Bill Marx
London 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…
Poetry’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…
As 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…
Perhaps 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…
And why [are] men bound beneath the heavens in a reptile form/ A worm of sixty winters creeping on the dusky ground? — Tiriel, William Blake Metropolis. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Lang and Thea Von Harbou. With Gustav Fröhlich, Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Erwin Biswanger, Theodor Loos, Fritz Rasp, and Heinrich…
By Bill Marx Summer has never been a time for theaters taking chances and the sluggish economy only encourages the hot weather drift to safety. But there’s some funky activity around the margins as well as encouraging news about Shakespeare & Company’s finances. Also, the Gloucester Stage Company has forsaken last year’s geriatric lineup and…
I have contributed a piece to The Public Humanist, a Mass Humanities blog posted on The Valley Advocate. It is a review of Martha C. Nussbaum’s new book (Not for Profit) , which argues that the arts and humanities are under threat because educational institutions, frightened by economic hard times, are moving toward a more…
. . . these plays in their various modes approach the theater as a means of knowing and not merely as a means of expression. — Richard Gilman, “The Drama is Coming Now.” Disfarmer conceived, directed, and designed by Dan Hurlin. Original music by Dan Moses Scheier. Text by Sally Oswald. Part of the Emerging…
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