Theater
As a theatrical event, The American Stage anthology would have to be classified as a rousing vaudeville show: there are literary routines for all brows—high, middle, and low. The American Stage: Writings on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner, edited by Laurence Senelick, Library of America, 867 pages, $40. By Bill Marx “There is…
Read MorePerhaps the inspirational cliches, by-the-numbers storyline, and fan cartoon hijinks are what’s expected in a baseball musical. Johnny Baseball, Music by Robert Reale, Lyrics by Willie Reale, Book by Richard Dresser. Story by Dresser and Reale. Directed by Diane Paulus. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, MA, through July…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Summer has never been a time for theaters taking chances and the sluggish economy only encourages the hot weather drift to safety. But there’s some funky activity around the margins as well as encouraging news about Shakespeare & Company’s finances. Also, the Gloucester Stage Company has forsaken last year’s geriatric lineup and…
Read More. . . these plays in their various modes approach the theater as a means of knowing and not merely as a means of expression. — Richard Gilman, “The Drama is Coming Now.” Disfarmer conceived, directed, and designed by Dan Hurlin. Original music by Dan Moses Scheier. Text by Sally Oswald. Part of the Emerging…
Read MoreTheatre by David Mamet. Faber and Faber, 157 pages, $22 Reviewed By Joann Green Breuer David Mamet’s concise and consistently frustrating book, Theatre, informs even while it infuriates, arguing for throwing out babes with the bath water as if theatre could, or should, make a splash without them. Get your towels out. But as you…
Read MoreWhat makes a comedy a sure-fire hit? Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Boston, MA, through June 5. Reviewed By Helen Epstein That was one of the few questions I was taking the trouble to ask myself while giving in to the sheer enjoyment…
Read MoreAugust: Osage County by Tracy Letts. Directed by Anna D. Shapiro. The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production presented by Broadway Across America at the Colonial Theatre, Boston, MA, though May 9. Reviewed by Bill Marx “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” opined Leo Tolstoy sagely in Anna…
Read MoreBut in my arms until the break of day/ Let the living creature lie,/ Mortal, guilty, but to me/ The entirely beautiful. – W. H. Auden, Lullaby The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. The National Theatre production presented by NTLive at the Coolidge Corner Cinema, Boston, MA, on April 22…
Read MoreArtists should “no longer huddle in the confines of a painted box set” but instead join together to “find visible and audible expression for the tempo and psychology of our time” and dramatize “the search of the average American today for knowledge about his country and his world.” – Hallie Flanagan, Federal Theatre Project Stick…
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