387 stories by "Bill Marx"
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 …
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.
An adaptor has to make choices, and this theatrical version of "Invisible Man" focuses on the novel's most straightforward narrative strand.
In 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."
Nervous mainstream audiences could breathe easy, the messy cultural ruckus of the '60s was over: it was ok to find yourself in the suburbs.
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.
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.
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.
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…
"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."
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…
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 disser…
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"?
"The Great American Railroad War" reminds us of an inspired journalistic reaction to the crimes of an earlier age of robber baron.
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…
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…
"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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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 revi…
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…
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…
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.
