Bill Marx
An exciting month, and that isn’t hyperbole. A couple of North American premieres: a futuristic opera from MIT’s Tod Machover and poet Robert Pinsky and a drama tweaking The New Testament from Howard Brenton. Toss in iconic director Peter Brook staging Beckett, F. Murray Abraham as Shylock, and Car Talk:The Musical and you are talking about taking out the smelling salts
The March Arts Fuse Preview Newsletter is out, bursting with news of the magazine’s impressive growth, future plans, and, of course, invitations to support (via tax deductible donations) this vital cultural enterprise by becoming a member.
Two recent productions of Shakespeare, one a heralded London staging at the Donmar Warehous heading to New York in April, the other an Actors’ Shakespeare Project presentation in Davis Square, provide examples of the strengths and weaknesses of tackling the Bard without frills.
It’s the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt, and there are concerts, conferences, and projects devoted to the pianist/composer going on all over the world this year. Lisztomania at New England Conservatory is one of a number of parties in the Boston area. The Boston Conservatory is also puttin’ on the Liszt. By Bill Marx In…
As long as the wizardly spell of dramatist Mark O’Rowe’s creative versification stays strong, Terminus holds you firmly in its slip-slimy grip. The nimble verse is rappy and snappy, a sort of slangy, obscene, sing-song rhyme (with some breath-taking vocal syncopation) that accentuates rather than undercuts the dark doings of the play, at least for…
April promises some provocative theater, from new plays at the Huntington Theatre Company and the Charlestown Working Theater to opportunities to hear a steamy script by Shakespeare contemporary Thomas Middleton and to take in the Elizabethan antics of BBC TV’s Blackadder on stage.
D.W. Jacobs’s presentation of the life and ideas of American visionary R. Buckminster Fuller invites you to make your own intellectual structure out of what you have seen—connect Fuller’s dots and you have an image that expands your mental horizons or at the very least ups your powers of analysis and recall. R. Buckminster Fuller:…
Critical Homage: Wilfrid Sheed — Farewell, Bittersweet Critic
Sensing the lonely importance of your review, you may lapse into muddleheaded kindness and a groping for a middle position that doesn’t exist. When this happens, no bribe has changed hands, no paper crown for Mr. Nice; you have sold out simply to your own weakness and the fundamental thinness of your vocation. — Wilfrid…
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