Persona Non Grata
by Bill Marx “The way of the Samurai is a natural way of the Universe, Ma, and to learn it, one must live one’s life from first to last in self-control. I know all about that stuff now.” — Wynne in Adam Rapp’s “Stone Cold Dead Serious” Just how far are American playwrights from dramatizing…
Read MoreThose who think that accolades should go to the fresh or the marginal — work in Boston that could use the recognition rather than the usual suspects — will have a long wait.
Read Moreby Bill Marx “Catharsis isn’t a wound being excavated from childhood.” – Sarah Ruhl NPR as well as New York theater critics think playwright Sarah Ruhl, the “Golden Ruhl” with “The Midas Touch,” is sure money in the artistic bank. A winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 for…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Shining City, by Conor McPherson. Directed by Robert Falls. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company, through April 6 at the Boston University Theatre. John Judd and Jay Whittaker gas on about a pesky ghost At their best, ghost stories frolic in the freedom of the imagination: the writer generates his or her…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Television offers so little discussion of local stages that I had to check out WGBH’s Greater Boston segment on the state (artistic and financial) of the city’s theater, which aired last week. Of course, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was surprised that – in a predictable effort to assuage the anxieties…
Read Moreby Bill Marx Avenue Q, though March 23 at the Colonial Theatre, Boston, MA. Music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, book by Jeff Whitty. Based on an original concept by Lopez and Marx. Directed by Jason Moore. Puppets and people warbling up a storm in the touring production of Avenue Q Where…
Read Moreby Bill Marx A recent study in Editor & Publisher delivers the lowdown; with its circulation down about 20% in four years, The Boston Globe is in free fall. Two major investors in The New York Times, which owns the Globe, are “challenging the company’s investment decisions, including its commitment to the struggling newspaper industry…
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Theater Commentary: George Jean Nathan — The Divine Devil of American Theater Criticism
“The best of the regular theater critics … the brightest America ever had.” – Eric Bentley “Intelligent play-goer number one.” – George Bernard Shaw “The truth is that Mr. Nathan is both a theatrical storehouse, full of the most voluminous and astonishing information, and a whole theatre in himself. He maintains an impetus and lustre…
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