Books
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…
If you want to know what’s for dinner in the Middle East or Africa, look no further than this marvelous book. Here a Persian dish of eggplant with saffron and yogurt, there a Ghanaian soup of chicken and ground nuts scooped up with a dumpling called fufu, there a Lebanese stuffed grape leaf from Arnold…
Papercut’s mission is to collect, catalog, and make available to the public the widest possible collection of contemporary ‘zines. By Dylan Rose I’m new at this reporting bit and, in an early conversation with my editor about the particular goals and restrictions of the genre, I blundered: I happened to refer to Arts Fuse as…
By Helen Epstein After the Revolution by Amy Herzog. Directed by Carolyn Cantor. Staged by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, MA, July 21 through August 1 (closed). Long before the invention of psychotherapy, long before writer William Faulkner wrote “The past is never dead. It is not even past,” the Greeks mined family history for…
By 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…
By Roberta Silman Although all the statistical material about the demography of Wordfest has yet to be compiled, the word is out that this newest event at The Mount was an amazing success. About 500 people attended events at the grounds of The Mount and nearby at Seven Hills (the fundraising dinner) over the weekend…
This farcical stage version of the classic Sherlock Holmes novel teems with physical humor and visual gags while retaining the basic storyline of the complex original version. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Steven Canny and John Nicholson. Directed by Thomas Derrah. Presented by Central Square Theater, at Central Square Theater, Cambridge, MA, through August…
Charm’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…
Last Train to Nibroc by Arlene Hutton. Staged by the Chester Theater Company, Chester, MA, through July 25. Reviewed By Helen Epstein I drove back to Chester Theater Company(CTC) last night expecting another engrossing evening and got it. I love making the trip to the village (pop. 1000) and the makeshift theater in its small…
With the establishment of Wordfest, a celebration of writing in America with talks, interviews, panels, and book signings, The Mount seems to be coming into its own in ways that make it more alive than ever before. By Roberta Silman When we first built our home in the Berkshires in the early 70s, I remember…

Recent Comments