Bill Marx
Shakespeare’s tragic characters, on the other hand, suffer from the Christian sin of pride: knowing you aren’t God, but trying to become Him—a sin of which any of us is capable. — W. H. Auden on Othello in Lectures on Shakespeare Othello by William Shakespeare. Directed by Steven Maler. Staged by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx In my other life, as editor of World Books for The World, BBC/PRI’s national radio program dedicated to international news, I write and edit book reviews as well commentaries and interviews. I also host a monthly podcast dedicated to global literature, which is available through ITunes. The most recent pieces posted on…
Read MoreCharm’d magic casements, opening on the Foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. — To a Nightingale, John Keats, 1819 GRIMM: The Brothers’ Tales Remixed & Re-imagined . . . Written by Gregory Maguire, Kristen Greenidge, Melinda Lopez, Marcus Gardley, Lydia R. Diamond, John Kuntz, and John ADEkoje. Directed by Summer L. Williams and…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx In English, Polish novelist, playwright, short story writer, and brazen, metaphysical gadfly Witold Gombrowicz remains under appreciated, a modernist who was never pulled into the highbrow bandwagon. Part of that neglect is thanks to bad translations that, in some cases, bowdlerized the Polish text or were translated from a French version of…
Read MoreLondon Assurance by Dion Boucicault. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. The National Theatre production presented by NTLive at the Coolidge Corner Cinema, Boston, MA, July 14. A bonus simulcast has been added to the NTLive lineup; on July 14th Coolidge Corner Cinema will, once again, simulcast Dion Boucicault’s comedy London Assurance starring Simon Russell Beale and…
Read MorePoetry’s secret, it seems to me, consists of two ingredients: a love of this world and a curiosity about metaphysics. – Durs Grünbein, The Bars of Atlantis I resist the idea that books for the beach have to go down as easy as piña coladas. My eccentric and eclectic list of fiction and non-fiction in…
Read MoreAs a theatrical event, The American Stage anthology would have to be classified as a rousing vaudeville show: there are literary routines for all brows—high, middle, and low. The American Stage: Writings on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner, edited by Laurence Senelick, Library of America, 867 pages, $40. By Bill Marx “There is…
Read MorePerhaps the inspirational cliches, by-the-numbers storyline, and fan cartoon hijinks are what’s expected in a baseball musical. Johnny Baseball, Music by Robert Reale, Lyrics by Willie Reale, Book by Richard Dresser. Story by Dresser and Reale. Directed by Diane Paulus. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, MA, through July…
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