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Given the timidity of so many American theater companies, who seem to reserve their courage for implementing new marketing schemes, reminders of what creative risk is all about serve a useful purpose. Some theater artists around the world face jail when they perform on stage. On August 22, special forces of the Belorussian police raided…
Read MoreAfter four movie versions of Alexandre Dumas’s nineteenth-century novel, does it make any sense to make a musical out of The Three Musketeers? The film versions efficiently present the book’s mix of comic book mayhem and romance and are available on DVD and video. By Bill Marx I can’t think of any successful swashbuckling musicals,…
Read MoreSome show biz flair-ups are dead debacles walking. Producers sparked a flap in Chicago recently by tossing accusations of foul play at a critic whom they claimed wrote about shows she didn’t have permission to review.
Read MoreThree weeks ago I attended Friday evening services at the main synagogue of Isfahan. I cannot remember the last time that I went to a kabbalat Shabbat service, but I cannot have gone much more often than once a decade for the past 40 years. By Gary Schwartz Isfahan, gate of synagogue on Felestin Square…
Read MoreBloggers predicted that CEO/President Josiah Spaulding Jr.’s over-the-top 1.265 million dollar retention bonus would spark inquiries into how much money goes where at the Citi Performing Arts Center (CPAC). It does not seem too much to ask, given that the state and other funders are throwing much moolah at a troubled nonprofit arts institution whose…
Read MoreCleaning up my desk, I came across the following mysterious note, written on a sheet torn out of a small spiral notebook: “Now I see what you mean with the question you had about the stones outside who is different on every sides. I have asked but no one could give some answer. Maybe they…
Read MoreThe same publicity firm, Weber Shandwick, that launched the “got milk?” campaign is doing damage control for Citi Performing Arts Center and its beleaguered Chairman and CEO Josiah Spaulding, Jr. Perhaps a recent Boston Globe editorial calling for Spaulding to be replaced was the last straw. WS has sent out an image-repair “open letter” to…
Read MoreWhen should a play be labeled dated and consigned to the junk heap of time? No playwright is safe from the charge of being called passé: one reviewer’s breath of fresh air from the past is another’s antiquated wheeze.
Read MoreA certain number of people (not huge) want to read critics who take the arts seriously, who do more than tell readers what is worth spending their money on.
Read MoreA few years ago, an adolescent boy with whom I liked to discuss books told me about a novel he had read called, The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. The book, I found, was absorbing, a real page-turner.j It was about a group of Travelers, endowed with the ability to move among a set of…
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