Theater
Though rooted in Boston history, “The Luck of the Irish,” with its racial, class, marital and inter-generational conflicts, could be set anywhere in the world.
In “Gatz,” F Scott Fitzgerald’s words come at the audience like bullets because they are so relevant to so much of American life today. And create the kind of catharsis, that peculiar combination of pity and fear, that is the mark of truly great theater.
Director Robert Lepage’s “The Andersen Project” is a masterful meditation on the agonizing process of artistic creation. Few scripts bring the mixed essence of opportunism and magic of show biz together so effortlessly.
Israeli Stage’s readings are consistently the best attended in the Boston area, thus demonstrating that there is a great appetite for Israeli culture beyond folk dance and hummus.
Many countries, including our own, still have not officially acknowledged that this genocide actually occurred and who was responsible. New England, and specifically the greater Boston area, has one of the largest Armenian populations in the nation.
An unusual and powerful historical drama that looks at the troubled relationship between Jews and freed slaves at the end of The Civil War.
As this is his only work which Shakespeare himself titles ‘comedy,’ a company may feel an obligation to elicit laughter. Ironically, this duty can become burdensome.
The musical wheels out well-trodden jokes about growing old while supplying all the usual greeting card life lessons (live each moment as if it were your last!).
Both productions play around with chronology in order to show the dark side of history, to unmask convenient illusions of social or personal well-being by juxtaposing the myopia of the past with the payback of the future.
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year: Warming Up a Riff — How It Happened, and Why It Matters