Despite some missteps and miscasting bumps along the way, this staging faithfully captures playwright August Wilson’s searing poetic vision.
Robert Israel
Theater Interview: Tennessee Williams and Censorship
“A lot of censorship in America has to do with the impulse to shut down what women have to say, literally hanging and burning them as witches to shut them up.”
Book Review: “Cheese, Wine, and Bread” — On the Menu, Confession and Fermentation
The current rage for inserting the personal/confessional in everything from cookbooks to literary criticism can go too far.
Book Review: John Edgar Wideman — Masterful Stories that Bear the Weight of Reality
A singular muscularity infuses these short stories, a confidence that astonishes.
Book Review: “Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch” — Nosh Nirvana?
Jake Cohen is “modern” in that he takes a contemporary approach at spreading the gospel; he is an expert at using social media.
Arts Feature: Best Stage Productions of 2020
Our theater critics pick some of the outstanding productions of a year truncated by COVID-19.
Arts Remembrance: Terrence McNally — Dramatist and Father of the Serious Contemporary Musical
The late Terrence McNally was more than just a masterful playwright. He also forged new roads in musical theater.
Theater Review: “The Children” — After the Damage Has Been Done
An apocalyptic backdrop gives the play urgency, especially given the current worldwide struggle to contain the Corvid-19 virus, which has already claimed thousands of lives.
Theater Review: “Pass Over” — An Unforgiving World
If one of the aims of art is to create a distinctively imaginative world, than Pass Over succeeds in generating a landscape of devastation, a hopeless place filled with gaping wounds and visible scars.
Author Interview: Boston’s Poet Laureate — Porsha Olayiwola
“I wrote those poems because I think people need to read the truth and to hear the truth about romantic sensibilities between gay people.”