Theater
By Caldwell Titcomb NEW YORK CITY–Nearly thirty years ago – 14 December 1979, to be exact – the estimable Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) opened at its off-Broadway venue a play by one of its actors, Samm-Art Williams. Entitled “Home,” the production proved one of its major hits, and was extended thrice its scheduled run to…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Earlier this month, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, stoked up the cultural consternation machine when he implied that American writers are too provincial to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. American literary life is “too isolated, too insular” he opines, its writers don’t translate particularly well and they aren’t…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb “The Winter’s Tale” is one of the glories of our theatrical inheritance. Of Shakespeare’s total output, the Big Four tragedies stand at the head. Then comes “Twelfth Night,” the greatest comedy in our language. Next I would place “The Winter’s Tale” as the finest of the late romances, though most people would…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx A scene from the world premiere production of Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s “Of Mountains and Seas.” “Of Mountains and Seas: A Tragicomedy of the Gods in Three Acts” By Gao Xingjian. Translated from the Chinese by Gilbert C.F. Fong The Chinese University Press, distributed by Columbia University Press Filled with wise-cracking mythological…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx “The Boys of Winter” Written by Barry Brodsky, Eric Small and Dean B. Kaner. Directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary. Presented by BKS Productions at Boston Playwrights Theatre, Boston, MA, through September 21. John Greiner-Ferris as the disgruntled vet in “The Boys of Winter” In his superb new essay collection “Writing in the…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Some plays are so long that they drive people to despair. In the standard theatrical canon the palm goes to Goethe’s “Faust,” Part I of which runs 4612 lines, and Part II takes the total to 12,111 lines. Next comes Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt.” The playwright did not intend this to be staged…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Now in its third year under the watchful eye of the admirable Whistler in the Dark Theatre, FeverFest presents a selection of Boston’s fringe groups in an evening of short performances, a sort of theatrical tasting event billed as a round up of “explosive work by vital young companies.” Tonight will be…
Read Moreby 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 MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb The American Theatre Critics Association, which moves around the country for its annual convention, this year spent a recent week in the nation’s capital and environs. The area houses 75 theatres – 43 in the District of Columbia, 17 in nearby Maryland, and 15 in the contiguous portion of Virginia. From the…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Hu Jia, a freelance writer, civil rights, environmental and AIDS activist, was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.” Last week the PEN American Center announced it was sending out letters to the Bush Administration and Congressional leaders protesting, fifty days before the start of the Olympics, the…
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