print of NATHAN THE WISE was discovered in Moscow in 1996. The Coolidge Corner Theater is screening a tinted and beautifully restored version of the film, with an original score by Aaron Trant performed live by the After Quartet.
Read MoreI have written another commentary for the Mass Humanities blog, The Public Humanist. It is a reaction, admiring but skeptical, to John Armstrong’s recent polemic IN SEARCH OF CIVILIZATION: REMAKING A TARNISHED IDEA.
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