Boston theater critics value stage venues that are “convenient” and “familiar.”
critics
Fuse Book Review: Cynthia Ozick — The Value of “Exaggerated Contempt”
For Cynthia Ozick, critics connect the dots; they inform us about what kind of culture we’re living in.
Fuse Commentary: Arts, Criticism, and the Search for a Serious Space
Criticism 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.
Fuse Commentary: Why is Boston’s Arts Coverage So Bland?
According 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.
Fuse Commentary: What Makes a Critic Tick? Harvard Business School Hasn’t a Clue
I 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.
The Judicial Review — What Is It?
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 […]
Great News For the ‘Fuse — Support for the Judicial Review
I 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 […]
Fuse Theater Review: Is This Musical Really Necessary?
After 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, […]
Fuse Arts Commentary: Freedom of the Web
Some 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.
Theater Commentary: Yeasayers Beware
The 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 […]