Ian Thal

Theater Review: Beached in the Living Room — “The Whale”

March 19, 2014
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Unlike much of what comes through the new play development pipeline, “The Whale” proffers a coherent narrative structure — the result is a well-crafted, somewhat edgy, domestic tragedy.

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Theater Interview: Swiss Playwright Jérôme Richer on Questioning “The Real Meaning of Words”

March 11, 2014
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“Everybody has the power to change the world because we’re a part of it. Even if it’s a really small change, it needs to be done. Writing is my pebble in this path.” – Jérôme Richer

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Fuse Theater Review: Liars & Believers’ “Interference” is “Guernica” for Hipsters

February 24, 2014
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The 64,000 question is, if the artists’ concerns gravitated to the Marathon Bombings, why did “Interference”‘s press releases and the program cite Picasso’s “Guernica”?

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Fuse Theater Interview: Israeli Playwright Motti Lerner on Catharsis, Tikkun, “Hard Love,” and Protesting a Play Without Reading the Script

February 19, 2014
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“The working relationship is based on the mutual feeling that all three of us have the same understanding of the purpose of the theatre – to present plays that create a cathartic experience for the spectator, which might open his eyes and his heart to a new consciousness.”

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Theater Interview: Stage Director Melia Bensussen on “Hard Love,” and “The Cherry Orchard”

February 18, 2014
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“There is a struggle in love in the best of circumstances, and when on top of the daily challenges there are divisions of culture or society or simply of invented categories – well, that does make it all the harder.”

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Theater Review: Take Two — Shakespeare Plays it Safe In “Henry VIII”

January 5, 2014
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If “Henry VIII” is dramatically lacking when compared to Shakespeare’s other histories, what makes this production worthwhile is the care Actors’ Shakespeare Project has brought to staging it.

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Theater Review: “The Golden Dragon” — A Satire With Bite about International Cuisine

December 22, 2013
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In his satire “The Golden Dragon,” Roland Schimmelpfennig holds his funhouse mirror up to “theater-people”: be they artists, audience, teachers, or students.

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Theater Review: Israeli Stage Brings “The Whore From Ohio” to Boston

November 16, 2013
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“The Whore From Ohio” is a provocative reminder that the same creature that is born to eat, drink, copulate, rot, and die is also a creature that dreams, tells stories, contemplates its own existence, and attends the theater.

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Theater Review: “Mameloschn” — Three Jewish Women Living Through the History of Germany

November 2, 2013
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Refreshingly, playwright Marianna Salzmann manages to be political without being didactic. Her characters live (rather than preach) through history, grappling with the transition from totalitarianism to democracy.

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Theater Review: Boston Theater Company’s “Romeo & Juliet” — A Romance Rife With Political Scandal

October 29, 2013
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BTC’s experiment, while not without its faults, proffers an admirable model of the sort of creative thinking that more companies should emulate when placing Shakespearean drama in a contemporary American context.

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