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Three 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…
Read MoreThe Hub Review features a perceptively waspish consideration of Pauline Kael’s unhealthy influence on film reviewers, taking scathing aim at a couple of her jittery heirs, A.O. Scott of the NYTimes and Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. I particularly like Tom Garvey’s concluding paragraph: But if the Paulettes have all repudiated their maker, where’s her baleful…
Read MoreThe caricature of the theater critic as spoilsport still pops up, pushed by rescuers of the “injured” who enjoy delivering self-congratulatory whippings. No naysayers are allowed –- it hurts business. For once, how about looking at the ways that yeasayers do a disservice to theater and the craft of criticism? By Bill Marx Are theater…
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Arts Criticism Commentary: In Defense of Negative Book Reviews
“Criticism will always have the force of the child in the story about the emperor’s new clothes, because there will always be naked emperors who everybody says are wearing today’s Crown Jewels.” — Eric Bentley
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