Review

Book Review: An Outstanding “List”

November 30, 2011
Posted in , ,

Although he has set himself an ambitious task with all that is happening in “The List,” Martin Fletcher has complete command of this material and has created a complex novel that is also a good thriller.

Read More

Visual Arts Review: Flowers as the Work Table for the Imagination

November 5, 2011
Posted in , ,

Inescapably erotic, flowers are all about desire. What are they but a glorious exhibition and frame of their own genitals?

Read More

Theater Review: Not Enough Political Heat in “The Kitchen”

October 26, 2011
Posted in , ,

National Theatre director Bijan Sheibani chose artistry of movement, beautiful as it is, over the battering belittlement of really hard, unappreciated work, the facts of sweat and stupor.

Read More

Theater Review: Of Race and Real Estate — Clybourne Park

October 25, 2011
Posted in , ,

Given his full-throttle depiction of the myopia of middle class mores, Bruce Norris is more in the flamboyant satiric line of Sinclair Lewis, who also trained his sharp ear and eye on the Midwest, the American heartland, jabbing away at American delusions of community, status, and self-satisfaction.

Read More

Theater Review: The Portrait of a 17th Century Artist as a Young Woman

October 19, 2011
Posted in ,

Liz Duffy Adams’ affectionate look at Aphra Behn’s rise to public prominence, despite prejudice against her gender, comes off as a sort of farcical love letter to an ink-stained ancestor that at times suggests a Shavian talk fest in a minor key.

Read More

Book Review: Denis Johnson’s Beautiful, Haunting “Train Dreams”

October 15, 2011
Posted in ,

In “Train Dreams” the world of beauty and terror is balanced as only our best writers have been able to balance those things.

Read More

Classical Concert Review: Sean Newhouse Conducts the BSO

October 9, 2011
Posted in , , ,

Despite some interpretive shortcomings, Sean Newhouse, the orchestra’s 30-year-old assistant conductor has solid technique, and a major orchestra whose players, management, and audience believe in him.

Read More

Poetry Review: Heaney Still

October 7, 2011
Posted in , ,

Must age diminish a great poet’s strengths? If I grant that age has such power, I’m left to ponder the truly strange fact that death does not.

Read More

Theater Review: An Unimpressive “Next Fall”

September 25, 2011
Posted in ,

“Next Fall” is so anxious not to polarize or offend that it ends up as little more than well meaning. Something serious seems to be happening on stage, but for all intents and purposes the conflicts that make for genuine drama fall by the wayside.

Read More

Theater Review: A Fabulous “Candide”

September 22, 2011
Posted in , ,

In this delightful production of “Candide,” director Mary Zimmerman imaginatively reworks and mischievously augments the musical. Her deliciously blowzy approach embraces, with charming lyrical fervor, the sheer preposterousness of Voltaire’s sardonic fable.

Read More

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Categories

Archives