Theater
A lack of dramatic combustion sometimes makes the Lyric Stage Company production, despite its intelligent detail, more staidly melodramatic than it should be.
Motti Lerner’s characters succeed in making both the secular and ultra-religious life appear rewarding and believable.
The 64,000 question is, if the artists’ concerns gravitated to the Marathon Bombings, why did “Interference”‘s press releases and the program cite Picasso’s “Guernica”?
“Witness Uganda” is a quintessential American musical — a work of cultural tourism that condemns cultural tourism.
The protagonist may necessarily be passive in the face of his or her diminishing mental condition, but art must rage against the dying of the light.
The “Cambridge Jonson” volumes are available online, and the site is a bibliographical joy to behold, Ben Jonson’s plays, poems, masques, and prose arranged in chronological order and in a searchable format.
“House/Divided” – a mélange of dazzling videography, startling and inventive lighting/props/stage craft, and spoken snippets of John Steinbeck’s quasi-Biblical prose – does not add anything new to our understanding of the current national malaise.
Those willing to accept that powerful political theater can be as much about depicting pain as providing hope will find much to admire in this visually striking, dramatically compelling piece.
The singing in the SpeakEasy Stage Company production is strong throughout; it’s easy to get caught up in the sheer pleasure of such a variety of voices.
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year: Warming Up a Riff — How It Happened, and Why It Matters