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Theater Commentary: Boston Fall Theater Preview — Rinse and Repeat and Repeat and Repeat …

July 30, 2025
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My hunch is that not only theater critics but audiences will find the parade of tried and true tiresome.

Film Review: “My Mom Jayne” — A Daughter’s Search

July 28, 2025
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The humanity Mariska Hargitay brings to her quest makes this film about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, much more than a hagiographic profile of a movie star: it is a deeply personal story of reconciliation, love, and family.

Classical Album Reviews: Price & Dvorak Piano Quintets and Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues

July 27, 2025
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Pianist Yulianna Avdeeva’s recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Preludes & Fugues is a testament to that rarest of syntheses: a total identification of a musician with her repertoire. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the Takács Quartet release an album that, on so many levels, is simply a joy.

Concert Review: Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto Revived on the Esplanade

July 26, 2025
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Music by Amy Beach, Leonard Bernstein, Florence Price, John Harbison, and John Williams: this Boston Landmarks Orchestra concert had a little something for everyone.

Opera Album Review: A Near-Forgotten Czech Opera Via a Vivid 1959 Recording Available in Stereo!

July 26, 2025
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The world-renowned tenor Ivo Židek leads a spirited cast, and reminds us how involving opera can be when sung by native speakers.

Film Review: “Cloud” — Death by Capitalism

July 25, 2025
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s return to form might be explained by his looking backward: the director has chosen to grapple with the fact that many of the pessimistic prophecies of his earlier films have come true.

Classical Album Reviews: Jordi Savall Conducts Schumann and Bruckner and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s “The Planets & Earth”

July 25, 2025
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What business has a period orchestra got playing the music of Anton Bruckner? And why can’t conductors and orchestras just leave Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” alone?

Arts Remembrance: Fanny Howe — A Poet for the Spiritually Audacious

July 25, 2025
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Fanny Howe’s writing pursued, as she put it, “bewilderment as a poetics and a politics.”

Book Review: “In Their Names” — Mapping “A Hierarchy of Harm”

July 25, 2025
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“In Their Names” argues that the best way to help victims of crime is to create circumstances that will diminish the chance that they will become victims again.

Doc Talk: Flickers of Cautious Optimism at the Woods Hole Film Festival

July 24, 2025
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There’s bad news and good news at the Woods Hole Film Festival.

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