Review

Theater Review – “Heathers” Is Back from the Dead and Still a Mess

July 18, 2025
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The Off Broadway revival demonstrates how 10 years of dedicated work can make a mediocre musical even worse.

Book Review: “Mark Twain” — The Life of a Champion of Liberating Irreverence

July 18, 2025
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At its best, Mark Twain emerges in this biography as much a live wire as ever: brash, outspoken, and overflowing with exasperating contradictions.

Television Review: “Too Much” — Over the Line

July 17, 2025
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“Too Much”‘s swings from comedy to tragedy generate considerable whiplash.

Film Review: “To a Land Unknown” — The Palestinian Refugee Blues

July 16, 2025
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No one argues about Israel or Hamas, or even mentions the words. All the same, caring this much about Palestinians’ lives is inherently political.

Theater Review: “The Garbologists” — What a Fine Mess We Are In

July 15, 2025
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It is entertaining, but Lindsay Joelle’s script supplies only a tiny, sometimes contrived glimpse at a profession that deserves to be treated with more nuance and understanding.

Television Review: “Back to the Frontier” — Living La Vida Antiqua

July 14, 2025
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Watching a historic reality show now takes on a different meaning than it did 20 years ago. Today, our reliance on technology borders on nightmare Ray Bradbury territory, so modern-day folks trying to survive on the frontier looks like an impossibility.

Book Review: “The Hard Work of Hope: A Memoir” — A Guide to Blue Collar Community Organizing

July 14, 2025
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On the hard wooden benches of a jail in Lowell, dialoguing with his street-fighting antagonists, we sense the emergence of organizer Michael Ansara’s strategy for working-class political action.

Dance Commentary: The Phoenix Rises — A Reimagined Doris Duke Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow

July 13, 2025
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Jacob’s Pillow’s new Doris Duke Theatre is a complete triumph. It is, in artistic director Pamela Tatge’s words, “nothing like we had in mind but exactly what we thought.”

Classical Album Review: The Korngold Symphony — The Great American Symphony?

July 12, 2025
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Could it be that Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp is the big kahuna of our symphonic music?

Doc Talk: MAGA Mirrored in “Apocalypse in the Tropics”

July 11, 2025
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In her new documentary about the crises in Brazilian democracy, Petra Costa examines a factor involved in the election of Jair Bolsonaro that was largely overlooked in the first film — the toxic power of the evangelical movement.

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