One of Vasily Petrenko’s most successful Elgar releases; there’s an edge to the Crouch End Festival Chorus’ performance of Britten’s Saint Nicolas ; Quartetto di Cremona’s new album is nothing if not overflowing with Mediterranean personality
Theater
Theater Review: Finding Hope in Isolation — “Dream Boston,” Episodes 1-5 @ The Huntington Theatre
In this innovative series, the Huntington Theatre Company has charged 11 local playwrights to imagine a future vision of Boston, post-pandemic, when “we can once again meet and connect in our city.”
Theater Review: “The Tattooed Man Tells All” — Memories of a Survivor
Peter Wortsman has made a valuable contribution with this play; it is a rare theatrical account about how living through the Holocaust shaped survivors.
Theater Review: A Raucous Zoomified “Much Ado” — “Thou Art Muted, Don Pedro”
Hub Theatre’s virtual production of Much Ado About Nothing recognizes Zoom’s potential for farce and leans into it: this is a rollicking delight of a show that refuses to take itself seriously, to everyone’s benefit.
Theater Review: “On Beckett / In Screen” — Bill Irwin Honors Samuel Beckett
Bill Irwin’s homage to Samuel Beckett explores what makes the writer so fascinating, even inspiring, for those who appreciate the knockabout beauty of his despair.
Theater Feature: An Interview with Benny Sato Ambush on Directing the Virtual Reading of Anthony Clarvoe’s “The Living”
“A play like The Living pricks the conscience of the country. It is the reason I wanted to produce and direct it.”
Theater Review: Penny Arcade — Provincetown, Puritans, and the Pandemic
I’ve hated enough people,” Penny Arcade confessed, “I can’t hate anyone new until 2022.”
Theater Commentary: Boston Stages — Running from Reality?
Are our theaters indifferent, craven, or complicit? Take your pick.
Theater Review: “Seneca Falls” – A History of Women’s Suffrage, Tongue-in-Cheek
The script is not a conventional history of women’s suffrage: dramatic Jean Ann Douglass mobilizes satire, sexuality, suffering, and sarcasm.
Theater Commentary: Notes Toward a Definition of Theater, Part One — “Be Bold and Wild”
As we grapple with building the brave new world of live theater in a Covid and post-Covid world, a few stray thoughts.