By Bill Marx
The prospect of holiday cheer on stage is pretty depressing to contemplate after the soporific treacle of Paula Vogel’s PC-crazed “A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration,” which culminates in the unintentionally eye-popping vision of Walt Whitman, dressed as Kris Kringle, visiting a dying Jewish soldier. For those reluctant to take [...]

Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, in repertory at the Gamm Theatre, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, November 25 through December 5, 2009.
Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb
To celebrate the start of its 25th season, the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is offering two Shakespeare plays in repertory: “Romeo and Juliet” and “Much [...]

By Helen Epstein
Reckless by Graig Lucas. Directed by Scott Edmiston. Presented by the SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for the Arts through December 12, 2009.
Just in case you haven’t noticed it’s edging on toward Christmas, the SpeakEasy Stage Company unwraps “Reckless,” a bauble of a revival by playwright Craig Lucas, whose work for [...]

What is a Judicial Review? It is a fresh approach to creating a conversational, critical space about the arts. The aim is to combine editorial integrity with the community-making power of interactivity. This is our first session.

Review by Ian Thal
Review by Timothy Longman
Review by Peter Cohen

Artist response by Shawn LaCount
Summary by Bill Marx

As coverage [...]

Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience by Julius Novick. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; paperback 2009, 200 pages.
Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb
The Jewish presence in the United States goes back to the16th century. In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh recruited the expert Prague-born Jewish metallurgist and mining engineer Joachim Gans/Gaunse to join him on [...]

By Bill Marx
Somewhere an enterprising graduate student is working on a trenchant study of the correlation between holiday stage entertainment and the American economy. When things were looking bright and profitable the shows became cynical and comic, with mischievous elves placing whoopee cushions under our delusions of good cheer. Now that unemployment is high and [...]

Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Carmel O’Reilly. Produced by the the Lyric Stage Company at the YWCA Building on the corner of Clarendon Street and Stuart Street, Boston, MA, through November 14.
Reviewed by Helen Epstein
Improbable though it seems these days with multiple requests to turn off electronics before performances, a [...]

By Bill Marx
October includes the usual line-up of plays by seal-of-approval dramatists, Edward Albee and Conor McPherson, but there’s some welcome new blood, from Punchdrunk’s athletic adaptation of “Macbeth” to “Little Black Dress,” playwright Ronan Noone’s latest salvo at our national psyche, and “The Overwhelming,” the Boston premiere of a critically acclaimed study of Americans [...]

Actors From the London Stage (AFTLS) proves that when it comes to the Bard the minimal may be maximal.
Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb
Shakespeare’s challenging “King Lear” is the vehicle for this year’s fall tour of the troupe called Actors From the London Stage (AFTLS). This project was begun in 1975, and has been flourishing ever since, [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
There are those who have proclaimed that Christopher Plummer is the greatest classical actor in North America. There is certainly no gainsaying that he has for some time been in the tiny group at the top of the acting profession. Now as he nears the age of 80 he has brought forth “In [...]