Friday, 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 01:40PMWednesday, May 30, 2012
I have read the Harvard Business School study about critics and it is clueless on so many levels about the craft and mechanics of reviewing that it is astonishing that major newspapers and m…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:47PMSaturday, May 26, 2012
If Wordsworth was right in saying that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility, than a rugby memoir is a punch in the face reconsidered from a hospital bed.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:37AMThursday, May 17, 2012
Written by a man who spent most of his life in a bourgeois harness, Amsterdam Stories focuses on the fleeting thrills of refusal, the chemical and philosphical rush that comes from floating …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:08PMWednesday, May 9, 2012
Dramatist and director Wesley Savick faces a number of fascinating but formidable theatrical challenges, and the generally compelling Yesterday Happened (how could it not be, given its story…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:10PMFriday, May 4, 2012
We are a long way from the love-destroyed-by-hostility pieties of Romeo and Juliet, but Actors' Shakespeare Project director Tina Packer wants to make Troilus and Cressida fit into that reas…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:54PMThursday, May 3, 2012
One of my students at Boston University, Kyle Clauss, has a program on the school's station WTBU. He had me on to talk about The Arts Fuse, teaching, and translation, among other issues. Her…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:25AMMonday, April 23, 2012
It is important for audiences to go to Ten Blocks on the Camino Real with an open mind. Do not expect a play like The Glass Menagerie. Go to hear a youthful Tennessee Williams’s marvelousl…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:44AMSunday, April 15, 2012
It is a pleasure to report that -- driven by the lively direction of Jamie Lloyd and the skills of an energetic cast -- the National Theatre production proves that even after two centuries O…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:47PMSunday, March 18, 2012
"Deported/ a dream play" tells a local story with global implications. Many countries, including our own, still have not officially acknowledged that this genocide actually occurred and who …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:46PMWednesday, February 29, 2012
August Strindberg's work unquestionably has not received the degree of popular acclaim in America that it deserves. It's a bit mysterious, given that major U.S. playwrights -- Eugene O'Neill…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:15PMSunday, January 8, 2012
The year kicks off with few unusual productions -- companies are depending on proven New York hits, such as the Yasmina Reza duo, the Tony award-approved "Red," "Green Eyes," though the Will…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:13PMMonday, January 2, 2012
The documentary "The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground" is pleasing to watch, but there are a number of ways of respecting as well as loving great artists, the most important being coming up with t…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:08PMSunday, January 1, 2012
The essential task of the critic is not to like or dislike the arts or to push bromides, such as to celebrate the “power of reading.” Despite some troublesome modifications, Lionel Trill…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:18AMSunday, December 25, 2011
As the year nears its end, time is running out to write at length about some of the new books that gave me pleasure. Thus this quick list of favorites. As usual, my taste runs to prose that'…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:05AMSaturday, December 17, 2011
Ben Jonson is one of the great unknown geniuses of the English theater and of western literature. Ian Donaldson's new biography of the playwright/poet successfully makes the case that he des…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:18PMFriday, December 16, 2011
For all of his claims to being a subversive termite, Jonathan Lethem the puffy white elephant appears more often in this collection, trudging down a much safer, much happier road -- leave th…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:52AMWednesday, December 14, 2011
As the Occupy and Tea Party movements attest, this is a time in America of social action and political upheaval -– not to the degree that we see in "Battleship Potemkin," but significant n…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:26AMSaturday, December 3, 2011
Along with its puppets and spectacle, "The Snow Queen" gives the audience a chance to become part of the action. Kids of all ages are invited to put down their electronic toys and enter a fa…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:55AMSaturday, November 26, 2011
Both of these novels about social corruption should be in every Occupy Wall Street library in the country: inequality is not a matter of fate but the result of a hapless acquiescence to subt…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:21AMSaturday, October 22, 2011
There will be a memorial service for Caldwell Titcomb, invaluable friend of the arts in New England, on October 29 at 2 p.m. in the Memorial Church at Harvard University.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:07AMThursday, October 20, 2011
Exciting things are happening in Israeli writing, and it is garnering considerable attention in Europe. But what about theater in Israel? Israeli Stage offers the curious a chance to see wha…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:45AMWednesday, October 19, 2011
Liz Duffy Adams' affectionate look at Aphra Behn's rise to public prominence, despite prejudice against her gender, comes off as a sort of farcical love letter to an ink-stained ancestor tha…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:50AMSunday, October 9, 2011
Given the power, glory, and fun the Boston Babydolls supply with their burlesque routines -- pasties and nipple tassels whirl with furious aplomb -- the lack of spooky payoff in "The Wrathsk…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:54AMTuesday, October 4, 2011
A symptom of our times: two books by self-described critics that aren’t particularly critical. Informed, lucid, thoughtful, and explanatory, yes –- strongly evaluative, no
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:32PMFriday, September 30, 2011
It is encouraging that the list of recommendations for October isn't filled with musicals. Are straight plays back? I wouldn't count on it in this economic climate. So let's bask in the chan…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:44AMWednesday, September 28, 2011
In "Delusion," veteran performance artist Laurie Anderson generates a muted melancholy, sometimes poetic, sometimes poignant, that makes the piece a consistently compelling if not always suc…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:35PMTuesday, September 13, 2011
It could be that the brilliance of Alberto Moravia's cool diagnostic vision -- sleek, clear, cruel, and existential no matter how emotional the conflict -- puts us off. His male protagonists…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:36AMThursday, September 8, 2011
What drives serious writing about film? "When Movies Mattered" suggests an answer: it helps for a critic to take a side, not as consumer advocate, hipster crank, or box office predictor, but…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:48PMSaturday, September 3, 2011
The American Repertory Theater's juggling/removal of the operatic elements in "Porgy and Bess" is clumsy, but the goal is to create a compelling entertainment for contemporary audiences, smo…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:57AMThursday, September 1, 2011
Director Gus Kikkonen and cast come up with a bright, literate presentation of William Shakespeare's play "Measure for Measure," a potentially dark comedy pregnant with power.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:32AM 
