critics
For Cynthia Ozick, critics connect the dots; they inform us about what kind of culture we’re living in.
Read MoreCriticism is vital to our time because it is a form of witnessing, testimony to the possibility that the richness and joy of the arts can be articulated in ways that invite intellectual contentiousness in the midst of community.
Read MoreAccording to our docile mainstream media, Boston enjoys a perpetual Renaissance — the merchandise in the cultural window is always worth buying. And that predictability makes for very boring journalism.
Read MoreI have read the Harvard Business School study about critics and it is clueless on so many levels about the craft and mechanics of reviewing that it is astonishing that major newspapers and magazines have taken it seriously.
Read MoreThere 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 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 MoreAfter four movie versions of Alexandre Dumas’s nineteenth-century novel, does it make any sense to make a musical out of The Three Musketeers? The film versions efficiently present the book’s mix of comic book mayhem and romance and are available on DVD and video. By Bill Marx I can’t think of any successful swashbuckling musicals,…
Read MoreSome show biz flair-ups are dead debacles walking. Producers sparked a flap in Chicago recently by tossing accusations of foul play at a critic whom they claimed wrote about shows she didn’t have permission to review.
Read MoreThe caricature of the theater critic as spoilsport still pops up, pushed by rescuers of the “injured” who enjoy delivering self-congratulatory whippings. No naysayers are allowed –- it hurts business. For once, how about looking at the ways that yeasayers do a disservice to theater and the craft of criticism? By Bill Marx Are theater…
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Stage Commentary: Critical Limitations — And Theatrical Neglect
Boston theater critics value stage venues that are “convenient” and “familiar.”
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