Review
There is now an eighth Judicial Review, with the panel deliberating on the Boston University College of Fine Arts production of the 1990 Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical “Assassins,” which looks at the lives and sensibilities of men and women who attempted (successfully or otherwise) to kill the President of the United States. Below: background on…
Read MoreBy Harvey Blume The major problem with these treatments of Timothy Leary and Daniel Ellsberg is that they portray their main characters as if there was no possible resonance between them, as if they came from different eras. The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin, HarperOne, 256 pages, $24.99. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel…
Read MoreI am not sure that men at present think more profoundly than half a century ago, but beyond question they think with more rapidity, with more skill, with more tact, with more method and less of excrescence in the thought. Besides all this, they have a vast increase in the thinking material; they have more…
Read MoreWhat is a Judicial Review? It is a fresh approach to creating a conversational, critical space about the arts. The aim is to combine editorial integrity with the community-making power of interactivity. This is our first session. Review by Ian Thal Review by Timothy Longman Review by Peter Cohen Artist response by Shawn LaCount Summary…
Read MoreNorman R. Shapiro took on the Herculean task of translating the 17th century French poet’s work—some 240 poems in all—in increments of fifties. He has performed the difficult task with wit and panache.
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Some plays are so long that they drive people to despair. In the standard theatrical canon the palm goes to Goethe’s “Faust,” Part I of which runs 4612 lines, and Part II takes the total to 12,111 lines. Next comes Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt.” The playwright did not intend this to be staged…
Read Moreby Bill Marx The schizophrenia is instructive if somewhat dizzying. At the Calderwood Pavilion, the Huntington Theatre Company kicks off its season with “The Atheist,” a cynical exercise in scatological anti-heroism about a sleazy reporter who blackmails his way to fame. On its main stage at the Boston University Theater the HTC wallows in PG…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx The Atheist by Ronan Noone. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston, through September 30, 2007. Machiavellian monsters aren’t what they used to be in the theater. The gloriously godless creeps that memorably rampage their way through the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Shaw and Brecht scale the dizzying…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx When George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Misalliance, subtitled “a debate,” premiered in 1910, critics couldn’t make heads or tails of the play. It didn’t matter if the reviewer was sympathetic to Shavian excess — the evening’s self-parodying polemics and prophetic theater-of-the-absurd trappings were too much. The production closed after 11 performances: the script,…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx In his critically acclaimed novels and stories, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami sings of the subterranean connections between software and the supernatural. After Dark (Knopf, 191 pp, $22.95) Haruki Murakami is a hip cultural diagnostician who would like to be viewed as a melancholic poet of the postmodern condition, a writer who has…
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Arts Commentary: From the Editor’s Desk — By Popular Demand, 2026