Bill Marx
Dramatist Jason Grote spins a postmodern, political variation on Scheherazade in his play 1001, and while it skimps on the imaginative playfulness of other versions, its time-tripping allusiveness has a scruffy intellectual charm.
In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that American culture is becoming dumber and dumber—plays like Matt & Ben suggest that we have entered the afterlife. Matt & Ben by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers. Directed by M. Bevin O’Gara. At the Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA, through August…
Two inviting collections of short short stories in translation — Catalan writer Quim Monzó sees fiction as an exhilarating if ingenious prison, Israeli writer Alex Epstein pens dreamy micro-yarns that free the imagination.
The likable Commonwealth Shakespeare Company staging leans very heavily on the comedy in ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, minimizing the Bard’s melancholic undertow.
The wily Enrique Vila-Matas remains wary but respectful of Ernest Hemingway and asserts his independence by going on his own self-consciously vaudevillian way—Juan Gabriel Vásquez is too subservient to elude the shadow of Joseph Conrad.
At the very least, showing the triumph of reality over inane illusions of perfection doesn’t lead to particularly complex drama; it is sort of like picking off myopic dreamers in a barrel.
French writer Jacques Jouet is a critic, playwright, novelist, and short story writer. His novella “Upstaged” is an ingenious comedy about theatrical transformation that runs with the notion that when art is live anything might go, that perhaps Pirandello’s six characters in search of an author didn’t go far enough and come up with a better play amongst themselves.
Your reaction to PigPen Theatre Company’s “The Mountain Song” will depend on how much whimsical Americana you can stomach
Book Commentary: A Thousand Words for Paul West
Paul West’s goal is to expand consciousness through the uninhibited play of the imagination, to revel in the glory of words, not to preach lessons in civic do-gooding. And that anarchistic intensity has gotten him into trouble with those who mistakenly believe that exploring the mind of evil indicates approval.
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