Monday, February 4, 2013
"What Sherwood Anderson knew and understood was the nature of inarticulate lives and what people do when they’re in the grip of strong feelings and words fail them."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:13PMSaturday, January 19, 2013
For all of its earnest interest in healing some of the great divides in American life, Other Desert Cities ends up slighting the desert spaces that lie between us.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:49AMWednesday, January 16, 2013
For me, the fact that Bread and Puppet Theatre has survived for 50 years is very hopeful, essentially because company members have never wavered from their principles. Imagine that. You can …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:27PMTuesday, January 15, 2013
The Whistler in the Dark production does right by the gaunt power of "Vinegar Tom" -- if only dramatist Caryl Churchill hadn't served up such a tidily edifying coven of alleged sorceresses.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:37PMSunday, January 13, 2013
An adaptor has to make choices, and this theatrical version of "Invisible Man" focuses on the novel’s most straightforward narrative strand.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:31PMIn this production, director Piotr Fomenko "wanted to explore whether family happiness is even possible, the fight to keep it and the fear of losing it."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:53AMSunday, January 6, 2013
Nervous mainstream audiences could breathe easy, the messy cultural ruckus of the '60s was over: it was ok to find yourself in the suburbs.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:41AMMonday, December 17, 2012
Bare bones, determinedly unhokey, and intimate, director David Cromer's matter-of-fact approach does away with the irritatingly self-conscious fussiness that afflicts so many productions.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:38AMSunday, December 9, 2012
Larry Coen directs "Chinglish"’s awkwardly written romance with a savory earnestness, but he can’t put the pieces of the fragmented script (you laugh/you cry) together.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:48AMWednesday, October 17, 2012
Two warhorses of the theater come to town: Shakespeare's "Hamlet" trots along in the Globe Theatre touring production, while "War Horse" shows off the equine puppet body beautiful.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:59AMSaturday, September 29, 2012
The questions at stake are good ones and not asked very often in contemporary plays: why do some win and others lose in America? And what are the responsibilities of the haves and the have-n…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:59PMTuesday, September 25, 2012
"Don't get me wrong, I am terrified of change, I can’t bear to read articles about the ice caps melting, but I would call myself a pessimistic optimist or an optimistic pessimistic."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:24PMFriday, September 14, 2012
By Bill Marx. Arts Fuse: Tell me how Leeches came about, given how different it is from your other books, at least those in translation. David Albahari: It is different from other books of m…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:40PMWednesday, September 12, 2012
In its program, the A.R.T. links today’s 1% with the French aristocracy, a stab at relevance that does both the snobby thugs of the French Revolution and the super well-off of today a diss…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:32AMMonday, September 10, 2012
Who has taken criticism out of the hands of the "true critics"? Is someone making me read rancid Amazon reader reviews? Where do we look for the "true critics"?
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:38AMThursday, September 6, 2012
"The Great American Railroad War" reminds us of an inspired journalistic reaction to the crimes of an earlier age of robber baron.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:01PMWednesday, August 29, 2012
The plans to serve the jazz community that WGBH offered to JazzBoston during the meeting, from an internet jazz station to making Eric Jackson more visible on the station's talk shows, are o…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:28AMWednesday, August 22, 2012
Why does Laura Miller feel, given her belief that negative reviews are often useless, that she has to kick criticism while it is down? Why argue against the efforts of a small number of delu…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:54AMMonday, August 20, 2012
"New York Times" Book Critic Dwight Garner makes salient points about the need for incisive criticism, claiming that too much happy talk denies common sense and undercuts credibility. But th…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:53AMMonday, August 13, 2012
There are plenty of amusing moments when dramatist Charles Busch makes effective use of his gift for exaggerated wit and whimsy -- no dramatist can drop the word 'canasta' with as much hilar…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:31AMFriday, August 10, 2012
Given the Russian writer's modernist pedigree, should director/playwright Richard Nelson and translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky be punished for putting some "unevenesses" int…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:29AMSaturday, August 4, 2012
Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" deals with the difficultly of recognizing superiority at a time of radical social breakdown, specifically when it is democracy that is in extremis.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:38AMSaturday, July 28, 2012
Discard the empty rhetoric about "amplifying the arts," follow the money and you will eventually find, winding your way through all the obfuscation and spin, WGBH's thrifty corporate charact…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:28PMTuesday, July 17, 2012
Based on The New York Times Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane’s recent article on arts criticism, he and the editors at the newspaper haven’t much of a clue regarding what a serious arts …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:40AMSaturday, July 14, 2012
Northrop Frye, inspired by the poet William Blake, demands that the critic be a warrior in a "Mental Fight," articulating the liberating value of literature as a source of imaginative energy…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:48AMMonday, July 9, 2012
WGBH is not even attempting to make any excuses, not bothering to put in the energy to explain why the station isn't using funding from its supporters to hire first-class journalists or to c…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:06PMSunday, July 8, 2012
My impression is of a trio of rough-but-ready theater groups spoiling for some nervy, in-yer-face theatrical action. That is the way it should be.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:16PMMonday, July 2, 2012
Jazz is dying on WGBH -- long live the arts, and let us all eat cake financed by Citizens Bank at the upcoming Arts Weekend, created by WGBH and The Boston Globe
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:26AMSunday, June 24, 2012
As a long time arts critic for print, broadcast, and the Web, the potential for cultural coverage online strikes me then and now as exhilarating. The challenge for The Arts Fuse is to foster…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:25PMSunday, June 17, 2012
Early on I was given these words of wisdom by my friend, the late theater critic Arthur Friedman: "Criticism should not read as if it had been written by a publicist.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:02PMFriday, June 15, 2012
Director Robert Lepage's spectacular projections, aided by a savvy use of sound effects and lighting, move the dramatic focus of Cirque du Soleil's Totem with ease, opening up the imaginati…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:40PM 
